All Our Wrong Todays

by Elan Mastai

Because you’re not writing about my wife. I mean, I like that you went right for the gut there, went all in on the dead wife, that’s a sharp move.

I try to rest my delinquent brain by listening to songs on John’s cell. I think about what makes music here so different from the music I grew up with. It takes me most of the flight to figure it out—punk and hip-hop didn’t happen in my world. So, yes, I admit that this world has the edge when it comes to music.

The car service takes me to Wan Chai, where I discover I’m actually looking for Chai Wan, which seems a bit deliberately confounding but for all I know there’s an obvious pronunciation difference and my confusion is culturally insensitive.

I know there is a better version of this world because I lived there and saw its wonders undreamt of. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a much worse version of this world standing in the yard hoping someone leaves the back door unlocked.

I feel a surge of pride as Penny lunges into action like a goddamn champion.

She was halfway through Great Expectations when her sight winked out. A clerical error assigned them to the same room and they got to talking. My father offered to read my mother the rest of the novel out loud. It took three days to finish it. Afterward, they made love.

time travel is very bad at fixing mistakes. What it’s very good at is creating even worse mistakes.

“My mom once told me that’s the secret of life,” I say. “We all think we’re frauds. Everybody’s winging it.”

“Don’t let it go to your head,” she says. “Nobody outside of this room even knows it happened. In fact, all you really did was not screw up reality even more than you did last time. So, maybe let’s ease up on the time-traveling savior thing.”

What I mean is—people lived in buildings, had jobs, bought things that were advertised to them, followed fashion trends, enjoyed entertainment projected on screens, ate food, drank liquids, had sex, fell in love and broke hearts, made babies and raised them as they saw fit, voted in elections, sometimes broke laws, and tried to contribute meaningfully to a civilization they believed was always open to improvement but fundamentally worth propagating.