“There are little bubbles of old time in London, where things and places stay the same, like bubbles in amber. There’s a lot of time in London, and it has to go somewhere—it doesn’t all get used up at once.”
Time is not merely of the essence in this book, it is the essence of the story. Keeping in mind, of course, Einstein’s theories that time and space are essentially the same thing, cosmically speaking. There is a bit of a Heisenberg thing going on here: one can know where they are or when they are both knowing both at the same it is a bit trickier. This state of alienation is touched upon here in this quote that suggests very hardily that there is a complicated connection between time and space and, furthermore, they don’t always co-exist in the way one would presume. Of course, this is at heart a very common element in fantasy quest novels that transport a character from the world they know to stranger wonderland. While two realms may exist together along the same continuum chronologically speaking, there always seems to be a hiccup in the time experience traveling between them. This will become the existential dilemma faced by the novel’s protagonist.
Sometimes there is nothing you can do.
Kind of like “who are those guys” in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, this is less a simple quote than recurring motif that builds upon itself to take on different levels of meaning. As the narrative progresses, the line is repeated several times, usually within the context of penetrating into the thoughts of Richard, the protagonist. Understanding its code as a mantra involves paying attention to the specific of semantics. Each of its recurrences in the novel is extracted verbatim as it is printed in the text. But the author is playing a little mind game with the reader as the quote would prove far more sensical if it were printed “Some times there is nothing you can do.” A minor typographic alternation, to be sure, but thematically speaking it makes all the different in the world.
The ATM took his card with a whirr. PLEASE ENTER YOUR PIN NUMBER, it said. Richard typed in his secret pin number (D-I-C-K). The screen went blank. Then, PLEASE walt, it said. Somewhere in the depths of the machine something grumbled and growled.
THIS CARD IS NOT VALUD. PLEASE CONTACT CARD ISSUER. There was a chunking noise, and the card slid out again.
Most people tend to invest their smartphone with being the keeper of their identity. The truth is that in comparison to losing your bank card, losing your phone is a minor blip in your life. Lose a bank card that can access your entire life savings in the time it takes to figure out the PIN number and all that stuff making up your sense of self-identity squirreled away on your phone isn’t worth much. When a card providing you access to your finances says it doesn’t recognize you as being who you were just the day before, that is really an existential threat to your identity because it is not limited to merely your self-identity. The beast of the interconnected global marketplace suddenly looks as you as if you are not who you say you are. This incident early in the book in which the protagonist’s ATM suddenly goes haywire become a major transformative moment in the Richard's (DICK’s) life. And it will be the selfsame machinery which helps to return him to normalcy.
