Cronus

“There was a time when all actions were final: people made decisions, faced consequences, and lived with regrets. Most people were unhappy due to the inexistence of second chances…”

The handsome host on the screen continued speaking as Cronus watched from his couch with a bag of Salties in his hand. His room was in darkness and disarray, clothes and dishes scattered about only visible under spontaneous flashes of light from the television. Colors from the screen tinted the blue of his eyes, the brown of his hair, and gave life to the paleness of his wrinkled skin. He used to have a wife and children, a better home, a better life, but someone had changed something and it had all disappeared. Of course, Cronus did not actually know of that fact, he simply felt a lingering emptiness in the depths of his mind.

“Two women—Tia Isle and Mari Ethos—changed our perspective of time with the development of the Time Modifier. This machine could teleport a person back in time from any point in the future to any time after its existence. They then created Second Chances, the only television show that has allowed people to alter the past and better the future!”

“I don’t understand why they give a history lesson every time,” Cronus thought to himself as he chewed on a chip. “They praise Isle and Ethos like they didn’t ruin society.”

“This year marks the 100^th Anniversary of Second Chances,” the host smiled almost mockingly into the camera. “We have chosen five lucky contestants to compete for a chance to travel in the Time Modifier. As always, viewers will vote for one victor of the five, who will then have the opportunity to alter a specific moment in the past.”

Cronus watched the images on the screen with dissatisfaction.

“The following are our five competitors…”

Cronus chewed carelessly on a chip as the host read four names he did not know. To his disbelief, the last name the host read was his own.

  “If you were chosen, congratulations!” The host smiled at Cronus as though he could see him.

Frozen on the couch, Cronus could not finish chewing the chip in his mouth. They called his name—his name—yet he had not applied to the lottery. He racked his memories, tried to remember submitting his name somewhere, anywhere, but came up short.

“There must be a mistake,” he told himself in a daze.

“Winners, please arrive at the Second Chances studio tomorrow at twelve in the afternoon…” the host kept speaking as though everything was fine, but Cronus was not fine—he was terrified.

“It’s all right,” he reassured himself. “You will go, they will tell you it was a mistake, and then you will come home as though none of it happened.”

And so, the next morning, Cronus walked down to the station and rode a subjet to the better part of town, where Second Chances was filmed. The building was a monstrous box of black against the gray skies and its doors gleamed red like the eyes of a snake. Inside, the lobby was just as black and numerous photographs of previous winners covered its walls. There were so many faces smiling at Cronus that he had to look down at his shoes to breathe.

A man nearly as handsome as the host on television stood behind a shiny red desk in the center of the lobby. He greeted Cronus with a smile and handed him a clipboard with one piece of paper and a pen. “Hello, sir, please have a seat and write what you wish to change.” He motioned to a line of five empty red chairs on one side of the room.

“There has been a mistake—” Cronus tried to say but the man silenced him with a shake of his head.

“I’m sorry, sir, but you will have to wait until you are called in. I am merely a greeter.”

Cronus frowned but took the clipboard anyway. He chose a seat on the furthest red chair and stared at the piece of paper on his clipboard. It was blank, a cloud of pristine white against the blackness of the lobby. He removed the pen from the clipboard and sighed.

“What would I change?” he wondered to himself. “Perhaps something that would create a better life for me? Is it selfish to want that, considering I have the opportunity to change so much more than just my life?”

The red doors to the building swung open and three strangers entered the lobby. One was a woman, tall and slender, and the other two were men. All of them were much younger than Cronus and all smiled like the photographs on the walls. They took their seats on the red chairs and occupied all except the one closest to Cronus.

“What could they possibly want to change?” Cronus thought suddenly. “They are all young, healthy, and happy.”

Not a moment later, the fourth and final contestant entered the room. Her muscles quivering, the old woman accepted the clipboard and slowly made her way to the chair beside Cronus.

“Hello,” she said softly as she sat down with great effort.

Cronus nodded in return but kept his eyes away from her creased face. “She is not much older than me,” he suddenly realized. “I wouldn’t want to change the past; I would want to live in it.”

With this conclusion in mind, Cronus wrote it down on his piece of paper.

The greeter called contestants into another room one by one, starting with the young men and ending with the old woman. Cronus sat quietly in his chair as each contestant disappeared into the room for minutes at a time and then exited the building. When they finally called his name, Cronus rose from his seat and approached the narrow red door at the other end of the lobby. The door was slightly ajar and the greeter pushed it wide open so Cronus could enter the small room.

Everything in this room was bright, especially due to the light that shone in from a large window covering one entire wall. It made the white of the walls and floors glow like snow. Even the small woman sitting behind a bright, white desk was dressed in lively colors.

“Hello, Cronus,” she smiled warmly. “Have a seat.”

Cronus glanced at the greeter who nodded politely at him and disappeared into the black lobby.

“There has been a mistake,” Cronus said immediately after the door closed. “I did not enter my name in the lottery.”

“I know,” the woman smiled. “I did.” She motioned at the chair across from her. “Please, sit.”

With his brows furrowed low over his confused eyes, Cronus took a seat on the white chair and handed his clipboard to the woman.

“Thank you,” the woman said as she glanced down at the piece of paper. She smiled at his writing. “You were chosen by me for a very special task, Cronus. Can you guess what it might be?”

Cronus shook his head.

