The Watch – Part 112:

I do apologise for not uploading yesterday. A tonne of unexpected things happened all at once, and when I finally sat down to upload the next part, I discovered that there was a rather large plot hole, which I have no sorted so it makes a lot more sense in the coming parts. Thank you for your patience and I hope to remain on schedule for now on.

***

‘OK, I think I know what happened back there,’ Amy said after we had returned to the future, into a newly established timeline. Tom is no longer lying on my couch and from what I could tell, nothing drastic changed. I know it was a rather big risk, changing time like that, but I was not going to stand around and do nothing. I have my watch and so I’m going to use it. It felt good that Tom was back to his normal-self once more, even though he has no clue as to what happened as that version of him doesn’t exist anymore.

‘But there is something that doesn’t quite add up,’ Amy said.

‘Go on,’ I said wanting to know her thoughts.

‘Well,’ she began, ‘Tom knocked on your door and explained that his parents were killed in an explosion at work…’

‘Yeah,’ I said, curiously.

‘And I then suggested that you go back in time and save his parents from said explosion, and then you suggested that I had better come with you for, when the timeline changes, a version of me would be wiped out and replaced with someone who doesn’t know what’s happening. So we went back in time together and saved his parents by dismantling the bomb. And here we are, in a new timeline.

‘Before I continue, I have to ask even though I’m pretty sure I already know the answer. We can still return to that timeline, if we want.’

‘We can,’ I nodded, ‘because whenever you change the past, it creates a new parallel universe with the new timeline and therefore new future in.’

It was Amy’s turn to nod before continuing, ‘and by changing the timeline, Tom’s parents wouldn’t have gotten killed, we wouldn’t have gone back in time to save that and they wouldn’t have seen you just disappear into thin air, therefore keeping the secret of your watch just between us.’ Where was she going with this?

‘My question is: Shouldn’t there be another version of us somewhere in this world living life without having a clue as to what happened, because they never went back in time and became us?’ That was a good question, and a difficult one. Amy is right, there would be another version of us in this new timeline. But if there’s another version of us, that means we can’t be here for fear of meeting them and causing all sorts of problems, and if they are here, that means the other me has the watch.

I spend the next ten minutes furiously trying to figure out a solution to this problem, but no matter how many times I thought I was going somewhere that would explain away the problem that Amy brought up, I only ended up at the very same conclusion. I was thinking hard, which was Amy’s cue to throw in another spanner into the works.

‘Which brings me onto another question,’ she said teasing me.

‘Go one,’ I said.

‘Where are they? What are they doing? And will we bump into the other us?’ First of all, that was three questions, but that’s not important right now. The second thing is, if I remember rightly whilst studying the many theories of time travel, I came across a similar problem. All I have to do is remember what I had read. This is important, and so if I could remember basically everything that I had read, that would be rather helpful. Retracing my mind back through my memories, I thankfully landed on what I wanted.

‘What we have here,’ I said, ‘is an open ended loop that can never be closed because the beginning had been wiped out. There is no cause to start the effect. To be honest, now that you’ve brought up this problem, it has gotten me wondering why the other we (I think that’s the right tense? All this time travel can really twist the English language into many shapes) aren’t here.’ And I thought that it was complicated before. This is another level altogether. No, this is completely different game altogether. Wherever we go, we have to be constantly on the lookout for the other us, just in case we accidentally bump into them and create something else altogether. It wouldn’t be a paradox since there isn’t one in the first place because I changed time, completely eradicating any loops that were there. My head was starting to ache. I’ve been studying Time Travel for years now, but this problem was indeed the hardest to figure out, and it’s even harder now that I’m living it.

‘Would it be better if we tried to locate where the other us are just so that we won’t be in the same place as they are?’ Amy asked.

‘That would be the best way to go about it, yeah,’ I said thoughtfully. I couldn’t agree nor disagree because I just didn’t know what the best way to go about it is. The other us could walk through the front door any second now for all we know, and they wouldn’t have a clue as to what’s going on, and we can’t explain anything because we won’t know anything either. I need a lie down.

‘I’ve just thought of another potential problem,’ I said wondering whether this was due to over thinking, but it does make sense to bring it up anyway.

‘What’s that?’

‘Can we go anywhere anyway? Our other-selves would have interacted with other people, and if those people see us, they will talk to us about stuff that we don’t know about, creating some very confusion and awkward situations,’ I explained.

‘Going by that logic, we can’t go outside at any point,’ Amy said as if she wasn’t at all happy with my statement.

‘I know, right,’ was all that I could say to that.

‘So what do we do?’ Amy asked.

‘I have no idea how to get out of this one. We just have to take it one step at a time and let it lead us to a, hopefully, simple way out.’

TO BE CONTINUED…

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)