The Christmas Rewind - Short Story written by A.C.
(Art by Phil)
The Christmas Rewind
The device rumbled in his hand as it emitted a high pitch screech. It was a warning that couldn’t be ignored.
“It’s over,” the man said softly.
He spoke to no one. There was no one to speak to, hadn’t been for… how long? He pressed his palm against his forehead, trying to ward off the migraine headache that he knew was coming. The human brain was designed to exist within one timeline, yet the man had traveled to more than he could count. But it had been a finite trip, as the screeching device reminded him. Panic threatened to overcome him, but he searched for one of his mantras. They calmed him and kept him focused, something that became more important the further into the future he traveled.
“Was it worth it?” he asked himself.
That was the question. It was the only question. He’d left his family to travel forward through time. It was an unthinkable sacrifice. They never knew why he’d gone. He was there one day, and the next morning, he was gone. Christmas morning, 1992. His three children woke up without a father. Joe was the oldest, he was thirteen, and he took his role as big brother seriously. He fretted over his little brother and little sister, often sharing his concerns with his parents when they were alone.
“I don’t think Paulie is getting enough exercise,” Joe had said once. “Can I take him to the park after school tomorrow?”
Most thirteen year olds cared only about themselves and their social status and getting the attention of the opposite sex at school. But not Joe.
Next was Melissa, who had been ten. Having a daughter changed so much. She commanded attention wherever she went, never missing an opportunity to show off something she learned in gymnastics class. She went out of her way to say nice things to everyone she met, leaving most who encountered her feeling better than they had before.
And then there was Paulie. He had been six in 1992, and the man’s heart had grown three sizes when the boy was born. There were no words that captured Paulie. He was joy and he was love. And he was sick, and he was dying. And there was no cure.
The three of them went to bed on December 24th, 1992 with a loving father, and woke up on December 25th, 1992 abandoned. The year was now… what was it? The man shook the device, awakening it to read its display. The readout was dim, the device down to its final few minutes of operation. It was day 11, Novem-Tri-Arth, 3075. Time wasn’t measured the same this far into the future, but by the man’s best estimation it was something like November 27th in the year 3075. His two sons and his daughter were long dead, if they’d even existed at all in this timeline. The thought should’ve shattered him, but his insides were already ground to dust, shattered a million times across a million different timelines. The things he’d witnessed, and experienced, and felt, it was too much. Fifty lifetimes’ worth of tragedy and horror, not to mention the splinter timelines he’d come to refer to only as the gnashing. They were indescribable, terror and horror beyond what he could’ve ever imagined possible. Somehow humanity had made the impossible happen. He’d burned up a lot of resources escaping those timelines. Precious resources, but it had been a necessary evil.
Was it worth it? He sighed heavily as the thought rang loud in his mind. Not everything had been bad, but he’d shielded himself from the good times. He viewed himself as unworthy of them. A man who abandons his family, no matter his reason, was not deserving of basking in humanity’s great triumphs across the futures. But he’d seen great things, and met wonderful people. It didn’t all turn out badly. Not always, at least.
The device screeched and rumbled again, this time louder. The man punched in his code, opening up the root systems of the device. He watched with reverence as it displayed the things he’d gathered throughout his journey through time. Breakthroughs. Warnings. Solutions. And he smiled as he saw one category of data scroll by on the screen. Cures.
A familiar electric shock began coursing through his arm, emanating from the device. But this was no jump forward like he’d experienced so many times before. This was the end. The men at the lab had jokingly referred to it as the rewind. What goes up, must come down, one had said. And thusly, what goes forward, must fall back. Falling back over two thousand years. No net, no control, no chance of survival. He’d known the deal, had agreed to it with no regrets.
The device buzzed four times, then activated. The man clicked the button, putting it into transmission mode. As he fell back through all time, the device would sync up with the lab in 1992 and any future labs they’d brought online to catch the data as it passed by in the time stream. The technology was all theoretical when he’d left, but the hope was that it would be able to catch enough of the data to make world altering changes before it was too late.
A cloud of electricity enveloped him, and his being began to reduce to atoms. It hurt more than the other jumps had, but he’d expected as much. As far as deaths went, at least his would be unique.
Existence began to reverse, and he felt himself ripped backwards. Decades went by in milli-seconds, and he felt himself fading to nothingness. But something the scientists had told him kept him there, kept him conscious for another moment. They said that before the end, before he fully ceased to be, he’d be able to see all of time as he rewound through it. And so, he kept his eyes open wide, focusing every bit of his mind and spirit on one thing and one thing only. He saw something he recognized from 2882, then 2411, then 2301.
Come on, he thought. Just a little longer.
And then, like a miracle from God, there it was. December 25th, 1992, inside a little house on Mandolin Drive. Three precious children were bounding down the stairs, knowing that there would be presents waiting for them under the tree, not yet aware of the absence of their father. Little Paulie in the lead, a huge smile on his pudgy face, followed closely by Melissa, who was taking the stairs two at a time. Big brother Joe was behind them, warning them to be careful, always looking out for them, even on Christmas morning. It was perfection.
All faded to black, and as the man ceased to be he had one final thought.
Worth it.
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