Derek often refuses to reveal details of an anecdote for reasons of blockchain security.

This is not a great issue in the normal course of events. But. But. Sometimes, when Derek is attempting to organise something it can be vexing. Simple acts such as pulling a pint, behind the Bar, in a Leeds Pub, become incredibly intricate. When that pint pulling is merely a pretext for a seedy robbery, it becomes even more intricate. Derek is not bright. Derek is able to keep track of a huge number of things.

I discovered Derek's capacity for keeping track of a huge number of things while reading a, "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information", Miller, G.A. Psychological Review. 63 (2): 81–97. At one time this was the most cited psychology paper in the world. The discovery that people, in short term memory experiments, could recall between five and nine items. Most usually seven. It was called Miller's Law. Derek is an exception to Miller's Law.

Derek showed me a bucket full of marbles. Glass marbles from Thuringia, 1848. Derek could recall and recite a stream of facts and figures for each marble. There were seventy nine marbles. Derek pointed out that 79 is the largest prime number that is lucky and below one hundred. Avoiding excessive exposition, I did not enquire about either prime or lucky numbers or even why he would need the marbles to be prime and lucky. I made the mistake of saying the marbles could be a metaphor for Time Travellers. Once.

Derek was very serious. The marbles could never be a metaphor for Time Travellers. That would have extreme consequences for the ontological integrity of local, and perhaps global, spacetime fabrics. The marbles could only ever be an allegory for Time Travellers. As in the Platonic Allegory of the Cave. If the Allegory of the Cave were the Metaphor of the Cave, insisted Derek, then Time Travel would be entirely different. Metaphorically based Time Travel, as distinct from Allegorically based Time Travel, is not real. Metaphorical Time Travel is where meaning is carried across from one situation to another situation. Which is no more than dreaming about the Past or the Future. The Dream of Time Travel, according to Derek, must precede the Act of Time Travel. Nobody should visit a pub in Leeds in 1988, for example, without first dreaming of the events.

The exposition of the shades of difference between Allegorical and Metaphorical Time Travel took several hours to complete. Derek was most insistent on getting all of the details correct. Metaphorical Time Travel precedes Allegorical Time Travel but is not, in fact, actualised as Time Travel. Metaphorical Time Travel is what we describe when we describe Time Travel but when we actually do Time Travel it is Allegorical Time Travel. Imagine seven hours, plus or minus two, being impressed with the minutiae of that.

Derek was proud of his Thuringian glass marbles from 1848. Each one was, for the purposes of organising a seedy robbery in an unnamed Public House, somewhere in Leeds, sometime in the 1980s, given a name. Derek assured me these names were the names of Time Travellers and that the marbles would stand in for those Time Travellers. I have to admit: I nodded off.

Which is how I came to wake up calling last orders behind a bar. In Leeds. In the 1980s. With no recollection of how I came to be there and no idea of how I would leave.

Derek stood there, in front of me, asking for his change. He stooped a little. I smiled. To be honest: I giggled. Derek was not impressed. Derek was being very serious. Derek instructed Me to announce to the Patrons that they ought to imagine the Pub was where everyone have been imprisoned from childhood, but not from birth. The Patrons are intoxicated so that their arms and legs do not work. A trick I assume has something to do with the unlabelled bottles behind the Bar.
The paralysis was forcing them to gaze at the wall in front of them. To not to look around at the Pub, each Other, or Themselves. I wanted to be calling last orders and slinging them all out on the street. Instead I was reenacting Plato's Allegory of the Cave with drunk people.

Derek looked around for anybody not participating with what, I imagine, might be some kind of ontological gusto. Someone consumed in the ecstacies of metaphor not allegory. His feral expression sought any - unallegorical presence - in the faces of the Locals, the Regulars, and the Drifters In. With a quick rattle of the bar bell, I announced time. Time gentlemen, please. Time ladies, please. Time to drink up.

With a swig that could only be described as a quaff, Derek announced, this is not the Pub. Which was something I could have told him. Purely because I had not mugged him. Nor had I popped along to 1979 to mug him. Nor had anybody else in the Bar or the Lounge or the Nook. Nobody had mugged Derek. Which was a disappointment. The disappointment turned to abject horror when Derek announced that the mugging might have been metaphorical. A metaphorical time travelling mugging would be really quite serious. A lot more serious than turning over a lanky bloke like Derek for a hundred quid.

For reasons of Blockchain Security, Derek announced that this could be the pub and we should arrive at the scene of the crime as soon as space and time permitted. We staggered, left, right, forwards, backwards, falling, rising, and even sliding between the angles between the dimensions. A drunkard's walk. Derek laughed. If we were Metaphorical Time Travellers there would be serious consequences.

Which is why unconsciousness is such a gift.

Derek Gives Up On Time Travel: How It All Became Curiously Repetitious.
Derek Gives Up OnTime Travel: How It All Came To A Bit Of A Head.
Derek Gives Up On Time Travel: How It All Became Personal.
Derek Gives Up On Time Travel: The Thickening Of The Plot.
Derek Gives Up Time Travel: How It All Became Tense.
Derek Gives Up Time Travel: How It Unravelled.
Derek Gives Up Time Travel: How It Got All Complicated.
Derek Gives Up Time Travel: How It All Began.