The Watch - Part 27

I arrived in the past. I travelled through the Space-Time Vortex for a longer amount of time than I did before as I decided to travel a few hours back mainly because I do not know when the accident occurred.

I arrived in my living room in exactly the same spot as I will be later on. I checked the clock on the wall to confirm that it was 12:30, about an hour and a half after I went to bed. My past-self is now fast asleep in bed, not to be disturbed until the accident that will happen in a couple of hours’ time.

My main reason why I decided to travel back in time was to prevent the accident from happening. I thought that since I have this amount of power on my wrist, I should use it for something good, and potentially saving a life is what I would call a good deed. I made my way to the front door, took the key off the hook that hangs above my head and opened the door.

My dad installed that hook for the key years ago purely to keep it as far away from the door as possible without the threat of losing it every single day, which did happen a lot, and would keep out of sight of anyone who decided to break in. To be honest, if anyone who does see the key, however, they would already have kicked down the door and entered the house, rendering the key useless. I remembered taking the key off the hook before unlocking the front door to go outside and see the scene of the accident through my own eyes instead of through a window. But, I didn’t have to remember whether the key is gone because I won’t be coming down to see anything, due to not being any accident in the first place. I may be too tired to think of the details, they are a bit incoherent a the moment; I'm going to stop the accident then go straight to bed, shouldn't be any more complicated than that.

I opened the door slowly and silently so to not wake my past-self. Once I was eventually outside, I didn’t bother locking the door as I would be going back inside anyway before travelling back into the future. The future where the accident didn’t happen. I have to keep saying that over and over in my head because what I was about to do felt so unreal.

I wasn’t sure how the accident actually happened, but from what the news reporter told me it might have been because of a technical fault with the car, or there might be something on the road when it does happen. It was unclear what might happen, so I have to be ready for when it does.

As I stood waiting in my garden, a couple of cars drove past. One car even looked like the one that crashed, making my heart race for a couple of seconds because I hadn’t done anything to prevent the accident, but then it drove on past the lamppost and I was able to breathe once more. From what I saw from my perspective of the crash, there wasn’t any animals on the road, so the driver mustn’t have tried to dodge a deer or a fox or something else, but the Police could easily have moved the animal out-of-the-way so that they can focus on the driver without any hassle, so that is still a possibility. I didn’t get anywhere with that train of thought. This moment is starting to play with my head.

A car rounded the corner, its headlights beamed right across the road, before flying over me. The car looked like the one that crashed. I saw no animal in the road and the car was going the recommended speed limit of 30MPH. What caused the crash?

I stepped a little closer, just to get a better look at the road. Nothing appeared. The car continued on merrily.

‘Don’t go any further,’ I heard a stern voice say behind me. I stopped in my tracks. I know that voice.

I turned around and saw myself standing in front of me, wearing the same clothes as I was and looking just as scruffy and tired, so this version of me wasn’t too far into the future.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said, ‘why are you here?’

‘To stop you from causing the crash,’ he said. I was a little shocked to hear that.

‘What do you mean to stop me from causing the crash?’ I asked unable to process that.

‘If you take another step,’ my future-self started to explain, ‘you will slip on a muddy patch and fall into the road, causing the driver of the car to swerve into the lamppost,’ he explained. ‘You should have brought a torch, then nothing would have happened.’ He smiled at me. As we were talking the car drove on past us two and the lamppost, continuing on without a single worry. I watched as it turned a corner and disappeared into the night.

‘But hang on,’ I said, ‘if you are here to prevent me from causing the accident, then I must have already have known about my causing the accident to go into the past to prevent me from causing it, yet I don’t and here you are preventing me,’ I said. ‘And the news reporter did not mention that there were two people involved, nor did I see anyone else.’ Something really did not add up.

‘I don’t have the memory as well.’

‘But I need to have the memory so that I can become you to prevent me from causing the accident. With you being here, you have created a new time line – a new Parallel Universe – that you can travel back to and carry on with your life.’ This is getting into some deep stuff, and at this time of night, I was struggling to process it all properly. ‘Hang on,’ I said suddenly, ‘did you say that you don’t have the memory.’

‘I did,’ he nodded.

‘That means that you must have seen your future-self, preventing your past-self causing the accident, so that I can then become you to fulfil the paradox. That also means that I must have travelled back in time at some point and caused the accident, for me to see and try to prevent it, only to be the cause, but you are here to prevent me from doing that, wiping out the entire timeline of my causing the accident, creating a new timeline, and therefore a new paradox. And now all that I have to do is travel into the past, become you, prevent me from causing the paradox, then I can go back home where the accident never happened.’ I explained all that as clearly as it sounded in my head, which wasn’t that clear at all, but was alright considering it’s in the middle of the night and I have been up for a long time now.

‘You know, I heard that two times now, but I still struggle to understand that properly,’ my future-self said, ‘however, what you have just explained is essentially what is happening, and if you can understand just a little bit, then that is all that matters,’ he said with a smile.

‘So how long are you here for, then?’ I asked.

‘Actually I’ve got to get going now,’ he said checking his watch. ‘Once I’ve gone, you can travel into the past and prevent yourself from causing the accident. He pressed the button on his watch and disappeared in a blink of an eye.

Usually, when you go back in time to prevent yourself, you don’t see yourself prevent you from causing whatever you caused until you actually do go back in time to prevent it. But actually seeing myself prevent it means some very complex time travel science has happened here. So complex, that I don’t even know whether it is possible, yet it happened, right in front of me.

I would like any professional scientist studying Time Travel to figure out this one please.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)