Fiction Fragment Friday
I love seriously complicated time travel stories. The kind of story where you think you have everything figured out only to get to the end and start drawing new lines in your head rethinking everything you thought you knew. I’ve never actually written that kind of time travel story. Mine are usually very lite a bit more straightforward. Until now.
Mission Log Entry #1 October 10th, 2024, 12:01pm local time.
My arrival in St. Louis in 2024 at 9:34am Central Standard Time did not go as expected. According to mission parameters, I was to arrive at Temporal Observation Outpost 43 for resupply and data syncing. TOO43 is an unmanned facility with little more than a bed, anchor point for arrival, storage closet, and an AI powered computer system. It is more of a rest stop in time than anything else. The AI, who likes to be called Martin, monitors the local internet and news sources cataloging events as they occur to compare with official records. Despite the increase in data available after the inception of the digital age, it is actually harder to determine the truth of how events occurred. There is information overload and the further you get from the event, the harder it is to determine the reliability of the data. These type outposts are extremely important, but I did not arrive at TOO43.
The world came into focus with the excruciating headache that accompanies an arrival at a point without a temporal anchor. Instead of landing solidly on my feet, I came out disoriented in an alley. I’m pretty sure it was urine I slipped on, causing me to fall against a wall, hurting my shoulder. It is still throbbing in pain an hour later. I’ve determined that I arrived in the right city at the right time, but there is no signal coming from TOO43. I’m writing up this log in a fast-food dining room that is shockingly empty even though it is noon. Everyone seems to use the drive through. Hopefully, I can reach the outpost before nighttime and get some answers.
Mission Log Entry #2 October 10th, 2024, 5:45pm local time.
I’m trying to stay focused and keep my emotions out of these logs, but I’m panicking. The outpost doesn’t exist. It is not just offline; the location is an empty lot. Without it, I don’t have easy access to the local internet or a communications relay back home. I’m truly and completely on my own. Thankfully, I have era appropriate false identification and currency. I discovered at the fast-food place that my debit card doesn’t work. I can only assume without Marvin here to keep the account active; it was closed at some point. Unfortunately, there are few places that will rent me a room for the night without a card on file for incidentals. After a half hour of panic, I reminded myself that my training covered this exact scenario. I have options.
I could return home now, but that would be a poor choice. I need to know why the outpost is no longer here and I don’t have that information yet. In addition, I’m noticing more and more things that just don’t seem quite like I remember them for this era. There are anomalies and I need to document them and determine if there has been a paradox when it occurred. For that I need the internet. I still have time to find a library, so that is my next step.
Mission Log Entry #3 October 10th, 2024, 9:01pm local time.
This is bad. This is exceedingly bad. I haven’t found the point of variance, but the world is wrong. The cultural changes, including fast-food restaurants being so empty inside, seem to have come from a global pandemic that lasted multiple years. That never happened in my timeline. I can only imagine the implications of a generation who had their life put on hold and every social interaction moved online. At first, I thought this was the divergence, but it is worse than that.
While reading about this pandemic, I noticed that there was no mention of it spreading to the moon colony. I hoped it would escape unscathed, but soon discovered that it didn’t exist. That’s right, in this timeline there is no moon colony. In fact, there is only one space station in orbit. The entire space program is over twenty years behind schedule and much of it is now being run out of the private sector. I can’t fathom what could have caused this, but without the moon colony, they haven’t found the crashed alien ship. Without that, they haven’t reverse engineered any of its technology. It has given me a theory about why TOO43 is gone.
Mission Log Entry #4 January 13th, 2150, 1:03pm local time.
My worst fear was reality. I jumped home only to find that my home doesn’t exist. Whatever has changed in the past, my future is gone. The Temporal Observation Commission doesn’t exist in this timeline, so they never set up outposts. I arrived in 2150 to find the world in ruins. At some point in the last hundred and twenty-five years, a third world war turned nuclear. My society never formed and Temporal Historians don’t exist. I am a walking paradox that shouldn’t even exist, but I do. That means I can still fix things. Unfortunately, I will only have one chance to do it.
