The Watch – Part 161:

As expected, the news of the four meteorites and my pushing them out of the way circumnavigated the globe faster than I ever thought possible. In less than an hour, every major news network was focusing solely on nothing except the meteorites and how they suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Experts dropped everything they were working on to jump on TV to talk about how this phenomenon shouldn’t have happened.

They explained that there were thousands of scientists across the globe monitoring the skies twenty-four-seven, yet this still happened. They then went on to say that if it weren’t for this strange man, who appeared out of nowhere as sudden as the meteorites did, we would have been as extinct as the dinosaurs. Computer simulations were created to express just how big of an impact the four of them would have caused if they successfully hit us:

‘It wouldn’t have been a gradual process as it was back when the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs, no this would have been instant,’ a scientist was saying a little bit too enthusiastically for his own good. ‘We have enough technology, enough knowledge of what to do if we were ever confronted with a similar situation, but nothing can prepare us for what happened earlier today. If it weren’t for that person, we would have been as dead as a Dodo.’

‘He can fly!’ another scientist exclaimed excitedly. Why was everyone so excited? ‘We’ve seen the news report about him stopping that train a few days ago, that was his first appearance. We learned that he had super-speed, but then he goes and puts out a fire. We then learned that his immune to fire. Then he does something like this, and we learn that he can fly. Not only that, but to stop four huge…’ he put his hands up to give us a picture of what he was talking about, ‘meteorites in their tracks, must mean he has super-strength as well. My question is, what else is he hiding up his sleeve? Is he bullet proof? Can he turn invisible? What are the limits of his powers?’

‘I’m still scratching my head on how they successfully bypassed every known radar system we have in place to detect any meteorites that are either on a collision course for Earth or are going to pass close by,’ yet another scientist who was an expert on meteorites in genera said. ‘Sure, a few do go undetected, but those four, as big as they were, that’s what I just can’t get my head around.’

‘Who is this person? Where did he come from? How did he get is powers? I have so many questions that I want to ask,’ said a TV presenter who was standing outside in a field. He must have been covering or was about to cover something else before this one came around, otherwise I really cannot explain why she was standing in the middle of nowhere.

‘If you are listening,’ said a news anchor sitting inside a studio, ‘if you are out there, then on behalf of planet Earth, we thank you for what you did today.’

***

Night fell and Tom was standing in front of his front door, getting ready to fall through it.

‘All that throwing up as made me so tired,’ he said. ‘I don’t recommend travelling through the Void until you are sure that you won’t be affected,’ then he stepped through the doorway and fell onto his sofa, falling asleep in seconds.

‘Is he going to be alright?’ Amy asked worriedly.

‘Yeah, he’ll be fine,’ I said closing the door. ‘When he wakes up tomorrow morning, he’ll be right as rain.’ The night was fresh, but wasn’t cold and due to the meteorites burning through the atmosphere, the clouds had to reform, meaning we were able to see the stars as bright as ever above.

‘So, how does it feel to be a superhero?’ Amy asked.

‘Huh,’ I said.

‘Are you alright?’ Amy asked curiously, ‘you haven’t been with it all evening. Did you strain yourself or something?’

‘What?’ I said, snapping out of my train of thought, ‘no, it’s just… Nothing.’

‘Well, it has to be something; you don’t go vacant over nothing,’ Amy stated. She took hold of my hand and said, ‘you know you can tell me anything, don’t you?’ she said.

‘I know,’ I said. She didn’t say anything as she waited for me to continue. ‘This is probably going to sound really bad, but when I saved you from whatever took you, because I changed the past, that created another timeline, particularly a timeline where you aren’t taken, which means, in the original timeline, you are still captured and… Well, I’m not going to come and rescue you because I did. Does that make any sense to you?’ I asked.

‘I see,’ Amy said, straightening everything out in her own head so that she could contemplate it better. ‘And you are feeling as if you should have rescued us from whatever took us,’ she stated.

‘Which would mean you would have gone through whatever is happening now and I don’t really want you to go through that experience,’ I said, wondering if there was any part of that sentence that was coherent. ‘But if I do go back and rescue you/them, then they would be expecting me to take them back here, where they/you already are.’

‘I see,’ Amy said again.

‘I’m not making much sense am I?’

‘You don’t want us to have experienced whatever we did, or are experiencing right now, so you prevented that by going back in time,’ Amy said slowly to make sure she understood herself.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘But you also don’t want us to be wherever we are right now, thinking that you’re going to come find us and rescue us and carry on our lives as normal,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I agreed again.

‘OK,’ Amy said, sighing now that she understood. ‘What will happen if you do save us?’

‘You would probably be expecting me to take you back home, which is here, where you already are.’

‘That does make sense. That is what I would have expected to happen,’ she clarified. ‘So, what will happen if you do save them? I mean, what will you do if we are already here?’

‘I’m not sure. I haven’t figured that out yet,’ I admitted.

‘That sounds about right.’

‘The worst case scenario is that I don’t come back for you, though,’ I said, knowing that much.

‘So you are asking me whether it would be OK to go and save them because of the possibility of that worst case scenario, or… What?’

‘Well, how would you feel if I didn’t come back?’ I asked.

‘Technically, you will come back, because you’ll be rescuing me in that other universe, meaning I will be with you. The Amy in that Universe is identical to me except for the knowledge she’ll have about where she currently is and what is happening, so… I’ll know that you will come back, in a very technical, complicated way that probably bends the meaning of coming back so far it has shattered into a million pieces, but you’ll still come back to me.

‘But then what if you are going through an experience that is tormenting?’ I asked. ‘I mean, isn’t it better for you to not know what you went through rather than to know?’

‘Maybe,’ she admitted, ‘but, if I were her – and I am – I would have faith that you would come through those doors and save me. Having faith can overpower the torment. Knowing that you’re there will be a massive relief; we can carry on with our lives.’

‘So what do I do?’

‘Do what you were going to do in the first place: Save us. Be a superhero. And as for what to do when you have saved us, you’ll figure it out.’

‘Come here,’ I said, hugging Amy tightly

‘In a strange way, it would help me sleep at night knowing that we’re safe,’ she smiled. I smiled and squeezed her even tighter. ‘I don’t want you to treat this as a goodbye, OK, because we’re going to be seeing each other again. OK,’ she pressed.

‘OK.’

‘Good. I’ll explain everything to Tom. Do you think he’ll understand?’

‘He’ll understand,’ I said, knowing Tom.

We let go of each other and I entered the necessary commands into the watch. I was about to press the button to activate them when.

‘Oi,’ Amy said. I looked up at her. She stepped forward and kissed me. It was an intense, meaningful kiss that clearly meant that… Well, I didn’t know what she meant by it, considering we weren’t saying goodbye, so it wasn’t a kiss to keep me from forgetting. Instead, I just relished in the fact that I was kissing Amy.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)