“For almost 100 years, the Time Modifier has allowed people to alter time in ways we never deemed possible. Judging by the subtle differences in our timeline and the fact that travelers return to the present every time, we believe that the Time Modifier may generate parallel universes in which various alterations take place simultaneously. Still, I cannot help but feel that our reality has changed many times throughout these 99 years. The young may not notice these changes, but I feel a strange emptiness that seems to grow deeper every year. Do you agree?”

Cronus watched the woman’s grief-stricken face and recalled the similar emptiness inside himself. “Yes,” he said softly.

“I know you have that emptiness; I have been researching you for months and drawing many blanks about your family-life. That is why I chose you.”

“I will help,” Cronus said despite himself. There was something unexpectedly compelling about the whole situation. He felt special knowing she chose him out of millions of people, even though he did not know the exact reason.

The woman smiled again. “I am the lead producer of Second Chances, so what I say in this room remains between the two of us. Is that understood?”

Cronus nodded.

“In a week’s time, an audience of masses will vote on one victor. The outcome will be in your favor and you will claim to revisit the past in order to prevent an accident that killed your wife.”

“But—”

“I know you do not have a wife who died in an accident, but the things I am saying will happen. You will be the victor, you will enter the Time Modifier, and you will travel to a very important date with a note from me. Once there, you will read the note and do as it says. That is all.”

Cronus stared at the woman in wonder and hesitated before asking, “If this is something that you want done, why not do it yourself?”

“Judging by what you wrote here,” she glanced down at the paper again, “you are destined for this task.”

One week after Cronus met with the lead producer, the public began voting on the candidates. As the woman had said, Second Chances showed Cronus as a sorrowful man in his fifties who wished to reverse an accident that had killed his wife. The votes were increasingly in Cronus’s favor and he was the victor by a landslide.

On the day when he was to enter the Time Modifier, Cronus wore his best suit and traveled once more to the black building with the striking red doors. There were crowds of people outside the studio who cheered with excitement upon seeing Cronus and allowed him to pass through all the way to the entrance. This time, the greeter was a plump woman who quickly approached Cronus and led him around the building to a small door in the back.

They entered a colossal hall with marvelously designed ceilings, thousands of black chairs, and a spectacular stage lined with cameras. The greeter escorted him backstage where the small woman from the white office stood with two men.

“Excellent,” the woman told the greeter. “Admit the audience members.”

The greeter nodded and exited the stage.

“Hello, Cronus,” the small woman grinned and reached out to greet him with a friendly hug, during which he felt her slip a note into the pocket of his suit.

Cronus glanced nervously at the two men but they did not seem to notice. Instead, one of them approached him with a small, glowing object in his hands.

“This is a recorder that will document your entire experience in the Time Modifier as well as the past,” the woman explained as the man attached the device to Cronus’s right temple.

They could already hear the audience members filing into the hall, but they waited another thirty minutes backstage before the woman asked Cronus, “Are you ready?”

Cronus tried to reply but his nerves got the best of him, so he simply nodded.

They made their way onto the stage where a rather large, grotesque machine stood in the center. Red curtains hiding them from view slowly spread apart and exposed them to the roaring audience. The small woman smiled and gave a prepared speech, while Cronus and the two men stood aside in silence. Loud music sounded in the background, blended together with the audience’s cheers and the woman’s voice, but nothing was louder to Cronus than the pounding of his own heart.

Eventually, the woman directed everyone’s attention to the machine. It stood menacingly tall before them all and looked almost like a refrigerator, only larger and painted black. One of the two men opened its door to reveal a chair with a strap in the middle and an aged keypad for the date to which one wished to travel.

“The date’s been set,” the small woman whispered to Cronus, almost as though she read his thoughts. “They will strap you in.”

Carefully, Cronus took a seat and stared at the small woman and the massive audience behind her as they strapped his torso to the chair. He took a deep breath as the men exited the machine.

“Thank you, Cronus,” the woman leaned into the machine so only he could hear her. “Good luck.”

The last thing Cronus saw—or believed he saw—were tears escaping the small woman’s eyes, before the men closed the Time Modifier’s door.

The machine surrounding him went black as a moonless night and everything was suddenly quiet. Cronus waited for light or sound to indicate that something was happening, but all was still. He wanted to ask what was going on, to shout for someone, but he could not find his voice. For a while, Cronus felt as though he was floating in a sea of darkness, even though he was strapped to the chair.

When it was over, Cronus blinked his eyes open and realized he had been unconscious. The space surrounding him was still black as night, but the keypad glowed with a date 100 years into the past.

Cronus stared at the keypad in bewilderment and unstrapped himself from the chair in the darkness. Carefully, he made his way to the door and pushed it open.

He was in a basement that appeared to belong to someone’s home. Upon stepping out of the machine, he heard voices of children above, playing outside, and vehicles driving loudly on the roads. A strange feeling enveloped Cronus, a feeling of somehow belonging to this moment in the past. He did not feel like a traveler visiting another time; he felt as though he was finally home.

He remembered what he had written at the Second Chances studio: to live in the past instead of changing it. The woman had said that because of what he had written, he was a perfect choice. More importantly, she had sent him back 100 years into the past, to the year the machine was first developed.

Cronus reached into the pocket of his suit and retrieved the woman’s note. He could not help but smile as he read a very simple message: Destroy the machine.