How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

by Charles Yu

Chronological living is a kind of lie. That’s why I don’t do it anymore. Existence doesn’t have more meaning in one direction than it does in any other. Completing the days of your life in strict calendar order can feel forced. Arbitrary.

The words an actual part of it, the whole space inside the borders, the whole space useful and usable and possible, the whole, unbroken space a place where anything could be written, anything could be thought, or solved, or puzzled over, anything could be connected, plotted, analyzed, fixed, converted, where anything could be equalized, divided, isolated, understood.

you’re not careful, time will take away everything that ever hurt you, everything you have ever lost, and replace it with knowledge.

I learned about the future tense, how anxiety is encoded into our sentences, our conditionals, our thoughts, how worry is encoded into language itself, into grammar.

After a night out in the lost half city, you end up with the dust of dead robots in your hair, or someone’s dreams, or their nightmares.

Life is, to some extent, an extended dialogue with your future self about how exactly you are going to let yourself down over the coming years.

Maybe we spend most of our decades being someone else, avoiding ourselves, maybe a man is only himself, his true self, for a few days in his entire life.

The story of a man trying to figure out what he knows, teetering on the edge of yes or no, of risk or safety, whether it is worth it or not to go on, to carry on, into the breach of each successive moment.