XLII.

Time Wizard

I am going back in time.

It is my life’s greatest work. Tonight, at 7:15 p.m., my corporeal existence shall be transferred through space-time to September 7^th, 1979. If all goes well, it will be as if nothing changed in the present—the moment in time I am going to alter will be a part of your reality without you realizing it.

There is, of course, the possibility of error. I worked on the theories at first, in my spare time. Bit by bit, piece by piece, it all came together. At first, I realized some key elements of the puzzle were missing, and spent all my spare time trying to unlock the puzzle. I studied tirelessly; I pored through every piece of literature I thought would even come close to helping me understand. I believed that by discovering the theory of time travel, I could also discover the one mystery that every person put on this earth has pondered at least once: the meaning of life.

The chamber I built looks straight out of science fiction. It has the shape of a one-man submarine and stretches from the floor to the roof. Four knobs on a nearby panel control how far forward or backward in time you can go. My prototype machine had three knobs controlling days, months, and years. I recently added a fourth knob: decades.

The love of my life, my late wife Kirsten, was the first to point out how obsessed I was becoming. What had started as a hobby on the weekends quickly became a full-time job. Before I knew it, ten years had passed. My hair went from a blazing auburn to dull brown receding tide. She had aged as well. When she entered a room, it used to be that heads turned and eyes watched. Her golden blonde hair contoured to her every movement, hypnotizing everyone around her. She always had a genuine smile on her face that told people her feelings were real and that she really cared. Even now, I still remember that smile. All the memories of our younger years are beginning to fade away, and memories of more recent times together are practically non-existent.

One night, when I emerged from the basement, she told me she had cancer. The news shook me to my core. When did this happen? How long had this been going on? I noticed that the chemo had taken its toll. Her lavish appearance had faded and turned into a skeleton. Her body creaked with every movement. A knit cap replaced her golden locks. Her eyes begat sadness and misery, and yet she still smiled. She still cared. How could I not have noticed what was happening?

Her death on that September day only fueled my research. It’s been twenty years since then. If I could somehow go back—back before the cancer, before the theories, we could be happy. I could spend my remaining time with her and we could live together like we were supposed to. Live like we were meant to.

Most of all, I can tell her how sorry I am for how selfish I’ve been all these years.

So far, live tests haven’t shown promise. Even after all these years, living beings don’t survive in the chamber once the computer makes the final calculations. Even if I don’t make it, I’ll still be reunited with my love. Either way, we can be together again and start over.

It’s almost time. Remember, if all goes well, it will be as if nothing changed in the present—the moment in time I am going to alter will be a part of your reality without you realizing it. History will have been corrected.

If nothing is written after this, you can assume the experiment was a success.

XLI.

Killing Time

His eyes grew wide as the kitchen knife sawed at his wrists. He expected pain, but was surprised to find it hardly hurt at all. A dark liquid seeped from the blade’s wounds as the knife continued to rock back and forth. It almost looked black. He always thought blood was red. His spent his last moments before passing out chasing these ideas.

“Jeremy? Can you hear me?” A concerned, feminine voice was close to him, though he couldn’t tell where. As he opened his eyes, he saw a young girl, mid-twenties, clasping his bandaged hands. His wide eyes manifested themselves again, this time accompanied by a horror-stricken look on his face.

“You’re in the hospital,” she said. “I came looking for you when you didn’t show up after work and found you collapsed in the bathroom. What were you thinking? You could have killed yourself—and I’m so glad you didn’t—but why did you do this?”

“I don’t remember…” Jeremy said. He decided he had to get away. Just wait for the right moment, and then slip out when no one’s watching.

“I’m glad you’re safe, anyway. I took off of work so I can help you get better. We can spend this weekend together, too. How does going to Houlihan’s sound? Just like we always do?”

“Sounds good,” Jeremy said. He shifted uncomfortably on his hospital bed. He unsuccessfully tried to break the iron grip she still had on his hands.

“I can make a reservation at our usual table,” she mused. “I wonder if Nancy still works there? She was trying to find a job right after college, but then again, a Liberal Arts degree doesn’t really lend itself well to any job in particular. You know?”

“I know,” Jeremy said. The girl smiled. Jeremy managed a smile back.

