Like any other day, I was waiting to go to lunch. I looked at the time on my phone. I saw the number: “12:51”, and I was transported there:
I'm listening to that song by The Strokes, “12:51”. I’m with my first love on an improvised picnic in her backyard. She's holding one headphone and giving me the other. She’s saying “Here, here. Listen!"
She is so proud of herself. She has been learning English and finally translated a complete song by ear.
She pronounces slowly, “Oh really, your folks are away now? Alright, let's go, you convinced me”
She repeats in Spanish. “¿En serio? ¿Tus viejos no están en tu casa? Bueno, vamos, me convenciste.”
“Do you remember?” she asks me. “It’s like you told me that time, after our first kiss.” She smiles.
I never look for the number, nor seek for the song on my iPod. But when it happens, when the song appears in my ears, or when I encounter that number on my phone, I find myself in that backyard, in that improvised picnic under the sun, forever young and in love, holding a Coke bottle and her smile.
Years later I was living in Germany. I had not seen her for almost a decade.
I was reading about futurology when I got her E-Mail.
She sent me a link for the live streaming of a press conference in Switzerland. The news was that they had measured something moving faster than the speed of light.
She wanted to ask me something: “I remember once you told me that we would never be able to go back in time until we find the way of moving faster than the speed of light. What do you think? Will it be possible now?”
And I realized her 12:51 was that talk we had, one night, walking the streets, also in love, chatting about time, space, memories and how to prevail over them. She was collecting bosons from our shared past, like every time I found “12:51”.
It was the only time we wrote each other. I answered her: “We must wait for more studies in the field, but these are hopeful news.”
We haven’t written each other ever since.
