RUSS BICKERSTAFF - WHILE WAITING FOR MY WIFE

Russ Bickerstaff is a professional theatre and comic book critic and aspiring author living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with his wife and two daughters. His short fictions have appeared in over 30 different publications including Hypertext Magazine, Pulp Metal Magazine, Sein und Werden, and Theme of Absence.

​While Waiting for My Wife

Recognition is, of course, entirely circumstantial. The neurologist would tell you otherwise. The cognitive neuroscientists. It's all a very specific firing a very specific action potentials in a very specific part of the brain. It's all geometry. Geometry of a face mirroring geometry of the firing mission of neurons. And electrochemical reaction. Brought about by photons and such like. But it's actually a lot more complicated than that. Take it from someone who didn't recognize himself when he saw himself.
You don't always recognize you when you see you. Specifically not in the right circumstances. Recognition is a product of circumstance. And having had a chance to talk with myself for a little bit, it occurs to me that there's a very good chance that everyone you see is someone you would actually recognize under different circumstances. They're just not that many people in the world. Under the right circumstances you would recognize everyone. And it would be much more of an understanding of the universal connections that we all hold. But as it is recognition is circumstantial.
I of course it had plenty of time to consider this. Because I had a lot of time to do nothing but think. He won't even let me speak. That is to say that he that is me that is holding the gun. I don't know what it says about me that someone claiming to meet Amy from the future who is identical to me in every way. I don't know what it says about me that I would have come to the past to run into me specifically. To specifically rendezvous with me unwittingly. And it to hold me at gunpoint. I don't know what it says about me that I would want to hold me at gunpoint. But then it's not the case that this is me now. This is me in the future. Arguably the me that isn't me doesn't even know this thing well enough that it could theoretically explain why it is that I would have come back in time to hold myself at gunpoint.
Theoretically there's a perfectly valid explanation for this. This whole thing. Not just the fact that I'm holding me at gunpoint in my own home. But that's part of it. I'm sure there's also an explanation for why it is that I would have traveled back in time. As I understand it it was something that was done on purpose. This was no accidental falling backward in time or anything like that. It seems to have been done quite deliberately. Although, I really have no idea. I have no idea why this happened. I'm a victim of circumstance at this moment. And I am victimizing myself through circumstance. Which is to say that I am holding a gun at me and my own home. This would be a very strange version of suicide. That occurs to me just now. That it would be a very strange version of suicide to be shot by yourself and to still be alive. How do you mess that up?
Of course, there's the obvious question. And if that really is me in the future, the obvious question and the question that first came to mind and was so easily asked and so easily dismissed was the question of causality. And paradoxes and such like. If you travel back in time and kill yourself. If you do that do you not ceased to exist. And if you ceased to exist and then you never would have gone back in time in the first place. So it never would have happened. This is a perfectly rational paradox. It's a perfectly rational question to bring up   to yourself under the circumstances that I find myself then. There's really no reason why wouldn't ask that question. All the same, that question was completely ignored. It was in no way acknowledged. I have brought that question up to me on numerous occasions over the course of the past several hours. 
And the question was never answered. I consider this to be rude. But under the circumstances it's understandable. Because the me that is me from the future is rude enough to be pointing a gun at me. In my own home I might add. I don't know when it was that I became so rude. One would think that one would be very courteous to oneself would one run into oneself in the past. I don't know what it is that I have done to offend me. Clearly the meet is me from the future is not that much older than the me that is me now which means that the meeting that is me in the future that's holding the gun knows perfectly well what it's like to be at this point in the past. So it would stand to reason me that is me from the future would want to be more courteous. Perhaps offered some can't add an explanation. But clearly that's not going to happen.
The unspoken question here, of course, is what I'm I going to do when my wife comes home. And this is probably a question that we're both trying to answer right now. Although, I would think that the me that is me from the future would have worked out a solution to that little issue. Neither of us want to disturb her in anyway. I know that for certain that I don't. The meat that is me from the future seems equally concerned with that. Not that I would know from him having specifically said or done anything. I just sense that there is a concern that there. I feel I know myself well enough to be able to make that judgment. That I am concerned about how my wife is going to see this. That the knee that is me from the future who seems to have acquired a gone of some sort clearly does not want to disturb or upset my wife in any way.

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