Each and every one of them now plays out its scene and then moves on to the next thing that happened, at the same time spawning another window on the past which begins from the original framing so that now there are ten, and then twenty and then forty and now some stretch on and on and on into things that haven’t happened yet, branching futurities which babble and clatter like drunken kitchen skivvies at the end of the night and you are cheating, cheating right now because you’re skipping from one to the other to watch and trying to do this in sequence but that’s not how it is, it can’t be, they come all at once and there are more and more and more and louder and the green eye of the machine is back and glaring down at you but that’s the least of your worries now because here you are, stretching like a balloon and the rubber is reaching that taut dry drumskin feel and you know it will—