Title: Motion Sickness Author: Tim Scott Email: TScott@aol.com Website: http://www.geocities.com/timmscott.geo/ Disclaimer: This story is completely unauthorized. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -- I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference. "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost Shakespeare was right. About a lot of things, really, but I was thinking of what he said about time slipping away. "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day" and all that. Time may fly when you're having fun but for the most part it just... slips away. Calmly and quietly it passes at the unvarying rate of one second per second. You're busy doing whatever it is that you do -- going to school, pursuing your career, something -- until one day you look up and it's... too late. Too late to climb that mountain, or swim that sea, or sail around the world. Too late to cure a disease and win the Nobel Prize or whatever your own particular dream used to be. When you're a kid you think, hey, I can do anything I want. I've got plenty of time. Time to burn. But kids don't realize that time is finite, that every second spent doing *this* means one less second you have to spend doing *that*. Kind of like never balancing your checkbook, you know? The day comes when you bounce one, and you think: "How can that be? I still have checks left!" But sooner or later you get your epiphany, or enlightenment, or satori... turn a card and pick your religious term. Mine came, of all places, in a burger barn on the road between Nowhere and East Nowhere, USA, headed back from our latest attempt to unscrew the inscrutable. We were tired, my partner and I. Weary from the work and from too many hours spent shoehorned into rented cars. Weary from staring at endless little white lines on one road after another. It was time to change drivers and get some coffee, stretch our legs, work out the kinks in our necks and backs. When you've been doing this as long as we have it's all automatic. We pulled in and got out of the car, she threw me the keys and headed for the ladies' room while I ordered dinner and stood in line. The smell of foodlike substances filled the air. I ordered her a salad and fixings, got my usual serving of cardiac glue, found us a booth and waited on the hard plastic bench for our number to be called. I got a wall booth because I don't like having people sit behind me. I sat and watched the room and waited for a glimpse of red hair in my peripheral vision, just like I'd done a million times before. And then it happened. She was nobody special. Nothing set her apart from any other thirteen year old girl in the country, maybe in the world. She had strawberry blonde hair, with a dusting of freckles across her nose and forearms. Average build, looked like most of her baby fat had recently been absorbed in a growth spurt. Green eyes, no glasses. She wore pale green shorts and a white short-sleeved tee shirt. She sat next to a man, presumably her father. He was Everyman, too. I could see male pattern baldness beginning in his short blonde hair. He wore jeans, a light blue tee shirt and work shoes. He had rough, working-man hands and his build hinted at a vigorous job. Truck driver or construction worker, maybe. It was just after the dinner hour. The wife was probably working late and the husband, too tired from his own job to cook, had no doubt let his daughter wheedle him into a burger and fries. Nothing special at all. Then she leaned against her daddy, relaxed as a kitten, and put the last french fry in her mouth. She closed her eyes and munched away, happy as a clam because all was right with her world. Between one tick of the clock and the next, she was beautiful. Nothing was different. There were no fiery letters in the sky, no alien ships arcing overhead, no signs of the coming apocalypse. No reason at all for the change. But suddenly she was the new grass pushing its way up through concrete, unstoppable and green with promise. She was the roar of galaxies being born, a glorious possible future rushing toward her chance at greatness. She was all that I could never have. All the chances I threw away rose up before me -- all the times I turned left and not right, all the choices I made or allowed others to make for me that led to this solitary and barren now. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody's daddy. I could have stayed at Oxford, as Professor Wyndham advised, and become an academic. Or gone into private practice, where crazy people would pay ridiculous sums of money to come to my office instead of me having to chase them all over the damn place. I could have married a decent woman -- they really are out there, contrary to what people say, I've met them -- and had a little girl or boy of our own. I could have had somebody leaning against me with the kind of adoration that says I am her rod and her staff and I comfort her. But I didn't. I don't. And I probably won't. When Scully tapped me on the shoulder I jumped, startled out of my contemplation. She looked a bit smug about it, in a tired way. I usually see her coming. The smile faded as she looked at me more closely. "What's wrong, Mulder?" I was saved by the bored counter girl calling our number. I waved the little slip of paper at Scully, slid past her and went to get our food. THE END