I was starting to get rather peeved, but this person was my guest, the only one to actually show up. Finishing their introduction with a clear warning, he said, “This was a lovely party, but I must be returning now, and I trust you’ll tell the public the right thing come tomorrow.”. He settled back in one of the conference room’s chairs, before jerking forward suddenly. “Oh, right! Nibbles!” he exclaimed, as he began to fill a plate with crackers, cubed cheese, bite-sized cuts of carrot, and celery sticks. Given the circumstances, I assumed he was just being polite.
I presumed that he nodded to me with a smile, but his attire covered his body from head to toe, face included. The skintight suit shimmered in the overhead fluorescent lighting, shifting between neon yellow and orange. I added a note to my calendar to speak to my doctors about any possible side effects from my current mix of medications.
He stopped fussing about the buffet platter for a moment, and glanced around the room. Enough time passed that I realized I had forgotten to have my assistant open the champagne. My visitor began drumming their fingers on the table. It became clear that he most likely was expecting me to respond, in some fashion. I blinked, and said, “This is a lot to process.”
“Take your time.” He resumed stacking food on his plate.
In monotone, I said, “You knew to come here on this date, specifically because I will share hosting this party with others? That was always my plan.”
“How could I not know the 28th of June, 2009? We study your work in 7th grade, Professor. Some of your early theories led to the invention of the material that makes a suit like this possible.” He waved behind his chair with his free hand. “The balloons are a nice touch, too.”
After a moment of reflection, while cherry tomatoes and pieces of cut broccoli were added to his plate, I asked, “What are you doing?” He had no obvious mouth, if that was indeed fabric.
He unzipped a pouch in the belly of his suit, where no seam had been previously obvious. “This space is entangled with me, in the same manner that you and I are entangled at the moment, but it is self-contained.” He pointed at the pile of crackers on the table. “Our main diet is much like this baked wafer, though we no longer have wheat, I am afraid. What a treat!”
The rapid fire implications of this stranger’s statements were designed to get a rise out of me. I resisted, and merely stated the obvious and most important of his messages. “Your suit also contains its own pocket universe.”
“Of course.” He shoved the tower of food, plate and all, into his pouch at an impossible angle. He wiped his hands together twice and continued, “Beyond your wafers, the other examples of your century’s food have been a personal highlight of this journey.” He zipped his pouch closed.
“And, we are entangled right now, you and me.”
“Yes.”
“At the quantum level.”
“How else would our soundwaves propagate to each other, given where we each truly are?”
“I understand.”
“For the members of my order, the decision you are now reaching is the culmination of our charter. There should be one among the universes without the scourge of time travel.” He leaned forward. “If you accept, I may go home.”
“Do you have an example of a refusal?”
“After you announce that time travel is real, the human race turns all attention to the task of discovering how I do this. Needless to say, we become a little distracted, and calamity strikes in different ways. Robotic rebellion, famine, sea-level rise, would-be oligarchs elected to political office, generations raised on social media, mass extinction from ecological collapse. Sometimes, I have witnessed more than one disaster at once.”
“And, in all of your other previous visits to other places like this one, I have always refused?”
“Unfortunately, yes. Few of the rest of the population will grasp the real truth, as you finally have, before it is too late. It is really that simple.”
“Simple.” Parroting this joke was the only response that made sense.
“It is also likely impossible that I will ever be able to return, not exactly. What a pity. I would like to share your hospitality with others, but it is not to be, for the greater good of your neighbors. And, ultimately, mine.” He sat back again. “That is the theory.”
One of my lectures came to mind, but my guest would probably have my words memorized already, before I had spoken them. I said, “The many-worlds interpretation, writ large. I always did like that one. And, an infinite number of reasons to disagree with you, it seems. Until now, of course.”
I turned my chair to face the doorway, resigned to the fact that no one else was coming. Was I alone in the room again? Have I been alone this whole time?
I said, “Okay.”
I heard the chair move as the man in the yellow suit stood up. I turned my attention back around slowly. My back had been to the table when he had arrived in that chair, too, and I was curious what might happen next.
“It was a pleasure meeting you, Professor Hawking,” the time traveler said. “This was a lovely party, but I must be returning now, and I trust you’ll tell the public the right thing come tomorrow.”
“No need to repeat yourself,” I said.
Luckily for our universe, I harbored no will to describe what happened next, not to anyone. Never. The tacky tesseract folding over itself and flashing through the visible spectrum, surrounding my visitor as his suit deflated and pulled into a singularity, was ludicrous.
The rather enjoyable Reddit WritingPrompt “It was a pleasure meeting you, Professor Hawking,” the time traveler said. “This was a lovely party, but I must be returning now, and I trust you’ll tell the public the right thing come tomorrow.”, or “What if he said no one came, because the only one who did was an obnoxious jerk?”