Paramour, Part 7

Paramour

I was disappointed to see that over the last trillions of years, nobody had posted any new status updates. Still not without hope, I moved the cursor up to the refresh button.

I never got to click it, because someone socked me in the back of the head, hard enough for me to do a sitting faceplant right into the keyboard.

“Don’t you dare click that!” I heard a feminine voice threaten. Prying my face off the keyboard, I stuck it back on my head and looked around. Standing behind me was a beautiful girl with a dangerous expression on.

“Who are you? By the way, that really hurt. And how’d you get here?” I said.

“I’m here because I dragged your out of your place and time to help you get a grip.” she informed me. “The whole purpose of ripping a hole in reality was to get you away from that stupid website.”

I looked back at my computer. “What, Facebook?”

“Yes, Facebook! Did you reflect on how much time you wasted on it? That was the whole point of getting you to wander the cosmos!” she asked.

“Yeah, I thought about that a lot.” I admitted. “I did waste a lot of time on it. Okay, wait; who are you?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Just the girl you eventually meet, fall in love with, get married to, and stay with for the rest of eternity!” she said. “I dragged you out of your stupid dorm and away from your computer to help you get a grip on what’s important. Did your trip through the universe show you there are more important things?”

“I get married to you later? No way. I’m way out of your league. And if - wait, how - that’s a quantum improbability-” I stopped for a moment. “So wait. Are you from the future, or the past. . .?”

“I’m outside of time, and I dragged you outside of time too so I could help you understand.” she explained. “I was watching the timeline, and I realized that if you didn’t get off of Facebook, you and I never meet. So I took you out of the timeline so you could get some perspective.”

I tilted my head to the side. “Isn’t that kind of. . . cheating the laws of the universe and time uncertainty?”

She shrugged, opening the photo album of the universe I’d kept. “So what? For all we know, this has happened before, and it’s just a time loop. But here’s the point: look at all these pictures you’ve taken, all the people you’ve met. Look at the different things you’ve done, the different places you’ve been. For heaven’s sake, look at the library belowdecks on the Paramour! Could you have done all of these things, gone all these places, seen all this stuff if you had been on Facebook?” She stopped and took me by the shoulder. “I’m here to remind you there are more important things. There’s a world outside Facebook, outside your routine. Get out and do other things; go explore. There’s a whole universe out there, and exploring it is the only way you’re going to find me.”

“She’s right, you know.” Paramour told me, licking a paw and dragging it over his ear.

After thinking about it, I closed my laptop and hefted it in my hands. For a moment, I kept a hold on it, but after reconciling myself, I reluctantly threw it out into the void, and looked back at the girl.

“And all this. . . my ship, Paramour, my galaxy maps, everything I recorded. . . was it all for nothing?” I asked her. “What happens now?”

She smiled at me. “Your ship will keep sailing. I don’t know where it’ll go, and you may or may not catch glimpses of it from time to time. But everything you’ve done here, it’ll keep existing. Paramour will stay with the ship; you’ll see him again one day.”

“Good.” Paramour muttered. “I didn’t exactly like the thought of being forever forsaken on this scrap of tree bark.”

I looked at her hard. “Has this happened before? Did you try to take me out of my timeline to get a look at what really matters? Because this feels kinda familiar.”

“Umm. . . I need to get you back into your timeline now.” she said quickly.

“You have tried this before!” I exclaimed. “Why didn’t it work?”

“Because I told you what I just told you without sending you through the journey first and we ended up making out and you didn’t remember or learn anything when I sent you back and I really need to get you back to your timeline now and hope that this lesson sticks.” she said really quickly, grabbing me by the arm as if we were going somewhere.

“Wait, we wha-”

“Sorry, gotta send you back now!” she said, socking me in the face. Paramour waved goodbye to me with his tail right before her fist made contact with my face.