SHIFT

Fuck. It happened again. I don’t even know what I lost, just that something else is missing. They call it “The Butterfly Effect,” but it’s more like a train getting derailed. Piece by piece. In slow motion.

I rifled through the back of my mind, making sure that the valuables were still there. My dad putting me up on his shoulders at Mardi Gras. The colorful plastic beads transformed by the light of my memory into emeralds, rubies, and topaz. Excited breath hanging in the cold air like our spirits exiting our bodies to take part in the parade. A horizon of ash waiting for us all on the other side of the celebration.

When Paw-paw died. Seeing the familiar face in the box. A face once filled with the strength of love, now nothing more than a paper-thin mask for death, wrinkled like a rag that has had the last of the water squeezed from it.

The pomp and circumstance of graduation and sweet friendships long ago melted away by the force of time’s waters, the very force that my mind now struggled with fruitlessly. I don’t remember what I forgot, but there’s still a space for it. Like an empty eyeglass case or a dust-free rectangle on a wall. Like a dead man’s suit.

What the hell were we thinking? Dr. Patel tried to tell us. He tried to save us, and what did he get for his trouble? He was locked away. The voice of reason is always locked away when we stand poised to violate a boundary. We call it “discovery.” We call ourselves “pioneers.” The horrors we visited remain unnamed only because our victims did not know how to speak.

Maybe it was all meant to happen. Who can authorize an action that will affect everybody? If an action changes everything, does it change anything at all?

If the event didn’t happen, then neither did all of the efforts to record the event. Pictures disappear, untaken. Letters disappear, unwritten. Every pin that our silver ball has bounced off of disappears and so do we – straight down the hole.

We couldn’t believe how simple it was. Not obvious, far from it, but simple enough to be dangerous. We realized that Patel was right. Time travel cannot be used judiciously, so it shouldn’t be used at all. There was only one trip that should ever be taken. We had discovered it by accident, so I was elected to go back and interfere with the moment of discovery. Which I did.

I can feel the shift. As I write this every trace of… 

This is curious. I’ve scribbled a story onto my laboratory notebook. I don’t remember doing so. No wonder. It’s quite forgettable. The old time travel canard.