Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
~~T. S. Eliot, from "The Four Quarters"
Timecheck and Paycheck
I was reading Philip K. Dick's long short (or short long) story "Paycheck" (written in 1952), which asks some of the usual PKDick-ian questions about time, cause and effect, p/recognition, retrocasuality, the nature of time, of memory and self, etc.
One throught-provoking observation I recieved as I read this story, was/is/will be, that the main character is payed 50000 credits for a 2-year suspicious work, whereupon he'll have the last two years of life (or rather the memory of it all) erased. So he's receiving a paycheck, for a piece of his life (and his time).
And, as the saying goes: time is money. He's literally (lit-e-art-thurgically) and also metaphorically, trading a part of his life/time for a trinket of gold.
But the observation goes even deeper, as it is said:
The main protagonist, has, in his work contract, as is allowed, by corporate law, decided to forego & skip every single digit of his 50000 riches, and instead choose to keep another kind of paycheck of his own. .....One that is not even any money in the shape of wealth or digits.
What he recieves instead of the 50-grand-multi-numbered riches, is a bag of some seemingly random and useless trinkets and stuff. A bag full of... tricks... or.... even a pile full of trash?
Half of a broken pokerchip. A token for a bus. A metallic wire. A green piece of cloth. An unknown code key. Etc. Etc.
But as it later turns out, the company that he's been working for in secret (extreme high security in order to get away from government investigation), has been building a "time scoop". As well as a mirror for receiving in-sights from out of time.
AND. At least one of the seeming useless objects, that he recieves as his paycheck---it turns out---has been "scooped out" *from the future*. (The day after tomorrow or something to that effect).
So. He is literally (and metaphorically) recieving a piece of TIME as his PAYcheck. Time, as they say, is money, and money is time.
He lost two years of his future, two years of his life, yet he also gained a piece of the future instead, in the end.
And, as it turns out, each of the seven items that he has picked up for his pay, turns out to be hightly useful, in fact even invaluable, since he has seen it all up ahead, before his own p/resent time, through&about the timely mirror and time-scoop, just how he might make use them all, in order to escape any fate, even worse, and more horrific, than just the loss of one's time, or one's trinkets of gold.
Useless random trinkets, constantly ending up saving his life.
Seven random little items. As in the lucky number seven? Or as maybe the days of the week?
And one final of them of the future) to begin&restart the cycle (week/day & life) all over again?
Or maybe just a random little number? A most lucky of numbers.
Your Future-you is like a god... to us now
Another curious thought I had, as I read this, is the realiziation that one's future self, would be as a god to one's present (and past) self.
Since future-me already knows what is ging to happen, and how to change the course of events, turn the tables, shift and nudge things ever-so-slightly in a different direction... Well.
One's future self might not be all-knowing or omni-pre-scient. But mine/your/our future self would surely know enough (which is certainly more than enough) to possess the power of the now. Or even---the power the future.
In a way, the past self of the protagonist, represents (or takes on the role of) his future self; since he has foreknowlege of the future, his past self represents his own future (self); and since his memory of his past (2 years), for his recent past self, his past, his present and the future hadn't been wiped clean, as of yet, meaning that in a strictly functional sense, his recent past self, with all of this might fore-knowledge (as well as some recent 2-year past-knowledge) functions as a stand-in for his own future/self.
What (and who) is his past? And what (and who) is his future? It all becomes extremely relative when the self of the past knows even more then the self of the present (or indeed the self of his soon-to-happen future).
All seen and sensed, through the mirror synchronis, tempus fugit, the reflected eye out of time, out of mind, out of sight, in&out of his life, shaped and changed, in the rivers and streams of all times; staring deep into that techno-futuristic mirror of time, that allows him to observe his own life, and so many other times lines and events, and to yet plan up ahead, for what is still soon yet to happen, or even be set in place.
Tempus Fugit
(History of Richard II
Act V, Scene 5. (Pomfret castle)
BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE)
(2790)
King Richard II:
Ha, ha! keep time: how sour sweet music is,
When time is broke and no proportion kept!
