by Un-su Kim
“There’s no event, nothing like that. I’m just drinking it by myself.”
“Come again? You mean to say you’re drinking four hundred and fifty boxes of beer by yourself? That’s impossible.”
Click!
I drank those cans of beer for 178 days straight. To be honest, I might have been more interested in crumpling the cans than I was in drinking the beer. Inside me, there was a silent churning riverbed of violent despair and helplessness that could not mend itself. Or at least I thought there was. Come to think of it, I’m starting to wonder if it was ever there at all. Can people really die from a broken heart? Probably not. Humans can’t die from love – at least, not me, apparently.
I stopped on day 178, even though there was still some remaining beer and peanuts. There was no reason for my stopping, just as there was no reason for my starting. You either keep doing something or you stop doing something, that’s life. Anyway, by then, strewn about my apartment were enough beer cans to make my apartment an aluminum deposit. On the last day, I threw away all the cans and said to myself:
“I guess I have nowhere else to run. Maybe it’s time to get some fresh air.”
I’ll never forget the taste of the seolleongtang I ate that day after leaving my house for the first time in 178 days. I cried to myself over that bowl of seolleongtang, but it wasn’t in reflection or regret. I realize now they were tears of joy – joy brought about by those delicious hot mouthfuls of soup.
TIME SKIPPERS
June 14, 1999. Kim Yun-mi went missing in a subway on her way to meet her boyfriend B at Jongno-3. Her family and the police searched for two years and even offered a reward, but not one single piece of useful information ever surfaced. Kim Yun-mi had disappeared into thin air. But then, exactly three years later on June 14, 2002 at 5:00 pm, she was discovered in Jongno-3 in front of the KumKang building. That day was the last day of the round of sixteen for the World Cup, and Jongno was bustling with all the street supporters in Gwanghwamun Plaza. The good Samaritans who took her to the hospital said they were stunned she didn’t know what day it was.
No one knew where Kim Yun-mi had been for those three years or what she had been doing. No one claimed to have seen her, and there were no traces of her whereabouts. In fact, she was discovered wearing the exact same clothes and shoes she had been wearing when she left her house that day. There was nothing she remembered about the three years she had been missing. She even looked exactly as she had on the day of her disappearance.
But this wasn’t a first for Kim Yun-mi. When she was a sophomore in high school, she had disappeared for three months before being discovered in a clothes factory. She also disappeared for six months while studying to retake the College Scholastic Ability Test. When Kim Yun-mi told her parents that it felt like her time had just disappeared, they simply laughed at her.
“We get it. When she was in high school, she was picked on by the other kids. And retaking the CSATs must have been incredibly stressful. She’s always wanted to run away from her problems. I’m not sure if she prostituted herself or lived with some bum. I’m just glad she came back in good health.”
The fourth time Kim Yun-mi’s time disappeared was in June 2004. But this time, the disappearance didn’t surprise her much. At just two months, it was relatively short too. She didn’t make excuses to her parents about her disappearance, nor did she act hysterical, as was common for time-skippers to do. She came back as if it were nothing and returned to her daily life quietly. When I interviewed her, she joked that “It doesn’t seem that bad.” She then added with a wry laugh, “I’ve got experience under my belt now.” A week later, she hanged herself in her room.
“I know what death is,” she once said to me. “Death is when the balance in your bank account of time reaches zero. You’ve either used up all your time, or someone has taken it from you. That’s all it is. You simply have no money to revive your bankrupt life.”
Because pain isn’t quantifiable, I cannot understand how much pain she was in by losing time. So it would be rash of me to say it was rash of her to choose suicide. Yet I can’t help but think there must have been a fair amount of time left in her bank account. A balance large enough to restore her life from bankruptcy. I’ve always regretted not being able to tell her that. Although I doubt if anything I said would have helped much.