“Well, I’ll let you sleep. Don’t worry about work. Everything’s taken care of. They said to take all the time you need to recover. You don’t have to do anything but sleep.” She kissed Jeremy on the forehead and left the room, a bounce in her step which made her every movement look like she was walking on springs. His face relaxed and his eyes lost the terror they held moments before.

Jeremy looked at his bandaged wrists. He was bleeding through. Pretty soon, she would be back, and would no doubt volunteer to help change his bandages amidst the protests from the nurse. And then, when he got better, they would go home and live their life just the way it was before. Everything would be back to normal.

All he had to do was wait.

XL.

Extra large. Which this entry is not. This is just a quick update to say that I finished my Metro internship on August 12th and have been working for the past week or so to get my money supply up before school. Train tickets cost a lot when you go to the city several times a week, and food isn’t cheap in the Temple area. I won’t have a lot of time on my hands to work once/if my Daily News internship starts, so I need to start saving now.

I added a new section: the Progressive Gallery. I got around to taking some pictures this month, and, if you haven’t already noticed, they went up a while ago. Some of the pictures may seem a bit bleached out, but it was midday and my first time taking pictures outside of an “I’ve been to this place on vacation” environment. So, enjoy that.

Also completed is the Portfolio section, which details all the articles and debates I did for Metro while I interned there. I was there for almost four months, and while it doesn’t look like I completed much in that time period, I did balance a summer class and two jobs during that time. It was an awesome experience, and I’d like to think I made a lot more than just contacts while I was there.

Something to look forward to: I hope to have some exclusive content here by the end of the month, be it short stories, or something else. Stay tuned.

XXXIX.

If you’ve having trouble reaching my page lately, I’m about to explain why.

On the right side of the screen, you’ll see a link to The Mega Man Network.

Right now, though, it’s broken.

This is a website I’ve affiliated myself with for many years, back in the days when it used to be three separate entities: mega.man.x.online, Mega Man Outpost, and Planet Mega Man, respectively (a nice little history, found on Mega Man Network’s old server, can be found here). Through a series of website mergers, these sites have come together to form this one major website, which is considered the ultimate authority on all things involving Capcom’s Blue Bomber.

And then, something happened. Something that hasn’t happened in over ten years happened, and the website practically exploded with excess traffic.

Mega Man 9 was announced.

“Mega Man 9,” you ask yourself. “Wasn’t that a game made for the Super Nintendo?”

No, no. A common mistake, and one made because of how much of a joke Mega Man 9 is. In fact, Mega Man 9 was the ultimate joke in the Mega Man community for over a decade. Mega Man 8 came out in 1997 for the PlayStation (uno) and Sega Saturn. And, as the years passed, the likelihood of a sequel to the game became almost nonexistent.

Capcom had other spin-offs of the original franchise up and primed for milking: Mega Man X, Mega Man Legends, and, later, Mega Man Battle Network. After that came two more: Mega Man Zero, a spin-off of Mega Man X, and Mega Man Star Force, a spin-off of Battle Network. Mega Man was so subdivided, even its spin-offs had spin-offs. The idea of another entry into the original series was such a farfetched idea that it had its own category on popular Mega Man forums: unwanted spam.

Even if it was decided that Mega Man 9 would be made, it wouldn’t fit in today’s market. To understand why is to understand a little bit about the mindset of developers as well as publishers in the late 1990s leading up to right before this current gaming generation, with the 360, Wii and PS3. Sony had created the PlayStation, a video game console capable of displaying 3D graphics, and wanted to market the console as such. This means that games like Mega Man, sidescrolling games on a two-dimensional plane, were unsightly spots on an otherwise cutting edge system. The idea of another 2D Mega Man on a console seemed all but impossible.

This is Mega Man Network’s web traffic for this year. Notice anything special? Why does the end of June have such a ridiculous spike in traffic?

This is why. IGN linked to it. Kotaku linked to it. Every single big gaming website linked to The Mega Man Network when they broke the news. And in doing so, they broke TMMN, along with the bandwidth for jvmwriter.org.

