From Astounding Essays: 
Sliced so delicately that when your tongue touches it, each fiber of meat collapses into pure flavor. Slathered with the finest barbecue sauce, it tastes like what man has killed to put into your mouth should. Most places they would just get some crap Wonder Bread for their rolls, but these rolls are authentic. Cooked by the wisest old man baker in the back using a baking stone which doubles as the Tablet which God handed down the commandments from on high to Moses, the bread is a celebration of carbohydrates. Unless you get the all wheat one, which calls to a wild animal past which only those who have a bit of the jungle in them still dare put into their body. The sauerkraut was made by a quiet German, a tentative Hun who lives in a shack out back. He doesn’t speak any English, or really at all. His life is his sauerkraut, what might have once been known as Liberty Cabbage liberates your mouth from the dull grayness of ordinary life. Barry’s BBQ made the best pulled pork that you could find ever. It closed three years ago. If I had a time machine and only one use of it, that’s where I’d go.
I’ve been looking into time machines. I find traveling generally tedious, a whole lot of waiting for no real payoff. Some people think that sitting in a cramped little corner for nine hours and walking out to a place where everyone talks funny is a great thing to do with your time. I am a little more realistic. Traveling like that is just a waste of time. Time traveling, by definition, can’t be a waste of time. I’m no big sci-fi geek. I don’t worship Kirk action figures or anything like that. I just want to travel through time; it seems like something that would really help me. Time machines are essentially miracle workers. A time machine can take something that was once destroyed and make it live anew, like Barry’s pulled pork.
I don’t know the first thing about building a time machine. I have had a few thoughts. Most of them involve hooking clocks to things. I know it’s stupid. I don’t see anyone else making a serious effort though. We have the smartest scientists in the world working on lip gloss that tastes like fruit, not advancing us to the next plane of existence. There should only be two things that qualified scientists work on in the world, yet they’re the most ignored. The first is time machines. If we got all of the scientists in the world, do you know how quick we’d have a time machine set up? Second we’d need some sort of device to make sure that nobody would ruin time, which scientists can work on concurrently. Until the day when scientists realize that control of time is what will save us all, humanity is just going to have to put up with my stupid clumsy attempts.
There are so many days that I would consider if I were going back in time that it would make this one use extremely difficult to pick. January 16th, 2003 a day after my first son was born. Barry’s was having a two for one pulled pork sandwich sale. I went in and sat at one of the tables while Barry smiled and winked at me. He called back to his friends in the kitchen and told them to put together two pulled pork sandwiches for his best friend. I laughed; I knew I wasn’t his best friend. Barry was secretive and shifty. You could never quite trust him. There’s only one thing that I have learned to trust in this world, and it’s the reliability of pulled pork. Looking back, I doubt that Barry had any friends. He sure was friendly though, and in the end that’s what counted when you were running the best BBQ the planet had ever seen. I ate the two sandwiches, and I was satisfied.
Maybe I’d go back to the hot June 17th of 1996. I was younger then, and my palate wasn’t terribly advanced. It was advanced enough to know that this was the best that I ever was going to do. It was a day after that first steamy love session I had with the woman who eventually became my wife. Frankly it sold me on the whole deal. This is before Barry had gained too much weight, and he had a lot more hair then. I can remember now, but he had green eyes. It wasn’t something you noticed in his more jowlier days. To get to the point, Barry’s BBQ was having a free sample day where you would get just a cup with the pulled pork, and no sandwich. I took it home and made a pulled pork shake. It was the first of many.
If there was ever a time that really screamed to go to Barry’s BBQ it would be the first time I went, September 18th, 1990. I can remember that day clearly, because the next day my father would die in an entirely unexpected car accident. You can understand though why I never got to see him that day, because I spent the better part of it experiencing Barry’s BBQ. They say that the first time is the best, and let me tell you the truth that when my mouth had first contact with that food I fell down on the floor. Barry had to call an ambulance because he thought I had passed out. I had. When I came to, I was in an emergency room, and I was pissed off. I knew that there was only one thing I wanted and it was a pulled pork sandwich. As soon as I could, I got out of that damn hospital and back to Barry’s where he was waiting with the rest of the sandwich for me. I bet mom was pretty mad she had to go to the emergency room twice in two days.
I start to salivate when I think about going back in time to go to Barry’s. I start to worry, though. What if something goes wrong? Maybe I shouldn’t go back in time on those dates because if I come in contact with myself I’ll toss the entire universe askew. I don’t want to permanently damage anything, I just want the most succulent meat this side of the universe in my mouth slowly melting. Is that too much to ask? I want my salad days of meat. In 2007, no one understands how to make a good pulled pork sandwich anymore. I hate being weighed down by this linear time system which sees that all things must age and be destroyed while we humans sit and watch… as the same things happen to us.
I know that I’m crazy to have theories like this. I already told you that my method of just sticking clocks onto heaps of metal is dumb. I am not a scientist; I can’t make the world a better place just by putting glasses on. Read this though… would you give up everything to experience one moment again? A moment of clarity. A moment where everything in the world seemed just right and you didn’t care about war, death, or any of the other horrors of existence? That’s what I felt when I was in Barry’s. I felt a gasping existential weight being lifted off my shoulders. The only way I will ever be at peace again is if I feel that, at least one more time. I would sacrifice everything I owned, everyone I ever knew, just for it once more. Time travel is the only way. Have you ever loved so much it hurt and tore you apart? That’s how I feel every moment since Barry left town.
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