There are people whose time disappears. On the subway, flipping through the pages of a book, rushing to an engagement, or even simply staring at the clock – at any moment, these people can lose time ranging from as little as a few minutes or hours to as long as several days or years. They think only a few seconds have passed, but in reality, an absurd amount of time has elapsed. Well, disappeared to be exact. And during that time, there exists no events nor any memories of any events. They have no memory of that time, and the world has no memory of them.
Missing time and disappearing. People who experience this phenomenon experience greater trauma than we can ever imagine. When I asked what if felt like to lose so much time, Sua Lee, an accountant, said this:
“It felt like my whole life had been taken from me.”
Ironically, time skippers are thorough when it comes to managing the time they do have control over. They prefer regulated and punctual lives and are thorough with their time almost to the point of being compulsive.
“I feel uneasy if I don’t have plans or rules. I feel like I need to plan out my life. I try my best to not waste time. I remove uncontrollable variables as best as I can, take advantage of my spare time as best as I can, consider the amount of exercise and sleep I need for the next day, and am meticulous when meeting people so that I don’t have any gaps in my schedule. I even make time on the weekend to relax. But for some reason people act like I have OCD. Doesn’t the media always go on about how keeping a regular schedule is good for your heath?”
They had a point. I don’t know what’s wrong with that, either. But in modern theoretical physics, time can disappear. Despite what we generally think, time is neither continuous nor regular. It can be added and subtracted, expanded and contracted. Time can be distorted, warped; can appear, and disappear.
Perhaps time skippers appearing in random places and times is a result of large twists in the fabric of spacetime. Ship engineer Gu Dong-jin disappeared from Yeoksam subway station and woke up three years later on a small island in the South Pacific.
“I had experienced instances of losing anywhere from ten to thirty minutes at a time before that. But losing three years at once was a first. Once I came to, I was on some island. The local children were catching crayfish. Beautiful women with bare chests and brown skin were laughing at me. The sun was beaming, and the seawater was clear. It’s what I imagined heaven to look like. I just stared out into the ocean. I thought for sure I was dreaming. Only a minute before I was like an ant on the subway headed for work, and now I was suddenly on a coral island in the South Pacific. I just sat there with a blank expression on my face. The children kindly gave me some grilled crayfish and boiled bananas. It was good. Obviously, I couldn’t communicate with them, and my phone didn’t have any service. I couldn’t use my credit card, and I didn’t have my passport on me. What could I do in such a place? At first I just resigned myself to staying for a few days, but as time passed, I didn’t want to think about anything. It felt like my head had been emptied dry, and all that was left was an honest body. So I just stayed. I learned how to catch crayfish from the children and how to fish with a spear. I swam in the ocean; dived under the water; peeled bananas and coconuts; took naps in a hammock. I even got married to a local girl so beautiful she could be on a calendar. Her name is Buba. Isn’t that a beautiful name?”
“Didn’t you want to return to Korea?”
“No.”
“Why not? It’s your home, after all.”
“Home is such a funny word. We make the decision to live somewhere and then it’s called ‘home.’ We eat there, work there, get married there, buy a house there. We
root for the home team and become friends with people solely because they’re from the same part of the world. But I’ve had a lot of bad times in Korea. Something was just off – spatially, temporally. I know now what a happy life is. I’ve been on a long journey. I don’t think ‘home’ is that important. To really know yourself, you sometimes have to become a nomad and forget about home.” He spoke with a definitive tone.
* * *
The problem for time skippers is returning to their daily lives after coming back. While on the surface the world appears as though it hasn’t changed, for them everything feels strange and unfamiliar. Like a piece of film that has been cut and taped back together, something feels off. Like they’ve woken up from a long dream. But the world runs at its own pace. In their absence, their cactuses grow large; their subordinates at work become their superiors; their babies become bratty six-year-olds; their puppies become old dogs. Their lives, which stopped of their own accord, feel desolate, like a life abandoned in the desert. So was the case with Park Jung-gu, who lost time and became a cripple.
