“This is real life! There’s no control Z for you to press!” Right when she said that, I clicked the invisible buttons and went back once again. My eyes refocused. I was sitting at my home desk, 14 months ago. Good. I looked down at my belt, where the readout now registered 561 in block letters. The pink tile of that last room, and her ubiquitous argument, faded away.
I opened a new web browser tab and verified the handful of new potential leads that I could remember from memory, since the last time I’d let everything play out that far. I tried not to think about the sad truth that I was probably running out of qualified people to contact ahead of time. I saved bookmarks and made a few notes in an open document editor window. I reached over to my right, clicking in midair to make a new save point. My belt display reset to a shiny 1. I briefly panicked, feeling untethered. How many times have I done this? I clicked the Info button for the text document, using my physical keyboard. Good lord: Document created 18 minutes ago. 14012 pages.
I sat back, realizing that the computer in front of me had not gathered any new dust in more than ten years, theoretically. The belt kept track of total wallclock time, but that had grown too depressing to verify particularly often. You would think that a mind brilliant enough to build a device able to harness small fluctuations in local spacetime probabilities, let alone maintain bridges between them, would be able to come up with a better use for the thing. I tried to think bigger, for surely some worldwide cataclysm or another had been going on in the background? Once again, an impossible request. Screw it, maybe I should start tracking stock prices? We could live more comfortably in the days ahead. I sighed and rose from my chair.
I went to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water, which usually helped to ground me again in the moment. The first sip continued to be too cold. The ice machine dropped new cubes with a flourish. Four seconds late. I made a note. I had carried a small paper notebook everywhere since engineering school, not that you could take anything back with you. Only the memories.
The cat rubbed my left calf and meowed twice, on schedule. That made the most cosmic sense. It was 4:27am. I walked to the bedroom doorway and steadied myself with my left hand against the doorframe. She was fast asleep, as always, breathing softly under two blankets and our other two cats. I bit my lip. It might be nice to try to savor this moment for a change.
The chain of events played out in my head, a loop of dozens of past experiences. I let my water glass slip from my grasp, to shatter on the floor 46% of the time. I crumple into the puddle inconsolably weeping at full volume. She wakens in a panic, of course, with no idea what has happened to me, thereby freaking her out. What has that ever accomplished or improved?
The moment passed. I drained my water glass and set it down on my dresser. If I actually slept for once, maybe I’d think of something new tomorrow morning? I glanced at the calendar on the wall, and I found myself strangely emboldened by a new enthusiasm.
I still had nine days until her diagnosis.
Reddit WritingPrompt [WP] “This is real life! There’s no control Z for you to press!” Right when she said that, I clicked the invisible buttons and went back once again. I am convinced this is why we don’t see any widespread adoption of time travel technology. Anyone who tries, just gets stuck in their own loop. Reminder: a work of fiction.