This gaming generation changed the minds of all the developers and publishers. The PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii all have one thing in common: downloadable content. The Wii has the Virtual Console and Wiiware, the 360 has Xbox Live Arcade, and the PS3 has the PlayStation Network. What these enable publishers to do is to release arcade games and pre-existing games over the internet via digital distribution. Just enter in your credit card number and you can enjoy the sounds of 8-bit goodness on your Wii in the form of Super Mario Bros for a nominal fee. It’s a goldmine for everyone because the packaging and distributing process is completely bypassed.

This also allows developers to break into the business by creating small arcade games to release on these services for a fraction of the price of what they would normally pay for creating a game and putting it out on store shelves.

So, Capcom decided to take a chance. They got together with Keiji Inafune and decided they were going to make a brand new Mega Man game and release it on Nintendo’s Wiiware system. Not only was it going to be new, it was going to be in the style of the old NES games to try to appeal to older gamers who used to play the games. I know quite a few people who said they would buy a new Mega Man game if it were like the old NES games. They’re eating their words now.

So, that’s why traffic’s slow on the server. Hope you enjoyed the history lesson.

XXXVIII.

Just a quick update to say I’ve accepted an internship at the Philadelphia Daily News for the Fall semester.

I’m grateful for the opportunity, as I always am with any chance to be published, but my plate is full enough as it is. I can’t imagine being a full time student and still managing an internship and two jobs. Something will have to give.

—

Edit: Holy crap, they fired Larry Mendte. I associate him with CBS News, so this is a really shocking turn of events. He apparently broke into a coworker’s computer and read her e-mail, but the article doesn’t say why. Was he curious? Was he trying to one-up her on some stories? I’m not seeing the purpose here.

XXXVII.

Yesterday was the first Meet the Press without Tim Russert.

From MSNBC’s announcement:

Tim Russert was the Managing Editor and Moderator of “Meet the Press” and political analyst for “NBC Nightly News” and the “TODAY” program. He anchored “The Tim Russert Show,” a weekly interview program on MSNBC. Russert also served as senior vice president and Washington bureau chief of NBC News.

He died Friday, June 13 at the Washington D.C. bureau. He was 58.

His two books-Big Russ and Me in 2004 and Wisdom of Our Fathers in 2006-were both New York Times #1 bestsellers.

He has received forty-eight honorary doctorate degrees from American colleges and universities and has lectured at the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Reagan Presidential Libraries.

Russert took over the helm of “Meet the Press” in December 1991. Since then, MTP has become the most watched Sunday morning interview program in America and the most quoted news program in the world. Now in its 60^th year, “Meet the Press” is the longest-running program in the history of television. Russert has interviewed every major figure on the American political scene.

Russert joined NBC News in 1984. In April 1985, he supervised the live broadcasts of the Today program from Rome, negotiating and arranging an appearance by Pope John Paul II, a first for American television. In 1986 and 1987 Russert led NBC News weeklong broadcasts from South America, Australia and China.

Washingtonian Magazine dubbed Tim Russert the best and most influential journalist in Washington, D. C. describing “Meet the Press” as “the most interesting and important hour on television.”

In 2008, Time Magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

TV Guide selected his use of the white dry eraser board (Florida, Florida, Florida) on Election Night 2000 as one of the “100 Most Memorable TV Moments” in history. The Washington Post credits him with coining the phrase “red state” and “blue state” to explain the nation’s political divide.

In 2005, he was awarded an Emmy for his role in the coverage of the funeral of President Reagan. He is the recipient of the Golden Plate Award of the Academy of Achievement. His Election 2000 Meet the Press interviews with George W. Bush and Al Gore won the Radio and Television Correspondents’ highest honor, the Joan S. Barone Award and the Annenberg Center’s Walter Cronkite Award. Russert’s March 2000 interview of Senator John McCain shared the 2001 Edward R. Murrow Award for Overall Excellence in Television Journalism. He is also the recipient of the John Peter Zenger Award, the American Legion Journalism Award, the Veterans of Foreign Wars News Media Award, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society Journalism Award, the Allen H. Neuharth Award for Excellence in Journalism, the David Brinkley Award for Excellence in Communication, the Catholic Academy for Communication’s Gabriel Award, and inducted into the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame.

He was a trustee of the Freedom Forum’s Newseum and a member of the Board of Directors of the Greater Washington Boys and Girls Club and America’s Promise –Alliance for Youth.