“They called me a workhorse. Once I started something, I saw it through till the end. I thought nothing was done correctly if it wasn’t done by me. And it wasn’t just me. ‘If it weren’t for you, Vice President Park, our company would have already closed shop.’ That was what the board of directors said at one of our office parties. It felt good hearing that. I liked working, too. So I worked myself into the ground, not even thinking about how tired I was. All the important projects were mine to oversee. But then suddenly six months of my time just disappeared. I had only blinked once, but in that time, six months of my life had become empty. I was so utterly dumbfounded by the whole thing, but I had no one to complain to. No one was going to believe me. Anyway, so I came back to my company. I had thought the company would be in shambles without me, but nothing much had happened. My team was doing well under the supervision of another, and the company was sailing smoothly. I should have felt relieved that the important projects hadn’t failed, but somewhere in my heart I felt miserable. ‘Well, shit, I guess the world doesn’t need Park Jung-gu after all,’ I thought to myself. I was despondent. I had thought the machine would have come tumbling down without its main engine – after all, that’s why I trotted like a workhorse. But in the end, I guess I wasn’t that important a piece after all. I was an expendable part. I turned in my letter of resignation not long after that, and now I stay at home and get drunk. The missus tells me to go out and earn money, but I don’t have the appetite to work again. We still have some money in our savings, and I have my severance package, so I think it’s OK if I rest a bit more. I can think about how we’re going to get by once the money runs out.”
Then there are some who have changed their life for the better. A designer and diagnosed workaholic, Hwang Miok changed her life completely after experiencing an extended skip. After a two-year time skip she became a little lazy, a little slow, and a little incompetent. But because of her laziness she had also become a little bit happier.
“I couldn’t stop working. I worked like a crazy person. Even after work, I would go to a language school to learn Spanish or take night classes at a graduate program for business management. And when that was over, I would head back to my office to work. I wouldn’t go home until two or three in the morning. And in the morning, I would leave for work again without being late. That’s what it’s like working as a designer. Once you get started, there’s always more work to be done. Back then, I never gave myself a moment to rest. It was the age of endless competition. Then suddenly two years of my time just disappeared. I was so shell-shocked I had to receive therapy, though nothing the doctor said was of much help. Anyway, I returned to my company. I had always been a good and organized worker, and my uncle on my mother’s side was on the board of directors, so it wasn’t difficult getting my job back. But something was off. Nothing had changed, per se. The people were all the same, and the work was just as I remembered it. But after the incident, I started doing a mediocre job. I was fine with ‘just good enough,’ and when it was time to go home, even if I still had some work to do, I would go home anyway. I used to have a habit of being mean and berating the younger designers, but now I said things like, ‘That’ll do. The world’s not going to end just because their clothes are a little less pretty.’ And after leaving the office I would relax or party. After all, I had already wasted two years without any recollection or experiences, what was three or four more hours? So I would either drink beer or go to nightclubs with friends who had hot bodies and with whom I got along. I don’t have particularly painful periods, but even so, I always demand menstrual leave now. It’s my right after all – I don’t know why I must feel ashamed in front of my boss. And, despite everything, it’s not like my life has fallen to pieces. I think it’d be more accurate to say that it’s become a bit loose. Or maybe it’s that I’ve finally achieved some balance. But I want to ask your opinion on something. What should I do if one day while working really hard, I time skip again and turn up as a grandma? Should I start going to cabarets instead of nightclubs?”
We regulate our lives because of anxiety. We make detailed plans and adjust our lives to follow those plans. Because we make our lives move in repeatable and regular ways, the most efficient system rules our lives. In other words, we attempt to live life through the power of habit and rules. But really, an efficient life? Can such a thing really exist in this world? Sounds like a life in which you do the same thing every day – a life that ends without having ever experienced more than a couple of memorable days.
Lim Yuna, a time skipper with six episodes under her belt, once said this to me:
“I wonder if my lost time is rolling around somewhere. The thought of that makes my heart ache. I could have loved someone with that time – I could have done something beautiful for someone. But I’ve nothing to show for that lost time. No waste, no ruin, no regrets, no pain. No feeling of having been alive.”
