The Bicycle

“Is this the bicycle you purchased?”, the detective with the rolled-up sleeves asked.

For a moment, I really wasn't sure how I should answer. I began thinking back to the very beginnings of the bike, to the Big Bike Bang—the day I first met Betty the bicycle.

I remembered the day when I bought Betty like it was yesterday, even though it was more than 120 years ago.

In spite of being ageless, I’m not immune to sentimentality.

It all started with a flat tire. Back then, the norm was to patch the tube. They had these rubber patches specifically made for the job, especially during the bike bubble days when it looked like the bicycle was going to take over the world. You could almost always patch the tube, but there was one instance when I hit a particularly rough stretch of cobblestone road. The wheel bent right around the tube and into the hard rubber exterior.

Normally, even this would just mean working hard on bending the wheel back into shape (which I did), patching the inner tube, and re-covering with the exterior tire. Inner tubes themselves were pretty new on the scene when I bought Betty, but by now, a few years (and lots of patches) had passed, and this tube was beyond repair.

The bike shop at the corner kept a few of the newer inner tubes in stock, and so I replaced Betty’s front tire’s inner tube some time in between the Panic of ‘07 and the start of the Great War. This was the first of many subsequent part replacements I’d need to do in order to keep Betty running over the years.

Slowly but surely, one at a time, each of the pieces had to be replaced. The seat cover came apart after the Tulsa Race Massacre, but before Black Tuesday. A decade later, the springs under the cover finally snapped and had to be replaced.

I salvaged what I could every time, but there was always a limit to the lifespan of a “part.”

Eventually, the last original part—a hub gear—broke right in half. I bought its more modern replacement, and Betty’s slow, steady transformation was complete.

Back to the detective asking me the question. I looked at the electrodes attached to my arm, to the lie detector test on the table, and back to the man tasked with solving this mystery. He was just doing his job, and had no idea that I have come to view centuries in the same way that most humans view minutes or hours. He didn’t understand the role Betty had already played in the history of the universe, and he was just trying to do his job.

“Is this the bicycle you purchased?”, he repeated. There was no animus in the question, just a patient willingness to get to the bottom of this mystery. This guy wasn’t abrasive, and he understood how to get answers. The lines in his face told me that he had experience well beyond his years.

“No, officer. I purchased an entirely different bike than this,” I answered truthfully, and the lie detector test agreed with my statement.

I could see that this diligent dick didn’t fully agree with the lie detector’s assessment, but his facial expression was accommodating, not accusatory. He really just wanted to solve this puzzle, with no axe to grind. I respected that about him.

His partner had stepped out of the room, but I was confident that she was watching intensely from behind the two-way mirror.

“All right, Mr. Fury. You’re free to go.”

As I stepped out of the interrogation room, the echoes of the detective's questions lingered in my mind, leading me to ponder the deeper connection between Betty's transformations and my own existence over the centuries.

Was I really free to go? As Betty carried me off into the quiet street, I couldn't help but wonder how similar I am to Betty. My entire bike ride home encouraged my mind to roam, watching the city turn into a blur as I put hoof to pedal.

Human beings are a collection of cells, but there are more bacteria than “human” cells in our bodies. Even the human cells in our body—with the notable exception of a small percentage of permanent cells—are gradually replaced over time.

Even more so: human beings are a collection of atoms. Our atoms are even more transient than our cells—we shed as much as 98% of our atoms every year!

Are we the same people we were a year ago? How about ten years ago? What do you think?