In 1995, the National Father’s Day Committee named him “Father of the Year”, Parents magazine honored him as “Dream Dad” in 1998 and in 2001 the National Fatherhood Initiative also recognized him as Father of the Year.

Irish America magazine has named him one of the top 100 Irish Americans in the country and he was selected as a Fellow of the Commission of European Communities.

Russert was born in Buffalo, New York on May 7, 1950. He graduated from Canisius High School, John Carroll University and with honors from the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law.

Before joining NBC News, Russert observed firsthand the inner workings of the executive and legislative branches of government as counselor in the New York Governor’s office in Albany in 1983 and 1984 and a special counsel in the United States Senate from 1977 to 1982.

He was a member of the bar in New York and the District of Columbia.

Russert is survived by his wife, Maureen Orth, a writer for Vanity Fair magazine, and his beloved son Luke.

A great man was lost on Friday, and a fine journalist. Life will go on, but no one man will be able to fill Russert’s shoes. Rest in peace, friend.

XXXVI.

I now know why Gary Webb shot himself.

XXXV.

Time for a little life update.

I went from having no job to having three jobs–two in retail, and one as a secretary/paper pusher for my friend’s Dad, an accountant. They’re all good jobs, but doing them all at the same time is extraordinarily tiring. I have about 38 hours of work next week alone in addition to a summer class and my internship at the Metro. It’s hard to find time to do anything but work and sleep. As a result, my writing has slowed tremendously, but that should pick up soon, hopefully.

I’m taking my first magazine-related journalism class, which is ironic considering how long I’ve been in the sequence. I’m very behind compared to all the other people in my class: while they have had three years to get their journalism stuff out of the way, I have had a half year since I switched majors. It’s almost unavoidable that I would need to take another year so I can complete all my necessary classes. I’m trying to pick up as best I can, but there are some things you can only learn through experience.

My internship has been interesting thus far. My editor is a cool guy and all the reporters in the office are really nice and accommodating when I ask for help. I really need to get over my propensity to shy away from people if it looks like they’re busy–my entire career depends on me bugging people who are probably not in the mood to talk. All in all, I’m going to learn as much as I can there and gather as many published pieces as possible. The clips I’ve been writing should appear in my portfolio soon, as well.

As for my creative writing…it’s been progressing slowly. It’s not that I don’t have the story down, it’s that I don’t feel comfortable writing it, or I’m never in the mood to write. That really has to change, as well, but when I come home from an 8-10 hour workday, the only real thing I want to do is crash on my bed and pass out. I’m not burning out mentally; I’m burning out physically. Work really takes a toll on my writing.

I am making headway with my character descriptions, though. I bought two wooden mannequins to pose for when I’m having characters interact with one another. So far, I’m just playing with them, but I hope that they will let me visualize the scenes I’m imagining in my head.

“Hey, I’m new at the desk, and I’d thought I’d introd–”

*gasp* “Oh no you didn’t!”

XXXIV.

Just a quick little blurb before I go off on my day.

Several days ago, a volcano that had been dormant for 9,000 years near the coast of Chile erupted spectacularly, hurling liquified metals and lightning many miles into the sky. The results, which you see here, are called a “dirty thunderstorm,” and are quite rare. Nobody is certain what causes them, but according to National Geographic it’s believed to be “the result of rock fragments, ash, and ice particles in the plume collid[ing] to produce static charges—just as ice particles collide to create charge in regular thunderstorms.” Want to see a photo of the volcano plume from space?

The volcano spewed debris twenty miles up into the atmosphere. It erupted on Friday, May 2, and erupted again yesterday. Over 4,000 locals have fled, but luckily everyone was able to get away safely. The lava isn’t the fast-moving kind, but rather a slow-moving creep of material. So nobody is being menaced by a rapidly-moving wall of liquid rock. Photographs via National Geographic.

Really amazing stuff. The stuff of stories, you could say.

XXXIII.

I’ve accepted an internship at the Metro in my area. The internship director at the paper told me I’d be starting at the end of the month. I’ll be acquiring a scanner and posting my clips as they’re published in my Portfolio section. If I manage to snap any photos, they’ll go there as well.

Looks like my summer is going to be fairly busy.