The Port Takes Twelve Seconds

The port takes twelve seconds. The company says seven. The company is measuring a different twelve seconds than I am.

There is the moment before. There is the moment after. And there is what happens in between, which the company calls "transit" and which I have stopped calling anything because I cannot find a word for a gap in a person.

Twelve seconds is what it takes for me to stop being me in one place and start being me somewhere else. My therapist says there is no gap. My therapist has not used a Teleport Massive transit pod in three years and lives within walking distance of her office.

I transit four times a week.

I think about what I am, in transit. I think about the question my grandmother used to ask: if you die, do you die? She meant: is the me that arrives the same me that left? She stopped asking eventually. Everyone stopped asking. I understand why they stopped. The question doesn't have an answer that doesn't make you either crazy or late for work.

But I notice things.

I notice that I remember my life differently after a transit than before. Not dramatically. Just: the edges of things are different. The emotional charge of certain memories shifts slightly. The things that hurt last week hurt a little differently this week. Same event, different weight.

Maybe that's just time. Maybe that's just me.

Maybe the pattern is drifting, trip by trip, in directions the company is too careful to measure and too smart not to notice.

I haven't stopped transiting. Where would I go that I could walk to?