The following is a piece taken from the Center for a Leisurely Life:
Statistically, there are probably 800 times as many time skippers as there are normal people. So don’t work so hard. Don’t make so many plans. Don’t struggle so hard just to be more successful than others. Otherwise, you’ll lose so much time. And wouldn’t that be unfair? Like dying-in-a-car-accident-the-day-you-paid-off-your-house-loan kind of unfair?
The only way to save up time is to take it easy. Take menstrual leave. Take it every month. Miss a deadline once in a while! And if your boss asks you if you’re going to take a bonus in exchange for less holiday, just say, “Fuck you.” And on days you feel down, why not just take an absence without calling in?
THE CLOCK OF BABEL
The first thing the Clock of Babel does each morning is raise the shutters at the city’s subway stations. And with that, the city is open for business again. Subway operators yawn; power is sent to the turnstiles; the subway trains begin to chug. Soon people rush inside. Trains move, streetlights turn on, and traffic signals change all according to the hands of Clock of Babel. The clock also manages all the city’s alarms.
“Hey, wake up! You’re one step away from being fired, and you’re thinking about being late?”
But because our biological clocks are slow and irregular, they’re always behind the Clock of Babel. Our bodies demand sleep, but the Clock of Babel demands we wake up and go to work. The Clock of Babel doesn’t care if we’re not hungry: it’s time for lunch; it’s time to eat. The Clock of Babel doesn’t care if we don’t want to talk: it’s meeting time – time to flick our tongues rapidly and come up with new ideas.
The monolithic Clock of Babel governs everything in this city – the police stations, the fire stations, the traffic lights, the sewers, the telephone lines, and all the electricity racing along at the speed of light. If its spring were to suddenly break, this city would instantly fall into chaos.
“You slowpokes. Pick it up, will ya? It’s the twenty-first century!”
The Clock of Babel pushes me to move faster. Whenever this happens, I feel myself groping for the rusty lever that will allow me to move my clanky metal suit of armor a few more inches. The colossal Clock of Babel shouts out to the city, “We’re on Modern Time!”
I must confess, I think we’re in different time zones.
And yet in spite of this, I have lived an honest life under the Clock of Babel, timid man that I am. I stand in line when everyone else stands in line; I eat when everyone else eats; I run when everyone else runs, despite not knowing what for. So in my freshman physics class when I first learned of Einstein’s theory of relativity – which says there is no such thing as absolute time and that time runs differently for each person – I wasn’t able to wrap my head around it. According to Einstein, inside every object, inside every being in the universe, there exists a unique clock. Objects that move fast have slow clocks, and objects that move slow have fast clocks. In other words, because people on Earth are moving slower than people in orbit around the Earth, people on Earth age more quickly than those in space. Not understanding how that could be, one student in the class raised their hand. “Wait, you mean to say the faster you go, the slower time ticks? How can that be?” To this the professor said, “Not even Einstein knew why. That’s just how the universe works.”
Damn. Not even Einstein knew why time moves on its own.
Regardless, time moves differently for everyone. And this means that nowhere in the universe can there exist a Clock of Babel that decides when and how to march. Because the Moon, the hare, and the Flash each have their own clocks, if one said to gather on November 11 at 9am at the Martian Public Stadium for a galactic track and field meet, on November 11 at 9am the stadium would be completely empty. And that’s because the Moon, hare, and the Flash each have clocks that move at their own pace, making the date and time of November 11, 9am as chaotic and meaningless as a table of random numbers. At the very least, the bunny, whose physical environment is similar to ours, would arrive closest to 9am, and then the Moon. But as for the Flash, for whom there is no time because he can travel at the speed of light, he might never arrive at the stadium. And in the end, the hare and the Moon would be left in the empty stadium with the flags of nations waving pitifully as they waited till the end of time for the Flash to arrive. They might even sing a song and title it “The Eternal Traitor, the Flash.”