I’ve never been much of a physicist; heck, I design cabinets for a living. Just the same, I wouldn’t let that stop me from doing the impossible.

It was Monday morning. I was attempting to draft a new shelving system. One line on the paper: Vertical. Nice and straight.

At a perfect right angle to it, another line. Horizontal.

At a right angle to that, one more. For depth. The z-axis.

And then, what was I thinking? Another right angle? I wasn’t thinking, I just drew it.

Time.

When I set the pencil down, it was tomorrow. Dang. I pulled out my eraser and shaved the line down to a stub, and I was back in Monday, mid-afternoon.

Extending the line again pulled me into next week. I grabbed a few more sheets of paper and kept drawing. Years into the future, I drew. But I had to stop, because it was terrifying. There are some things cabinet makers were never meant to see. How far ahead was it? Five years? Ten? A hundred?

Too soon, anyway.

I carefully erased the line and, shaking, tried to return to work.