Adrift Without Choice On A Wave Of Time
Sci-Fi - CW: Self Harm, Suicide - About 1,200 Words
I think back to the time machine often. We were young, and the thing looked so glorious and shiny. A friend had shown me what to do with it, but I'd never used one before you brought it to my bedroom. I was enamored. You told me you wanted to use it with me, to see the dinosaurs and hear the whimsical sound that they made. When the time machine started to fire up, your breathing got heavy and your fists balled up. A mouse's squeak popped out of your mouth, so I turned it off.
“What are you doing?” You said.
“We don't have to do this now,” I explained. “You look frightened.”
You sighed. I thought you were relieved until you said, “But I want to do it now.” You stilled your forehead to make your eyes look determined, but I saw a twitch on your lip. Back then, it seemed like you were still afraid. Maybe you were just angry.
“Well, I don't anymore,” I told you. “We'll try again some other time. We have all our lives.”
I smiled, imagining the day that we would see the dinosaurs. I'd looked up videos that people had taken of their calls thousands of times in the past. The real thing, everyone said, was so much more beautiful. To hear that sound with you should be an intimate affair. I didn’t want either of us to be afraid of it.
You thought differently. The time machine was here, so why couldn't we use it? You feigned getting over your fear by transmuting it into a hateful scowl. I don't know if you thought I was being difficult or stubborn or some other word that I just can't put my finger on, but it didn’t matter. You got what you wanted.
You climbed on top of me, and the time machine whirred to life in the palm of your hand. I didn’t get the chance to ask what you were doing. One hand covered my mouth, the other started pressing it against my forehead. It started phasing in, and I felt it pass through my skull and into my brain. I didn’t know it could work that way. I thought I might die.
Now, sometimes if someone passes me wearing your perfume - you said it’s called ‘happiness’ - the time machine feeds off of the scrambling signals of my brain. I'm sent back to that moment and forced to watch it all play out. You climb off of me and take the pocket knife from my nightstand. I scream at my former self to run, to hide, to never look back in your direction. He doesn’t. He can’t hear me because these devices have to make interaction with variant selves impossible - otherwise everything would shatter. That’s what they say, at least.
Still getting used to the constant clicks and blips now haunting his head, he rolls over and pivots your wrist. My brother and I learned that move in a self defense class. I wish it had taught me how to get you off of me earlier.
Two streaks of blood roll down your arm and drip onto my bed. I want my former self to take the knife that just fell out of your hand and stab you in the throat. He can't hear me, though. Instead, he says, “I didn’t mean to hurt you, but you can't cut yourself.”
I try to use my thoughts to interface with the time machine, I bang my fists against my skull to disrupt it and take me out of ghost mode. Paradoxes be damned, if it can't send me back to the present I want to do something to stop this. It never works, though. Sometimes the walls bleed, sometimes your eyes go black, but I'm never able to change anything. Short circuits cause hallucinations - I know because the room catching on fire doesn't get a reaction out of my former self or you. The flames only burn me.
“I'm sorry,” crocodile tears fall from your eyes. “I should kill myself for what I just did to you.”
“You shouldn't say that,” my former self doesn't look at you. He just grabs an old shirt, tears off the sleeve, and wraps it around your arm.
“I don't know why I did that,” you say. Except, you do. This thing stuck in my head makes memory difficult, especially when I try to remember things about you. Sometimes, it sends me back to a distorted version of the past, and I hate being around you so I try to avoid thinking about you altogether. When I do, though, one stinging memory surfaces. If it was before this night or after, that’s hard to say. It's when you told me that you always get what you want, no matter what.
I come back to the present with a migraine, the edges of my vision like a vignette. At the end of the tunnel vision, some stranger is waving a hand in front of my face. “Are you alright?” She says. “An ambulance is on the way.”
“I'm fine,” I push her away and stumble off of the tiled supermarket floor. Gelatin legs wobble underneath me. I can't tell if it's her or someone else in the crowd surrounding me, but the smell of ‘happiness’ pythons around me, makes it hard to breathe.
I scream for everyone to just get the fuck away, that I'm not paying for a fucking ambulance. I dash off, nausea threatening to take me back to the floor if I don't slow down.
A congress of specialists have informed me that something might have been possible if I told someone back then. Time machines are volatile. It's lived in my head too long already, a procedure like this has never been done and would extract a heavy fee if I could find a surgeon with the balls to move forward with it. There's an incredible risk of dying on the operating table. Sometimes it sounds worth it.
The company that produced the machine, Chronotrotter, sent various representatives my way when I finally told my family what happened. Apparently, time machines can only phase if they're overclocked, which voids the warranty and conveniently frees them of any liability. Due to the laws surrounding paradox protection, no one can go back to stop what you did from happening.
I find a trash can outside and vomit. Sirens blare through the air making my migraine hammer my skull. I walk to my car and rest for a moment, holding back more vomit as I watch the paramedics rush into the store.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Crisp air filled with petrichor floats into my nostrils. I'm laying on the grass, vibrant fauna surrounding me. A symphony of wintonotitan calls streak through the air and soothe my headache.
The first time I'd visited Gondwana, I was drunk at a college party. I've only been three times since and this is the first time sober. I don't know what triggers the machine to bring me here - there are loads of places I disappear to on drugs - but it's my happy place. When I'm in Gondwana, hearing the dinosaurs, I don’t worry about anything else. My ‘present body’ is sitting in a shitty beater car without any groceries to show for a trip to the supermarket, but I'm adrift through time basking in a peaceful surprise after a hard day. Moments like these let me forget everything, including how I got here.
