Two young men sit across from one another on worn plush recliners. A low wooden coffee table sits shoved into the rest of the small space, barely fitting between the chairs and the wall. It's so close to the chairs that the boys would have to crawl over it to leave their seats. On it rests a half-eaten tray of homemade brownies and a tiny television playing some animated feature, the sound on mute.

They sit swaddled in blankets. Breath fogging up the chill air that permeates the apartment. The only real way to tell them apart, so bundled against the cold, is by the color of the blanket cocooning them, one red, the other blue.

The apartment is tiny, only three rooms– a bedroom, a bathroom, and the room the two sit in now– a main area with a nook for a kitchen and the door to the hallway. It's the kind of thing you only live in on the most shoestring of budgets, fitting for the closet sized space it squeezes you into.

Going by the bunk-bed just visible through the bedroom door, it's clear these two are roommates, nothing more. The scattered take-out boxes, sheets of homework, and discarded school projects further clarify the two's situation.

Broke and in college.

“You ever wonder why we don’t see them?” the boy in the blue blanket breaks the silence. Gesturing with hands still beneath the fuzzy blanket.

The other boy scrunches up his face and squints at his friend, “Huh? What?”

“You ever wonder why we don’t see them?” the friend repeats.

The blue blanket boy still looks confused. “Nah bro, I heard you. What's them?”

“You know, like, time travelers. You ever wonder why we don’t see them?” The friend repeats for the third time, as if he's surprised his roommate wasn’t already on the same page.

“What do you mean? Time travels not…” the friend trails off looking for a word, “… Not, uhh. Viable. Time travel isn’t viable, dude.”

“No, no, but, like, if it was. Why don’t we see them?” The red blanket boy sounds frustrated.

“You mean, like if it was… Shit, uhh. Viable! Viable, if it was viable. Why hasn’t anyone come back?” As he catches on to the idea he sits up in his chair, squirming in his blue blanket cocoon, to look at his friend.

The friend still hasn’t moved, staring off into the middle distance somewhere between heaven and the ceiling. A slow smile spreading on his face as his friend gets it.

“Yeah! Exactly!”

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The two lapse back into silence, chewing on the idea.

After a while, the second friend speaks up.

“Something must stop them”

“What?” Its the red blanket boy’s turn to be confused

“The time travelers, something must stop them.”

“Oh, like a person? Like a super time traveler?”

The blue blanket roommate gives his friend another squint-eyed look, “No, thats dumb. I mean, like, a concept– gravity or relativity or… something.”

“Oh, that makes sense. A super time traveler would be cooler, though.” The red blanket boy has to take a second to be properly disappointed by his friend's dismissal of super time travelers. “What would you call a concept like that, though? You think someone has already thought up a name?”

At his friend's question, the boy in the blue blanket slides back down in his chair, thinking.

“You know, I don't know. If nobody’s ever discovered it, I bet it doesn’t have a name at all.”

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The sky here was never perfectly blue. It shifted through a vibrant spectrum of waves and colors indescribable to the human eye. Though, it did boil down to approximately blue– the rest of what was there was hard to describe, humans couldn’t see it, so I don't have the right words to say. It also looked perfect, not a cloud in sight– we weren’t supposed to call anything that. Half a dozen concepts here, including Perfection themself, constantly reminded us that nothing was ever ‘perfect’ nature just didn’t work that way.

They were right. If perfect did exist I would know, plenty of the others would say that at least. I had the ‘perfect’ job. By that, they meant I hardly had to work at all.

Nothing to do but raft in the river and stare at the sky. I’m a concept so unnecessary that humans have yet to give me a name. There are a few of us around the garden, aspects of some un-researched, unexplained, undocumented concepts.

I wonder if the others feel as lost as I do.

I’m sure they don’t.

I prop myself up on the raft, careful not to cause too many ripples, and look out to the land around me. The garden is beautiful. From the river I can see every bit of it, which is why I’d rather look at the sky.

I can see Gravity and Geology’s impossible mountains stretching off high into the heavens. The mountain range looks impossible, though I know Physics keeps the two of them honest. The land around the mountains give the immediately eye-catching spires a run for their money in the jaw dropping department. Massive forests, plains, oceans, desserts, fields of flowers, colors, shapes, all spread out to a scope that would drive a human mad to see it all as I do. Each and every land full of life, plants and animals that are every bit as impressive as the towering mountains. Biology, Nature and a million other concepts all maintain the vista.

Beyond even that sprawling land is the hazy space of dream and mind. A constantly shifting illusory place home to Dream, Logic, Thought, and other concepts of that ilk. They record and document the idle space of thinking minds. From them things are made real, crossing closer into the center of the garden and being handed over to the more material concepts.

The garden is the most amazing place a human could imagine. Everything exists here, if it possibly exists or is imagined we maintain it here. At least everyone else maintains it, again I don't do much. I get to watch, more of a punishment than a prize.

My gaze falls back down, but I stay seated. Below me– well, below my raft– is the River Time, infinitely deep and infinitely long. Well in theory, in practice the river only goes as far as humans can remember or predict. Combine that with all the branches and navigation is nearly impossible, It's quite hard to see where I’m going.

Despite that, the river Time touches everything. One of the few things that crosses through all things, both real and unreal, the only body of water that both affects reality and thought.

To be honest, I don’t get how it works. Isn’t that just perfect? The one concept that's supposed to keep this massive metaphysical metaphor of a body of water ‘working’ and it doesn’t even know what that means. What am I supposed to do? Float around randomly and hope something goes wrong with time itself, so I can feel important? Just the thought of that makes me feel terrible. I’m a shitty aspect.

I get by, as far as I can see the river takes care of itself.

I shake off my thoughts, I didn’t sit up to ruminate and feel miserable. No something was wrong. The normally chaotic and random currents that shook my raft had stilled, the currents and eddies straightening, my raft stilling its steady rocking and picking up speed. We were headed for rapids, and if I couldn't see them, they were bad ones.