It's Not You, It's Me

A date and time was scrawled in red and circled a hundred times.

January 5, 2013.
10:00 P.M.

Today was the day. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. It's a miracle I could even wait. By the time I finally returned to reality, my watch taunted me:
9:58 P.M.
9:59.
10:00. I held my breath and fingered a chip in the center of the face of my watch.
10:01.
10:02.

I felt someone behind me.

"You're late."

Although his watch, like mine, was lined with silver and sported cracks that spidered from a chip in the center, his displayed a different time.
"You were four years late," he announced. "That's how long it took you."
"So I did it. I invented time travel."
"You haven't done it yet."
"Well…we invented time travel."
He tossed me a smirk and began to look around. I was immediately embarrassed. My walls were covered in formulas and my curtains had been traded for equations. "Why couldn't you ever get organized?"
"Have I always been this pretentious?"
"Clever. I like how you say "I," even though you're talking about me."
"But we're the same person." With the same infuriating smirk, he chuckled.
"Was that a fake laugh?"
"No."
"Yes it was."
"It's how I laugh."

He pushed me out of the way and began correcting everything. From the corner of his eye he studied me, broke me down into a formula with missing variables. "Why do you want to do this so badly?"
"The whole idea is to change the future – make it better." I squinted at him. "You know that."
"You're doing it for yourself, and we both know that."

I bit the inside of my cheek and shoved him, correcting a mistake he'd made. He laughed hollowly then began to work alongside me, but he never stopped challenging me.
"Who were you going to help first?"
"You know the answer."
"I've forgotten."
"What about all of the things we were going to change? Did you forget about that too?"
"It doesn't work that way. You can go back and make it better for someone else, but you can't change things for yourself. It doesn't matter what you do."
That's when it hit me. Yes, if I just change that variable, tighten up that line. Time isn't circular. If I change my past, it doesn't change my future. He knew that once I met him, I would never be the same. So if I move this part over here, then place this –
Soon we were standing back and looking at the perfect recipe for time.

"Why come back at all if it doesn't change anything for you?"
"Because we're the same person."

We shared a disquieted silence.

"Show me the machine."
He paused. This was the moment he'd been planning for years. We'd both been planning it. He pulled an ordinary kitchen timer from his pocket and presented it with reverence.

"It's so small…"

The timer began to click as I slowly began to turn the dial.
"If you twist if forward, you'll go into the future, and if you twist it back, you'll go into the past. You have to be careful, though. Two objects can't exist in the same place at the same time, so if you go back and an object is where you are now, then the two-" He folded his hands together. "-They'll combine."  He lifted the timer from my hands and pocketed it before I even passed the first notch. "You would die."
"And if I go to the future?"
"The laws of matter don't change."
"So if I go back, I can die. If I go forward, I can die."
A grin slid across his face. "I want you to wait until tomorrow to decide. Spend some time with me."

I frowned for the tiniest second, but he pounced on the expression.
"Don't you like me?"
"I just…thought I would be happier."
"Don't I seem happy?"
Despite myself, I did the laugh.
"That's a fake laugh."
"We are the same person," I recited.

He pulled out a cigarette and lit it, going outside. There were goose bumps on his arm from the cold.
"You know, about five years before you moved here there used to be a shed. It was right – " He stepped to the left and looked back at me. "– here." He pulled the timer from his pocket and his thumb stroked it absentmindedly. Our eyes locked and his fingers began to slowly turn the timer backwards.

My tongue thickened in my throat. The bell in the timer ticked desperately, fighting against the contradictory movement as the dial brushed past each minute.

10
5
0

And then he disappeared.