flux capacitor

Back in the day when the technology we have now was still in its infancy, we got our first movie player, a betamax, as a gift from our uncle who at that time was single and would rarely be in the country within a year's time. Seeing how wide-eyed we were watching JAWS in his apartment, he probably thought it best to just give us the player since no one's gonna be using it anyway when he goes overseas.

We couldn't contain our excitement, my brother and I, when we found out that we're gonna be having the betamax. Our parents always thought of these stuffs as luxury and were very adamant on not giving in to our whims. First thing I did when we got the player was apply for a membership in the local betamax rental shop located within the flea market up town. If you look at it, the video regulatory board was as helpless then as they are now. All the betamax rental shops offered bootleg movies VCR copied and they were peddling it(for rent) out in the open. Go inside one and you'll be overwhelmed by the stack of tapes white stickered and pentel-penned with the title of the movie. There were no original box casings, just the generic ones and the only hint you'll get of what the movie is about, you'll hear from the shopkeeper. His guarantee and bias is all that stands between your precious 5 bucks and the movie being a bust. You've to either trust him or trust your gut feel whose credence is supported only by the scribbled title coupled with your imagination. If you're a clueless kid running the errand of renting the weekend's movie and you come across PRINCESS BRIDE, you would just have to take the shopkeepers word for it or dismiss it as one of the X-RATED movies which got mixed up with the GPs.

I guess my being an Obsessive Compulsive consumer manifested itself early. I will spend a good 1 hour scanning the titles of stack upon stack of betamax tapes before I choose what to rent. 50 percent of the time I will take the shopkeeper's word if I end up in a quandary while other 50 is the product of my deduction method. Mostly I end up renting sci fi movies. Sci fi was as big then as it is now. Everyone marvels at the special effects especially us kids. Special effects was the order of the day back then.

Back to the future was one such movie. Here a young Michael J Fox stars as teenager Marty Mcfly who teams up with Christopher Lloyd as Dr Brown-the scientist who invented the De Lorean time machine. Time travel was the basic plot and back to the future was a line uttered by Dr Brown at the end of the movie to hint the sequel.

In the movie, flux capacitor was the device used to make time travel possible. To the uninitiated it sounded as a credible scientific crap :> but as I soon learned in school it was just a weird word play of capacitor and inductor. Perhaps the one who coined the term was pressed for time and simply played around the terms offshooting from inductor and he came across flux. Flux and capacitor make for a neat mix perhaps.


The movie put in vivid detail one of my deepest rooted fantasies-time travel. On top of flying and reading other person's mind(I watched too much superman as a kid), time travel caught my fancy. I knew about H.G. Well's Time Machine as a children adaptation book not the real novel, but Marty Mcfly brought to life everything I had pictured of what time travel would be.

There've been many theories presented how time travel can become a possibility. Each of them suggests that there has to be this energy source powerful enough to blast you off through time and reconstruct you back in that other dimension. Scientists are just beginning to scratch the surface of Einstein's theory of relativity as the most plausible basis for time travel. Well, with the environment problems and the rising fuel prices now, time travel will have to take a backseat over these pressing issues.

The idea that you could travel back in time or ahead to the future has to be up there on the list of the " TOP 10 future possibilites you want to happen now ". Time travel goes two ways: past or future. Given these two paths I am partial with the past as I figure future will be ugly knowing how population plus the way we abuse our environment are a catastrophic mix.

Past gives you a chance to recover back events that turned out for the worse resulting from the wrong decisions or circumstances. How I sometimes wish that I be given the chance to redo the events that unfortunately took the wrong turn! I ain't asking for all, just a few. How I wish I could turn back time to the good ol' days when Bibe and I were positively looking towards the future, when we were planning ahead how we will go by and brace ourselves for the life ahead, together. That was big for me cause it signaled a new era. How I soon will be settling and shaping my own future with a lifelong partner was barely within reach. She was amenable and so was I. Our intimate discussions gave me a sneak peek- it painted a picture- of how the future will be like. It was different, it was new, it was big and I liked it. All my life spending in solitary, making few associations, living like a modern day hermit minus the beard and the staff; all these I was somehow about to turn my back away from and I was actually gladly welcoming that prospect.

But I came up short in my effort to keep the intimacy flame burning. The candle burned to the last wicker and just like that Bibe was gone. I wish the Delorean was parked just right outside the garage, I'll hop on to it, rev the engine, fire up the flux capacitor and back to the past I will go.

To keep Bibe, to keep what we once had, to guarantee that we stick to our future hopes and aspirations, to never waver and to focus on the road ahead, these are the things I would risk my life and limb for to go back to the past... to keep Bibe. Given the chance, I would do so much in my power to ensure these things stay its intended course just as we once planned.

But unlike Microsoft Office applications, life don't come with an UNDO or backspace keys. It would be good if it did but you never really get things done when you have the option to revert. Mistakes happen and they serve as wake-up calls. Mistakes are there like an anvil and hammer to mold and draw you to be sharper and stronger to face the challenges life will offer ahead.


It sucked that Bibe had to be my anvil and hammer pair. How I wish Bibe didn't have to be that person who I will be grateful for years later when I look back at my past. I wish Bibe didnt have to be that character who as a graybeard, I will gladly tell anyone who will listen, as being the person who helped me to be the man I will have become then. I wish Bibe didn't have to take that role. Someone else could have assumed that part but it sucks that as it looks now, it had to be Bibe. Bibe is everything who I had longed for and everything who I wanted to be spending the twilight of my life with. Before knowing her, I had built into my mind the kind of woman I wanted to spend my future with and was I glad that when she came, she fit that description to a T. Bibe was that very person to the tiniest sinews. It sucks that the woman I had long waited for was given to me and yet I wasn't able to keep her. Some people go thru their lifetime waiting but not getting the chance to be with their ideal partner and just settling for the next best. Here was I with all that chance in the world and all I needed was keep her. She was within reach and it sucked that I couldn't cling on to the rope that binded us together despite seeing it being drawn to its last strands. I just wish that when the story of my life is down to its last pages, time will have carried me through the chapter of when Bibe was there.