Time Is All We Have, My Friend.

Reginald saw no change at all in the man sat across from him. He didn’t appear to have even moved. His old face was still creased with deep lines; his cheeks were redder than they used to be and what was left of his hair was just as grey as always. The damn fool had gone and gotten old. He hadn’t truly noticed until that moment. But then, when was the last time he had really looked at his friend? It never seemed necessary. He knew the twit's face well enough, having to deal with it every damn day for the past thirty years. No matter. He was looking now, and he saw nothing the slightest out of place.

“Well…?” He snapped.

“It worked…” Jasper mumbled, wide eyed, “Reg, we’ve done it! We’ve actually gone and done it this time!”

“What are you talking about, you daft prat! You didn’t go anywhere. I was watching the whole time! You didn’t move!”

“Maybe not from your frame of reference…but I’m telling you, Reg, I’ve been sat here for the last minute, itching to tell you. I had to be sure though, had to go through the motions, until I caught back up to the present.”

“I don’t believe you. What number prototype is this?” He said, gesturing to the crude box of circuits and wires on the table between them, “I lost count years ago. Still, I’d know if it had worked. I’d have seen it.”

Jasper just nodded smugly. Man of few words was his colleague, and it suited Reginald just fine. Spend enough time locked in a lab with the same man and you began to wish only for silence from anyone. Jasper tossed his pocket watch across the table. It landed face down, with the loud clack of metal on wood. Spinning to a stop, it proudly displayed the engraving Reginald had paid an arm and a leg to have scratched onto the back plate of the time piece. A kingly gift for the mans fiftieth. “Time is all we have, my friend” it had once read crisply. Now it was battered and scraped with use. With a huff, he reached out and flipped the old thing over, and there it was. A minute ahead. He even pulled out his own matching model to compare. He had set them both himself before the testing began. They had read the same time. He was sure of it. Reginald looked up to see the satisfied grin on Jasper’s weathered old face. He’d just time travelled a minute into the past, and he knew it. After so many years of perseverance, Reginald should have been overjoyed. They had finally cracked the fourth dimension. Instead, curiously, all he felt was a sinking in his stomach.

Glancing between the watch face and that of his friends, then back again, Reginald’s mouth worked, unable to produce a sound.

“I know!” Was all Jasper could say, still nodding.

“After all this time? After all of this…” Reginald whispered, looking around the room at all the government funded equipment lining the walls, “We’ve really done it? I guess I never actually believed-”

“So, where are you going to go, old boy!?” Jasper barked, as excited as a fresh pup. His smile so broad it made his face seem foreign.

Reginald looked down at his hands, still clutching the two watches. His wrinkled, veined and spotted hands. He was old, it was true. They both should have retired years ago. But no one else could have done what they had done, none understood what they did. It had taken a lifetime to wrap their own two heads around it. Now that they had succeeded, did age even matter anymore? Would it ever again?

“What are you on about?” He asked, realising he had mostly forgotten the question.

“It's late. The whole facility is closed up. We're alone. Before the powers that be come to claim our work as their own, we agreed to test it. Just us. Remember? I would take the risk and go first, since you’re a giant girl's blouse, and if it worked, you’d go for real. So... where...when are you going to go?”

“I-I don’t rightly know.” He admitted.

“Oh, come on! Don’t tell me you didn’t decide a decade ago!?”

“Of course!” Reginald snapped, sliding the mans watch back across the table to him. He caught it deftly. It was impressively done. The old fart must have been brimming with adrenaline. “But it's real now. That sheds a different light on things. I’ve thought so long and hard about what this could be used for, I’ve come full circle a dozen times.”

“Lets make it simple then,” Jasper said, tucking his watch into the inside pocket of his jacket, “Future or past?”

“Can you imagine me in the future?” Reginald laughed, “We might be leaders in our field, my friend, but I still need my son to show me how these damned phones work these days, and I barely understand a word my grandson spouts!”

“Agreed, past it is then.” The other man said, rubbing his chin and looking to the ceiling, “Hitler?”

“Perhaps we should aim a little smaller than changing the entire course of human history on day one? Who knows what effects something like that could have…although maybe none, if you remember my theory.”

“That it would have just been someone else anyway?” Jasper asked.

“Well if you look at the state of Europe at that time, it was a powder keg!” Reginald began to argue.

“Yes, yes, I know.” His friend said, waving away the debate for another time, “You’re right, you should just observe. Like we talked about. No changes that could end with us anywhere but here, now. That’d be some feedback loop, sending you back, resulting in it impossible to send you back? That’d melt a few brains hey, old boy!”

“Yes, quite right.” Reginald said, pushing his glasses up his nose. Suddenly nervous.

“How about satisfying that little boy in you? Dinosaurs?” Jasper suggested.

“Tempting…but I’m not much for running anymore. Wouldn’t want to get eaten…” Reginald smiled, attempting to appear lighthearted about the idea. He stood up, grimacing at the ache in his ankles and the twinge in his back. Their funding hadn’t exactly stretched to comfortable chairs and if sitting was so arduous, hiding from gigantic reptiles in a tropical forest was most certainly out of the question. He tottered stiffly along the rows of equipment, tracing his finger along the polished tabletops.

“Look at all this,” he said, “all the tool’s we basically invented, in order to create that thing. If we were able to share even one of them, we would be heralded as visionaries. Ever regret taking their money? Agreeing to their terms?”

“Reg, stop procrastinating. We don’t have all night! They’ll find out soon enough. Then the chance will be gone, and it’ll be someone else taking the first steps on this proverbial moon.”

They both paused for the barest second and then simultaneously roared with laughter. Reginald slapped the stupid sod rather too hard on the shoulder and wiped the tears from his eyes, chuckling away as his mirth wound down.

