The Watch – Part 113:

That moment when you have no clue as to what to do next. When you have no clue how the story’s going to move on. There is a simple solution, but one that is deciding to stay hidden, maybe until the time is right, or until we’ve found it. Who knows? Amy and I can discuss this and piece together a plan that may get us somewhere, or nowhere, or may accidentally lead us all the way to the finish. Who Knows? Whatever we do, how much we try and organise our thoughts in our head, the more everything starts to unravel and more problems start to present themselves.

‘It looks like we’re stuck to literally making it up as we go along,’ I said, putting emphasis on the ‘literally’ part.

‘It looks like it, doesn’t it?’ Amy said through a large sigh. She was as stuck as I was.

‘Well, when I say make it up as I go along, I mean, at least we know the end goal.’

‘What’s that?’ Amy asked, curiously.

‘To sort out this problem,’ I said with a small hint of it being a question because I wasn’t quite sure what she was thinking.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said, ‘of course it is,’ and she ended that sentence with rubbing her eyes. ‘Sorry, all this confusion and thinking has made me tired.’ As soon as she said that, I came over tired and exhausted as well. We’re still motivated to tackle this difficult case, but it is taking its toll. We both will need a lie down at the end of this.

‘I think we should try and find the other us, you know?’ Amy said after a long silence. ‘Just so that we can get some idea of the situation.’

‘I don’t think that’s the best idea, to be honest,’ I said before explaining why. ‘We don’t want to make things even more complicated. We’re going to have to explain it all to them.’

‘They will understand. They’re us,’ Amy said bluntly.

‘I know, but I just feel as if we shouldn’t interact with anyone.’

‘So what’s our end goal, then. We want to get out of this problem, yes, but what do we actually want to achieve? I have never been this clueless before. Secretly, I want all of this to sort itself out, but I know that’s not going to happen, so I should stop hoping and just get on tackling the problem.

‘OK,’ I said, ‘so there is another us out there in this world, which means if we try and do anything, we may or will end up making this more confusing.’ I’m not helping by repeating what we both already know, but I think I have a reason for doing that. ‘What we want is for only us in this world.’ Again, that’s rather obvious. Then an idea just popped into my head. I said it aloud before reviewing it just in case I dismissed it, ‘what if we left and went to somewhere else.’

‘You mean, to another Parallel universe?’ Amy knew what I meant. ‘But aren’t every parallel universe different in some way or another?’ she asked rhetorically because I already knew the answer, but I answered it anyway.

‘Yes, they are,’ and that’s when I picked up what she meant, ‘you’re worried that something important will change.’

‘A bit,’ she said, not liking my idea that much.

‘I can pick which universe to go to where the difference is very minute. I can guarantee that you wouldn’t be able to spot the difference.’ Then I saw in her eyes that she had put two pieces together.

‘A parallel universe where we aren’t there, but our parents would know who we are.’ Her dislike of the idea grew even more. ‘I don’t think I’ll be comfortable, you know. I mean, I would always know. I mean, I know that we’re sitting in a newly created parallel universe, but that’s because we changed time, which means my parents are still the same parents. If we deliberately went to another universe altogether, I would always know that they aren’t… Well, my parents, if you know what I mean.’ Yeah, actually, it does sound like a bad idea.

‘Sorry,’ I admitted.

‘No need to apologise. Any idea sounds like a good idea when stuck in this situation,’ she reasoned. I nodded my head in agreement. Amy sighed again, this time with a small hint of anger in her voice. We went silent as we both thought some more. We’re both smart. We’re both clued up on time travel and how it works, so I don’t understand why we’re both stuck with this. Well, as I said before, we’re stuck in an open loop. Most time travel paradoxes involve a circle, not this. There is no end in sight, to be exact.

It was my turn to rub my eyes out of exhaustion. There’s so much to think about all at once, and no matter what idea we come up with, it’s instantly dismissed because it’s either going to make things more complicated or just won’t work, or we simply don’t like it altogether. There has to be another way. We can’t give up now. Who said anything about giving up. No, why am I even going down this route. I’ve automatically tangent off into something irrelevant. I guess it’s easy to do when faced with a difficult problem.

What if we aren’t actually out there at all? What if we are the only us in this world? I said this to Amy and she asked, ‘what do you mean, logically there should be another us out there, because we changed time.’

‘Yeah, but…’ it all makes sense, actually. I don’t understand why I didn’t put the pieces together before; almost making us being confused for ages redundant. ‘We went back in time, and we changed the past.’

‘Yeah,’ Amy knows that part.

‘And so the moment we changed time, we were standing in another universe… a universe where we went back in time to defuse the bomb, and so…’ Amy cut me off to finish enthusiastically.

‘And so we’re standing in that timeline’s future instead of the other…’ her shoulders slumped, ‘that does defy logic, though.’

Then the front door opened. We both turned our heads and waited for someone to enter the living room. And we did.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)