A Stitch in Time

[WP] You’ve gone back in time and killed many of the worst people in history as children, making a better world. When you returned to your original time, however, you see that you are now seen as “a time-traveling lunatic who murdered a lot of innocent children” and are now wanted by the law.

*****

You remember everything.

The world is not the way you left it. You spend six years adjusting to the differences. This part of your hometown should be green glass and neon signs, but instead, it is white concrete halls and overgrown gardens. The folks are far more welcoming to strangers, which turns out to be beneficial, but there is less talk between neighbors. It is a deafeningly quiet and lonely city.

You don't exist here, and neither do your parents nor your little brother. Sera, the only remaining person from your personal life, is two years older than she should be and went into agriculture instead of biochemistry. So you move into that empty villa at the edge of town that has remained unchanged throughout fourteen timelines and get to work your life's work once again.

It is all you have now.

Blueprints in your memory. Vivid, dutiful plans in your dreams. Simulations run over centuries in order to pinpoint the ideal outcome of the world. All you have is your responsibility, of course, and time.

.

"Wow." There is a man at the foot of your bed. He's wearing a blue puffer jacket and jeans. Real casual for somebody who just broke into your home.

You rise slowly, warily. This is wholly unexpected, even considering this timeline is fundamentally different from your first. "Who are you?"

The man studies you just the same way you are studying him right now. He's young, mid-twenties, buzz-cut and deliberate in his movement. He keeps his distance and his tone is equally wary. "You're the time traveler," he says, "I almost can't believe it."

"Oh, I know you," you say, pushing your sheets aside. He steps back. Somebody appears behind him, in the doorway, a woman wearing a gray coat. It's Christine Li. The man, "Amnon Sicher."

They were your underclassmen before you dropped out.

Li holds a gun. So guns look the same as they ever have. Guess this timeline has looser laws.

"So you know my name." Sicher nods. "That's... Wow. What else do you know? Do you know that you've been wanted since at least 1860?"

"Wanted?" You eye Li's gun. "Are you going to shoot me with that thing?"

She looks alarmed and says, "Uh, sorry, it's just here just in case." Her eyes flit back and forth between you and Sicher. She adds, "We were both educated on the proper safety procedures to handle it."

Sicher clears his throat and shoots a look at Li. She shrugs. Turning back to you, he asks, "What's your name?"

"My name?"

"Come on." Is that impatience in his voice? "You know me, but I don't know you. Did you erase yourself somehow? Were you a professor? A researcher?"

"What is this?" You get up. They both immediately tense up and take a step back. You slow your movement. "What's going on? Are you here to arrest me?"

Sicher and Li look at one another. Li's eyebrows knit together. She shakes her head. He glances back at you, and after a moment, says, "We're not actually supposed to be here."

"We were actively banned from coming here," Li specifies.

"But look, man, finding you has been my dream since I was nine. I thought our work was enough to afford us a... chat, with you."

"This was a terribly reckless idea," Li mutters. She looks at you. "But you're not just some psycho serial killer, are you? You're a..."

"A scholar, like us," Sicher says.

You take in the two of them. Scholar, he said.

Scholars of you. Your identity hasn't been erased—your legacy is historical and true. You never thought you cared about that before, but hearing it from these students, knowing that it's real, is beyond anything you ever dreamed of.

Your life's work.

"I can't believe it," You say, because what else is there to say?

Thankfully, Sicher does the talking for you. "I never really believed that you were just some cold-blooded murderer like the stories made you out to be."

"There are stories," you whisper.

Li smiles. "Movies and television shows," she adds.

Sicher grins. "Yeah. They always paint you as some insane, omnipotent villain. But Christy and I figured, why go through the effort of realizing time travel to go on a crazy child-murdering spree? I mean, you can do that sort of thing in the comfort of your own timeline, right? But I realized there are so many more reasons to do something as drastic as that."

You shake your head in awe. They understand.

"Yes," he continues, "I understand that you sought to design the perfect world."

You pause.

"Centuries of simulations, right?"

Li shakes her head too. "And they want to destroy your time machine. All that work. It doesn't seem right."

"Hold on. It was never about... designing the world, as you put it," you say, "It was... preventing criminals. Mass murderers. Dictators and terrorists."

Sicher looks at you strangely. "You mean, people who become criminals in less fortunate timelines," he corrects. "And who decides who's a criminal?"

"You... you don't understand me," you say. "You grew up in a timeline where these catastrophes never happened. If you had seen the way the world was, you would have known these as universal evils, and that the world would be better off had it never happened."

"We're talking about the same thing," he says, sounding only a bit annoyed, as though it's just a matter of semantics. "I get it, I do."

You catch yourself breathing heavily. You look out the window and nothing looks familiar. The birds' song, the bugs chirping, even the way the wind blows in hastily are foreign to you. You close your eyes and for a split second, you think about Sera.

In your basement lies the machine that you and Sera designed. She figured out the final key, the impossible answer, but not before she was gone.

The thing about terminal and hereditary diseases is that it is always there, in every timeline where the patient exists. You cannot change the illness without changing the person. She taught you everything—your ambition, your responsibility, and then she was gone before you could prove it to her.

Is it your responsibility, now, to let your work be destroyed?

You open your eyes. "When are they coming?"

"Who?"

"The people that will take care of my machine."

"They aren't," Sicher says this. He laughs, sheepish all of a sudden. "Sorry. I couldn't help it. It was really intuitive to operate."

Your blood runs cold. "What did you do?"

"I told him not to do it," Li mutters.

"I went back in time and told every agent coming over here that I'd remove their bloodline if they did."

He grins up at you like a freshman looking to his sophomore mentor for approval.

"We have all the time in the world to talk, doctor."

*****

THE END