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Fingers glide across the keyboard, already knowing what keys they press without a look or any kind of confirmation. I trained my fingers to do this long ago and now they wonder if they're getting paid enough for their efforts.

It's been too long since before everything happened. I can't go back and change it. The time machine only works during the time when it exists. No one knows why, but we can't go back to that lonely jail cell after WWI and kill off Hitler before he writes his screed about butterflies and beetles and the best ways to exterminate them.

Thursday is the first day of summer and the night of the new moon. Look up in the sky, the light you don't see is from the moon. Look up in the sky, the light that's still shining is the sun. The sun works harder these days than I do. It wakes up hours before me and goes to bed just a little bit before my head hits the pillow. No wonder it's so damn hot.

We're really close. It's, like, 10:14.

The TV wants me to buy something. No, actually, the TV wants me to buy everything. It doesn't care about personal finances, needs or underwear choices. It just knows that if we don't buy, they won't pay. And if they don't pay, then how will we be able to watch TV for free (not counting cable fees and the cost of the TV and the VCR and VCR tapes and that newfangled Tivo machine and service and electricity and batteries for the remote and a new remote when some drunk bastard uses the old remote as a projectile and makes modern art by lodging it into the soft sheetrock between the kitchen and the living room)?

What does Britney have to do for her 94 million? And for how many years? And does she really like Pepsi or is she lying to us? And if she's lying to us about that, then what about all those other things she says she believes in and practices and puts on like glittery Spandex sparkling on the lake from way back when no one knew the allure of fundamentalist Christians dressed up like Catholic school girls in heat?

The foothold is not steady. It slips and slides and makes me wonder who made these legs and why did they give them to me? Could I trade them in and get new ones? And then everything locks into place and I realize that the unsteadiness might have more to do with last night than something out of whack with my legs and feet. When the head kicks in and calms everything down, I realize that I cannot walk on water. No matter what the rafting guide tells me.

It's almost at the end of the trip when I realize that everything she's said is really just to keep in control (or the proper orbit, so to speak), but there is no control. I quietly put the paddle in the middle of the boat and roll backwards over the side. The water instantly numbs me, causing a bit of a body shock and it's hard to answer the questions they are all shouting at me from the boat, most of which are "Is it cold?"

"It's not bad," I stutter back and the current picks me up and begins to carry me away from everyone with the certain speed of water rushing to get to its final destination (miles and miles away where the river meets the sea).

"Stay away from the eddy on the right side!" the guide yells. "Keep your feet up and pointed downstream!" I acknowledge by doing what I'm told and let the water take me where it will.

Soon I won't be able to hear their cries. Soon they will be gone, out of my range, out of my life. Soon I will reach the end and get the prize. And it's as I pass everyone else floating in the river and move closer and closer to that certain end when I realize that I forgot to ask what the prize actually was. Maybe it's something I don't want. Something I don't even need. Why am I even competing when I don't need a breadmaker with optional toaster and pudding shaker?

The end is quick and painless. A short smile and nod of acknowledgment. These circumstances will never happen again. We will never be at this point and revel about how it was the first time--so different than it is this time. We will never do this because it's all over and there hasn't been a time machine made yet so we can't ever go back and change anything. Push that short smile into a raging grin. Change the handshake into a hug. Transform the hug into a passionate embrace.

Everything gets smaller as I move away from it. So much so that after a while I can't even see where I was before and don't even remember what it looks like because I wasn't looking at it to remember, rather to make sure my feet were on the ground instead of trying to walk on the water.

But I'm sure if I ever went back, it would still be there. Of course, it would be totally different, making any kind of instant reverie merely a blipping spark in my brain, rather than a complete revisionist reenactment of a historical event.

Matt Worley can remember things that never happened with the same frequency and accuracy of things that actually did.