Only a small thing it had seemed at the time, and yet, by
changing that one, insignificant detail, he had altered the course of events
that would soon lead to catastrophic results for the entire world.
Who knows for what ends the madman had calculated; perhaps
he had wanted to plunge the world into chaos, perhaps it had been just a simple
miscalculation.
Whatever the reasons for his actions, the one thing he did
not count on was that I had witnessed his mad scheme that night, and that I
would travel across and space to put an end to it.
It took me years to recreate his time machine from memory
and figure out how to traverse time with it, and by the time I had finally
completed my work the world had been plunged into chaos and was now an
apocalyptic waste land. I myself had lost so much and so many people I loved,
my heart had become a barren waste as well.
There was only hatred in me now; hatred of the man from the
future and how he had selfishly taken everything away from the world; from me.
Once I had the machine up and running, I calculated where
and when would give the best possible chance to stop the madman's evil plans
and I entered the coordinates into the time machine's navigation computer.
It only took a fraction of a moment and I was back in the
past, to a time before the world had begun its descent into ruin.
I changed what I figured needed to be changed and was back
in the time machine in only a few moments, ready to go back and see if my
future had been fixed.
Apprehensively, I pushed the recall button and the machine
returned to the exact time and place I had started from.
Nothing had changed, it hadn't worked; my future was still
in shambles.
Furious at my failed attempted to right whatever wrong that
madman had perpetrated on the past, I went back to try again.
That attempt failed.
So again I went back; again and again, over and over, each
attempted failing to make any change in the future.
Each failed attempt was maddening and I became obsessed with
getting it right; there had to be a way I thought, one little change that would
repair all of what the madman had done!
I made hundreds of trips back, until the one which I came
back in the night, going over all of the mistakes I had made, raving to myself
about fixing the timeline.
Making my adjustments hastily, I headed back to the time
machine to return to the future once again and hopefully see a positive result,
and I saw him.
Through the flashing blue electricity that the time machine
created to travel along, I saw a figure looking back at me with amazement, just
before I winked out of the past.
It had been me.
I had been the madman all those years ago that the younger
me from the past had seen.
In my astonishment of the revelation I stopped the time
machine in mid-journey; paused in time and space.
Before me, out the view window, the entirety of what I had
done was laid out so clearly now.
All my efforts to change the future by changing the past had
been in vain. For sprawling outside my precious time machine, in plain sight,
were all the different branches of timelines. Each branch leading to a new
future I would not be a part of.
In some I had succeeded and the future was bright; in
others, most others, my meddling had only made things much worse.
In almost all the timelines I had become the villain; the
raving madman I had sought to put an end to.
Only now, here, high above the branches and offshoots of
time, could I see it: the only way to fix it all.
Setting a new trajectory, I sped back down to where all the
branches had split in the first place; careening toward the very moment I had
broken time.
Shockwaves rippled away from the machine as I tore back
through the fabric of space-time, on a collision course with me final destiny.
Screeching through the past, a sphere rocketed down from the
sky towards where I stood in the dimly-lit street; the same clear-glass sphere
as the one sitting in the dark alley in front of me.
In a terrific explosion of glass and blue sparks, the
spheres collided and were completely obliterated in a blast wave that blew me
off my feet.
Landing in a large pile of garbage bags on the street curb,
I stared dumbfounded at the space where the two spheres had been.
Where there should have been flaming wreckage, there was
only a shimmering opening, hanging strangely in the air above the wet alleyway.
Getting up out of the bags of trash, I approached the
opening cautiously until I could just poke my head through the wavering opening
and look at what was on the other side.
Instead of what should have been just the other end of the
alley, was a void of sorts, with an infinite number of identical openings; all
of them with another version of me, peeking their heads through.
"What the f..." was all we could get out before
all time folded in on itself and the tears in space-time closed up, sucking
everything in with a blip.
This time, only a passing stray dog was there to hear the
faint noise of the timeline correcting itself. It relieved itself on the big
pile of garbage bags and continued on its merry way.
