The Watch - Part 16

The morning sun was just rising above the horizon when I awoke, smiling. I rolled onto my back, stretching my arms upwards as far as they would go to get the stiffness out and some movement in.

This time, I awoke in my bed, in my house, in my home planet, in my home Universe. I had to think for a second before I realised that. 

Pulling off my bed covers, I stood up.

‘Morning,’ I said to the A.I.

‘Good morning, Sebastian,’ he said appearing beside me, ‘and how are you?’

‘Couldn’t be better,’ I said getting dressed.

‘What are your plans today?’ he asked.

‘I’m not sure,’ I admitted, buttoning up my trousers and putting a belt around them to prevent them from falling down around my ankles, ‘I’ll make that up as I go along. But I have a feeling that it might involve time travel.’

‘Is there a destination in mind?’ he asked.

‘Not at the moment, but I’ll think of a place to go after breakfast. I need my apple juice in the morning otherwise I just won’t be able to function properly.’ I headed downstairs and into the kitchen. During the times that my mum and dad were home, I would usually find them already sitting at the table. It was a very rare occasion not to find them already dressed, having or had breakfast, and as fresh as if they have been awake for hours already.

They go away for days on end to complete courses or other such work related activities, that I am used to waking up without them in the house in the morning. The strangest part about it though, was waking up with literally no one except myself in the house. Before, my Nana and Grandad would usually come and help me look after myself, but now that I am 20, my mum and dad now think that I am perfectly capable of looking after myself, which I am, and now that I have my watch, I think I will be able to do a lot more than just look after myself all day, for however long my mum and dad will be gone for.

Dropping the bread into the toaster, pulling down the lever, and pouring myself a glass of cold apple juice from the fridge; as soon as the cold liquid ran down my neck, I felt my body being kicked into first gear. I remembered what I was going to do this morning.

‘I was going to give you a name, weren’t I?’ I said to the man who was patiently standing in front of me, silently waiting for me to interact with him. ‘That way it will be a lot easier to talk to you and address you.’ I set my glass down on the counter and thought about what to call the A.I. in the watch.

‘It doesn’t feel right to name you a simple name, such as Bill or Bob, or Ray or James, if you know what I mean.’ He nodded in agreement even though I knew he is only nodding at what I am saying even though he told me that a name is unnecessary. ‘I reckon an epic name would suffice, considering you are part of an epic device. I mean, nothing can get more epic than The Watch, can it?’ Again he nodded. I continued, ‘and I think it needs to be representing who you are, so any name referring to a dragon, or a bird is completely out of the question.’ I was putting a lot of thought into this, I knew there was a name out there that would fit the A.I. perfectly. ‘Maybe it can describe who you actually are, and you are an A.I., an interface, a man. Maybe it can be something short, sharp and simple, something that isn’t a mouth full each time I say it. Something like…’ I couldn’t think of anything.

The toast popped up, making me jump. Pulling the two slices out of the toaster, and buttering them on a plate, I took a bite out of one.

‘This is more difficult than I thought,’ I swallowed a little too early, feeling the large clump of toast drop through my throat. Then, from out of nowhere, the perfect name popped into my head. It was so perfect, it felt as if it had been his name for so long.

‘How about, plain and simple, Interface,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t have to be a name such as mine, it describes exactly what you are and it’s short, sharp and simple that isn’t a mouthful. What do you think?’ I asked, smiling.

‘If you wish to call me Interface, then I shall be known as Interface,’ he said.

‘Awesome,’ I said taking another bite out of the toast. After I had finished my toast and apple juice and put both plate and glass into the dishwasher, I sat down at the dining room table and spoke to Interface.

‘Can I ask you a question?’ I asked Interface.

‘Certainly,’ he said, ‘what would you like to know?’

‘First of all, you mentioned that this watch is able to grant me any power I so wish,’ I said, before leading into the question, what are the limits of the powers? Is there a limit to the strength that I can have, the speed that I can run at, et cetera?’