My Temporal Insertion Chronometer only has enough power for four jumps. That isn’t normally a problem because every outpost has the equipment necessary to charge them. Now there is nowhere in time that equipment exists. I should have spent more time in 2024 studying the new timeline, but I got too impatient to come home for help. Now I only have charge enough for one last jump. I only have one chance and I’m not sure where or when to go. This time doesn’t even have the resources to do further research. I and by extension my timeline is screwed.
Mission Log Entry #5 December 13th, 1985, 3:25pm local time.
I arrived in Titusville, Florida this morning. I’ve given myself over a month to fix the furthest back variance I could identify. The space program was drastically impacted by a space shuttle explosion destroying the country’s faith in NASA. In my timeline, they discovered a fault and addressed it prior to launch. That doesn’t happen anymore and unless I can fix that Space Shuttle Challenger will explode on live tv. The only problem is that I don’t know how to stop it.
Mission Log Entry #6 December 20th, 1985, 8:12pm local time.
I didn’t screw up. My barely operating TIC detected a temporal insertion today. I’m in the right place at the right time to correct the change. Someone is here actively working against me to sabotage humanity’s progress. I can’t figure out what they hope to gain, but now I finally have a lead. For the first time in weeks, I have hope again. I just need to figure out who they are and how they are going to do it.
Mission Log Entry #7 January 10th, 1986, 2:12pm local time.
I did it. I tracked down the operative and followed them back to their local base. The base is an observation outpost, but not like one of ours. I recognize the technology filling their outpost and the language on the screens even though I can’t read it. The operative may look human, but the observation post belongs to the alien species that crashed on the moon. They must have come back in time to stop humanity from finding and reverse engineering their technology. Stopping him is going to be exceedingly difficult, but I bought a pistol this morning.
I didn’t just get information from the outpost. My TIC may not be completely compatible with their technology, but it runs on the same type of power. I’m fully recharged and have another four jumps if I need them. I also was able to sync some of their files. They are in a language I can’t read, but the TIC has built in translation functions. The alien language is not one programed into it, but eventually it will create a translation.
Mission Log Entry #8 January 20th, 1986, 9:12pm local time.
I’m a murderer and somehow, I’m going to have to live with that. Options were running thin, so out of desperation I took a more direct approach. As the saboteur returned to his outpost, this evening I met him on the street and confronted him. I pulled my pistol on him, hoping I could threaten him into giving me more information. He reached into his pocket and before I realized what I was doing; I had pulled my trigger multiple times. His dead eyes stared at me accusingly while his body bled out onto the street. I’m not sure what this device he pulled from his pocket was, but it wasn’t a weapon. My goal was to save my timeline, but now I can’t get the image of what I have done out of my head.
Mission Log Entry #9 January 28th, 1986, 11:40am local time.
Challenge exploded. I have failed and I don’t know why.
Mission Log Entry #10 February 10th, 1986. 4:25pm local time
I finally came out of my drunken stupor long enough to check the alerts on my TIC. The translation program completed, and it turns out the files I grabbed were his mission logs. The man whose face haunts my dreams. The man I killed. It turns out was here to ensure that NASA found the flaw. He was here to save Challenger and by killing him; I created this nightmare timeline. I created a grandfather paradox that broke the causal loop paradox needed to create my timeline. My head hurts trying to grasp the concept, and my hangover is not helping that.
To further complicate things, the ship on the moon and the man I killed are not extraterrestrial after all. They came from a thousand years further down the timeline to prevent the third world war and kick start humanities advancement so we would be ready for a real alien invasion that happens in their time. Not only have I murdered a hero, but I have also wiped out my timeline and ensured that humanity will get exterminated in a thousand years. There is not enough alcohol in the world to make me accept this.
Mission Log Entry #10 January 19th, 1986. 12:01pm local time.
Well, I just shot myself in the head. It was the only way I could think to fix what I had done. I’ve lost track of what kind of paradox I’m now in the middle of. I can feel myself fading out of existence, though, so I guess I won’t have to worry much longer. I just wanted to finish up this last log entry and set it to sync up to the local outpost so someone smarter than me can figure out what all of this means.
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