So is it in the music of men's lives.
And here have I the daintiness of ear
To cheque time broke in a disorder'd string;
But for the concord of my state and time
Had not an ear to hear my true time broke.
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;
For now hath time made me his numbering clock:
My thoughts are minutes; and with sighs they jar
Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch,
Whereto my finger, like a dial's point,
Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.
Now sir, the sound that tells what hour it is
Are clamorous groans, which strike upon my heart,
Which is the bell: so sighs and tears and groans
Show minutes, times, and hours: but my time
Runs posting on in Bolingbroke's proud joy,
While I stand fooling here, his Jack o' the clock.
This music mads me; let it sound no more;
For though it have holp madmen to their wits,
In me it seems it will make wise men mad.
The gospel according to Dick
"Paycheck" might not be PKD's best, or even most interesting piece of story weaving, thought surely not his worst either (some of his earlier pulpy 50s stuff comes to mind).
Would I recomend Paycheck to anyone? Maybe if your intereested in these kinds of ideas.
Or maybe its enought to just have read THIS one here article of text. Or even the wikipedia/cliffnotes version.
But why go to the exegesis when we can go straight for the gospel (itself)?
Or in the end (or one of the shady beginnings) maybe both serves their own kind of needs and their ends.
In the end.
Timecheck and paycheck
Time's check(s) and numbers/digit's cash-register checkIf we were to take the "time=money" saying literally (and we are here), it would also mean that a paycheck is also a kind of timecheck. And the protagonist here is literally checking out time in advance, as well as actually reciving a check from the future, both with his actual pay (the objects and foreknowledge what is to come), as well as a literal check from the future, a receipt that will be registered and made active in just a couple of days.
Timechecks and maybe/too many futures long past
Some people (like Eric Wargo of the Nightshirt) have speculated about precognition that any precog abilities are only possibilities or potentialities. Even PKD, himself, in the Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldridge, where the precogs (future seers) only foresees a series of possible, and somewhat more and less likely timelines, with various probability factors (of actually coming to pass).
Any possible precognitive ability--as in the sight of the future--has to actually be observed in the future (or rather in the present when it happens), for the probability wave of time and space (and its many possibilities) to collapse as it did (or as it will or hopes it might do).
Futures and greens
Where does the futures grow at its peak? In finance, there's this thing called "futures", which are trades that are made in the future, or about the future, or about any possible or probable future(s) that might happen some time further down the road.
Even a paycheck is something that you recieve or will recieve for your future's labours/time/love lost.
Just as a loan is something borrowed from the future, maybe from the bank, or from another person, or from one's own self. To borrow money is (in the end) to borrow from one's future money bag. To replace future consumtion with consumption in the now. Lots of people hope and pray that their money will have increased and arrived (futuristic possibilities) by the time futures comes to collect the debt and pay back the check.
What is a bill (payment and debt) but a will (an intention and testament, of man or god).
Machine time and Life-time
In the marxist analysis, finally, it is the very measurement of time (and all our hours laboured
and long lost), that makes it possible to even maintain the current capitalistic system of currency markets and exchange.
Time-money, and money-time: chronos, machine-time, can be summoned in the image of a cogwheel.
The cogwheel is the thing that allows the detailed numberical measurement of time (chronos).
The cogwheel is also that which represents the machine, with all of its industrial wealth and creation, social rearrangement, technologisation, and alienation.
What about other kinds of time, then? Personal time? Life-time? Self-time? Or even: other-time?
Or the concept of Kairos: time as an event, or manifestation, rather than as a mechnical measurement of numbers and moments.
People don't usually get a check... for showing up on time in their very own lifes.
But you/us/we (people) might at least get a life: A time that is lived, and embraced, and engaged.
Time out of time. Or time deep inside of time.
Time of a life.
The future collapsing into the now.
And just what does matter any more in the end?
In the end.
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