‘Nothing can be truly infinite,’ Interface started to explain. ‘Each Universe has its own laws on what is allowed and what is not. This Universe's limit is different from that of others.'

‘I don’t understand,’ I said wanting Interface to elaborate.

‘The watch draws its power from the energy within the Universe itself. The greater you increase your superpowers' strength, the more energy that you use. Once you have deactivated your powers, that energy returns to the Universe. So far, you have only used a minute percentage that doesn’t affect anything at all, but the more energy you use up, the more the Universe has to compensate for that and so it starts to break down objects to give you the necessary energy.’

‘So, if I increase my powers so much, I could destroy a star, is what you are saying.’

‘That is correct,’ he nodded.

‘And if I increase them even further, there’s a good chance that I could destroy an entire galaxy.’

‘That is correct.’

‘But, you said the energy is put back, so wouldn’t everything go back to how it was once I've deactivated everything?’ I asked.

‘You would only release the energy back into the Universe,’ he said. ‘There is no guarantee that it would remake what was already there.’ I was not liking this picture.

‘And you said that if I exceeded the Universe’s limit… What would happen if I did that?'

‘The Universe would be torn apart,’ his monotone voice made it sound that much more threatening. 'The Universe will not be able to give you any more energy, so you will be left in the Void.’

‘And does each power has its own limit or the same?’

‘Each power uses up different amounts of energy, so there is a different limit for each power,’ Interface explained.

‘And how will I know what the limits are before I accidentally exceed them?’

‘If you like, I can tell you,’ he said.

‘I think that would be helpful,’ I said. ‘The last thing I want to do is destroy the sun.’ That threat made me question whether using this watch is for the best or not, but I don’t necessary have to worry about destroying anything. So far, I’ve been just fine, and if I ever am about to do so, Interface will tell me, meaning all I need to do then is just stop increasing my powers or get rid of them entirely. It’s as simple as that. Satisfied with the information that I now know, I moved to the second subject that I wanted to talk about.

‘What about Paradoxes? When travelling through time, I mean?’ I asked. One of my hobbies is studying time travel and how paradoxes work. ‘I must not do anything I want as that can change history and can create a paradox.’

‘Some paradoxes will play out later on and some paradoxes will have had have already played out, yet will need to begin,’ Interface explain. That was rather very complicated. I needed a couple of seconds to think about that, but I can’t so I’m going to need Interface to simplify it a bit. Luckily, though, my knowledge that I have gathered from various sources did help me do just that.

‘So what you are saying is what I will do, I have already done and so haven’t changed history. Those tenses were all over the place in that sentence. Basically, to put it in a better way: There can be a moment in time when I meet my future-self, which means, I will at some point turn into my future-self and meet my past-self. That also means, my future-self, at some point, met his future-self and went back in time and met me.’Yeah, that hasn’t simplified it all has it?

‘But what if I go back in time and kill Hitler?’ I asked bluntly. A common time travel question.

‘Then that will create a new timeline,’ Interface said simply, ‘You will then have a choice as to whether you wish to travel to that future’s timeline, or the one that you came from when Hitler wasn’t killed before the war began,’ he explained.

‘Are you saying that I would travel back to this timeline, where I haven’t changed history?’

‘Your changing history will create a new Parallel Universe, meaning you will have to travel through the Void to get back to this timeline you are living in now. However, if you wish to travel to the other timeline’s future, you won’t have to go through the Void as you will already be in the new timeline’ he explained. That does make sense. I think.

‘But the more times I travel through the Void, I will become immune to the effects,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he nodded.        

‘Then we have no time to lose,’ I said, standing up. ‘Let’s have a bit fun. I can’t wait to see how different certain timelines are if certain people or certain things didn’t happen.’

‘What would you like to do?’ Interface said.

Then the doorbell rang…

TO BE CONTINUED…

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)