“Just to be clear,” He wheezed, “anyone knocks on that door…who ever is closest hits the button and jumps back to the beginning of this conversation, then speeds us along. Deal?”

“Yeah, alright, Reg.” Jasper said, rubbing his own eyes dry, “Sorry. its late. I’m not a half-wit, I promise.”

“Bah! You’ve always been a pleb!” Reginald laughed, patting the man a couple more times on the shoulder.

They both thought in silence for a few minutes. It wasn't uncommon in their field to spend time exploring their own thoughts before lending them voice. Reginald was the first to speak up, his voice soft and conspiratorial.

“What about the other plan?” He ventured.

Jasper sighed and leaned back in his chair, placing both of his hands on the back of his head and stretching out his elbows.

“We never really entertained it before.” He said, evading the question.

“We should consider it now though, right? Now that its possible?”

“Well, I can confirm that when you go back, you’ll enter your own body of the time. I appeared right here, behind the same eyes, just as I was the previous minute. Except with knowledge of the sixty seconds to come. I knew everything you said, everything that happened, because I had already lived it. So that rules out any kind of ‘meeting yourself’ paradox.”

“So I could do it. Take the knowledge of this final product back to the younger versions of us? The poor sods who worked out of your aunts damp garage those first few years. I could save us thirty years of labour, simply returning with the solution?” Reginald asked.

“Wouldn’t that mean all of that work never happened though? So how could you return with a solution that had never been developed? Except that it would still exist, just without the work having been done? Isn’t that an issue?” Jasper asked.

Reginald slapped an open palm to his forehead and swore in the only way his wife had ever allowed.

“Biscuits!” He gasped, “Madeline. I met her while we were spending all that time at your aunts place. She and Maddie’s mother, they were friends. If I change this, none of that will happen. I’d never meet her. I can’t have that.”

“You could wait? Until after you meet? Reveal it then?”

“No. It wouldn’t work. What would she see in me now? I’m an old man! She was so full of life back then, so adventurous and bright. And I…I was so hell bent on my dreams, so passionate…”

“You’ll be in your old body you dolt!” Jasper laughed, “She’ll still see you as you were!”

“Will she?” Reginald snapped, “I don’t think so. Maybe in my face. My body. But I’m so different now. She will see it. She always saw it…always saw me.”

“I miss her too.”

“Its tempting though, ain’t it?” Reginald smiled, “She was a firecracker, no doubt about that. Or hey! What about Samantha. She admitted not so long ago she always had a crush on me back then. Maybe I could, you know, make that happen a little different? Before I ever meet Maddie?”

“Reg! You’re a dog!” Jasper cackled, “You’ve got my mind running now! All those missed chances…”

“Ah, to correct all the dumb things we moron’s did! Spare ourselves these thirty something years of struggle! Wouldn’t it be something!?”

“Sure would, Reg. Sure would. It wasn’t all bad though. Most of it, for sure. The lifetime of poverty and stress, chasing a dream straight out of a science fiction novel. Most people still think we are crazy, you know? But it wasn’t all bad. Not all of it.”

“No. Not all of it, old friend. Not at all.”

Silence reigned again and Reginald dumped himself back down into his chair. It had started as a gentle lowering, and ended with the uncontrolled drop of a man who should have been in bed hours ago.

“So,” Jasper said, hand back on his chin, muffling his words, “Dinosaurs are out, Hitler can live his sordid life. We commit to doing the work, for Maddie. What else is there? Maybe you go small, just drop in, grab a newspaper and come back?”

“Newspapers can be forged. Preserved. Its no kind of proof. Always thought that was stupid.” Reginald yawned.

“Well, whatever! Make it Napoleon's hat for all I care! Just do a quick fly-by. No harm, no foul.”

“That’s what I think I’m coming to,” Reginald said, “I don’t think there’s any action I could take that wouldn’t cause harm. Future or past. I know you’ve thought on it as much as I have, Jasper.”

“A damn sight more, I should imagine.” He scowled.

“Can we really hand over something as powerful as this to our government benefactors? Will they sit around a table and talk like we are now, or will they just hit go and send some meat head with a machine gun leaping headfirst into disaster?”

“I think we both know that answer to that one,” Jasper said, rolling his eyes, “What are you saying here, Reg?”

“I’m saying I’ve had a good life. I’m an old man and I’ve certainly made my share of mistakes. But I own my past. I treasure it. I wouldn’t give it up. Not a second with Maddie. Not my children or my grand babies. Not a minute of the time I’ve spent with you on this project. You damn fool. Would we really rewrite all that we’ve become? Because make no mistake, any single butterfly would do it!”

“You’re a sentimental jackass,” Jasper said, shaking his head, “But damn it if you aren’t right.”

“So what do we do then?” Reginald asked, lost for the answer himself. His mind foggy and wanting little more than his pillow.

“We do this.” Jasper said, leaning forward. The old man wobbled, putting all his slight weight on one hand against the table. With the other, he grasped a fistful of wires and half a circuit board and yanked hard, turning all their hard work into a mess of nothing.

“Alas, prototype number seven-hundred-and-forty-two is another failure. I do keep count.” He smiled, “So, back to it tomorrow? We’ll need to begin designs for the next one.”

“Yeah, alright, old friend. We’ll start again tomorrow.” Reginald nodded, the relief washing over him and suddenly making him exhausted.

They both stood slowly, fighting their own aches and pains, then wandered side by side toward the doors they had entered together every morning of their adult lives. Reginald slapped a hand to the old dolt's shoulder, nodded his goodbye, and they both moved apart, heading home through the night.