Time School

More than half of the recruits sitting in front of him don't have what it takes. Some are just too old, set in their ways-should probably be in high school somewhere. He scans the room for a hint from the handful that will be around next week, the few that aren't going to get themselves killed.

Jake shakes his head in despair. "If you're serious about becoming a time traveler, you will have to understand the basics. And before you can do that, you're gonna need to forget everything you think you know about the fourth dimension. You think there is a past, a future. You think that one's happened, the other may happen."

Jake speaks with disgust, walking between the aisles of desks. "You think both these things are something different than right now. Sometime before right now you were a bundle of goo goo ga ga at the teat--right. And what about the future, Hunt." Jake says, shouting over the top of the cadets head. The cadet doesn't dare offer a response.

"C'mon, Hunt," Jake taunts. "You've got a bright future, don't you. You're gonna be someone-you're going to fall in love, get married, grow up--isn't that right?"

Cadet Hunt shrivels inside himself, speaking from uncertainty. "Sure--"

"Wrong," Jake scolds. "In Time School, there is no future. There is no past. There is only this moment, there is only this experience. Everything that has or will happen is doing so right now. Remember that. If you cannot remember your name. Remember now-this moment. Think of time in any other way and it will swallow you whole. It doesn't care. As far as time is concerned, you're nothing. Time is. Time exists. And unless you can learn to exist along side it, time will swallow you whole."