in the capitalocene, they used to frequently use the phrase, "we're running out of time." they used it on the daily in any and every situation. they used it without thinking. our language reveals so much about our relationship to time because today we say, "we're being policed by time." meaning, we can find refuge.
this new phrase was only possible because several generations ago, the immortal jellyfish (medusozoa) decided it was right to share with us the genetic instructions for reshaping our relationship to time. we do not know why they decided to do so, because humans were actively destroying the world (and themselves) and many humans felt it wise to let the destruction happen so as to end it all. they (rightfully) assumed that more-than-human kin were tired, but perhaps were wrong in assuming how the more-than-human kin would respond. it's unhelpful to map human conceptions onto more-than-human bodies... like the jellyfish, for example. the jellyfish was the one who made the final call (it makes sense that they consulted others, but we're not sure how many they consulted. perhaps everyone was in on it... more-than-human kin rarely make decisions alone. that's a recipe for mutual death). the jellyfish's gift was the last puzzle piece that pushed humanity past the precipice through the inevitable-evolution. we were never the same afterwards.
the genetic technology they gifted us rewired our cells to relate differently to time. we cannot rewind time to the extent that the jellyfish can, but we can pause it momentarily. we can see fissures that become openings into a pocket in time where we may find refuge together, and rewatch the last 5-10 minutes that had just occurred. these pocket time portals do not change what happened. when we emerge we reenter the river of time just as before.
the gift was not instantaneously rolled out, however; they conducted a few waves of alpha tests among select few, followed by a large scale beta test. those that did not survive the beta test did not join us in the cthulucene. #536c was part of the initial alpha test waves.
it took anywhere from 4-7 years for the entirety of the body's cells to completely transition out of time. one of the first side effects was called shadow glitching. here's my chronographic memo describing #536c's first noticeable symptoms:
she glitched. her shadow would momentarily separate from her, lagging in spacetime. at first she didn't notice, especially if it happened in the forest or at the beach because the shadows of the trees and ever-shifting sand hid the evidence from view. the first time she noticed it was while she was walking in a part of her neighborhood where there were no trees. she jumped furtively in the air (checking first to see if there was anyone around to witness her bizarre behavior), walked in some meandering circles, staring at the unmoving dark shape on the ground. before she could squat down to touch it, it was already attached to her feet. it was quite startling and unnerving. she chalked it up to some strange physics phenomenon and lack of sleep.
over the next several years, however, she began to glitch more and more. eventually she discovered that if she aligned herself at a very particular angle with the frozen shadow, she could see a fissure in the air that she could step into/through. she initially couldn't discern any pattern for why and when they happened. she felt that she was surely going insane, but was curious nonetheless. she began to experiment: what happens if someone is near me when it happens? can they see it too? what happens if/when i step inside? how long is the pocket open for? and eventually: can i bring others inside with me? it turns out, yes, however from the other person's perspective, it just felt like she was asking them to stand somewhere specific. good thing she was clever and quickly began bringing her camera around with her as an excuse: "i'm just practicing spontaneous portraiture in different lighting contexts." her unwitting participants never caught on. upon leaving the pocket, they always experienced an intense wave of deja vu, and for a fleeting moment they might have felt more settled within themselves. slower. their cells were more aligned. few were conscious of it though (as they were not learned students of their own bodies).
the more glitching she experienced, the more shadows she left around the world. they are mostly indiscernible to regular eyes but we use special goggles to assist in adjusting the sensitivity of our eyes so that we may be more attuned to notice the shadows. frankly they're a pain in the ass to track down on their own, but thankfully i have the help of the photos she took (the person she photographed cannot be seen in the photo, of course; they are hidden within the time pocket). these shadows tell the story of just one of the layered stages of the inevitable-evolution: how humans adapted to the jellyfish's gift and invitation to become disrupters of capitalist time and visionaries for otherwise worlds.
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in response to linear capitalist time, "running out of time," wanting to slow down. inspired by joshua's sharing of wanting to respond to the too-quick moments of micro-violence, and the shadows that hiroshima and nagasaki left.
