Author: Mark Renney

All those who can afford to are jumping ahead. Almost everyone has the App, and those who don’t are excluded, and are seen as social pariahs. This is how we now connect, where we communicate. Admittedly the App isn’t any different to the other platforms, apart from the fact it allows us to jump ahead. And this is why we are here, it is the reason that we stay.

The longest anyone has managed to move forward so far is eighty seconds but for most of us it is less than a minute and the estimated average is fifty five seconds. It is a minute segment, a tiny slice, but it is time travel. There is much debate as to whether this is enough for us to actually manipulate time. Whenever anyone jumps ahead it is recorded on the App and so we can’t use it for personal gain. Even so, we have to check our phones if we wish to enter a casino or a betting shop or a sporting event, anything that is ticketed in fact. Most of us have dispensed with communal entertainment and I haven’t visited a cinema or theatre, or listened to live music in over a year. Like everyone else, I cannot bear to be away from my phone and not have access to the App.

We are all jumping ahead as often as we can now, and to do so is quick and easy. We listen to the audio, the noise and we engage with the spirals and the colours, immerse ourselves in the convex and complicated patterns. It isn’t difficult but pleasurable and all a part of the trip. We don’t feel the elation until we circle back and complete the loop and it doesn’t matter how trivial or mundane, or how frivolous it is, it is the knowing that creates the buzz. The high continues after we move beyond the jump and are stumbling again in the dark. It isn’t long before we need to jump ahead again but we have to rest, a period of gestation. This is difficult, and like everyone else I keep trying and failing. It is costly because, even when we don’t hear the noise and the screen remains blank, we have to pay. But I keep trying and paying because I need my fix. Some people are upset by this phrase, by this type of terminology, and they insist that time is not drug and perhaps they are right. But time travel is certainly a trip and what we feel in its aftermath is the ultimate high.