My Morning Routine

People are always surprised that I still use an alarm clock. Once time travel became common place, getting anywhere on time was no longer a problem. You rarely saw anyone who wasn't well rested these days. Time Chambers were found in virtually any house, as standard as a television set or a microwave.

Still, there was something about them that made me uneasy. All that shifting around, forwards and backwards in time. It never seemed like the kind of thing that should be taken for granted. It reminded me of math class, when the teacher would insist you learned the process of figuring out the solution to the problem, even though the calculator would do it for you.

Maybe I saw too many movies or read too many comic books, but I felt like casual use of time travel would end badly. I have heard all the speeches from physicists about the Butterfly Effect. The general consensus was that it was an interesting concept, but time was such a powerful force, it would take a major event to really make significant changes. Most interactions with the past were completely harmless. The universe wanted events to unfold a certain way, and unless you did something major like murder important people, smaller changes would quickly be folded into the narrative that was already underway.

They say you can't really change the past.

Even with the assurances from scientists and philosophers, I was uncomfortable with time travel. I never used it to make it to work on time, or see what would happen in the future. I didn't see the point. Once time travel became something everyone did, betting on sports ended almost immediately, and I saw no point in knowing for sure what was coming up. I liked my life with a little mystery.

So many people used time travel for everything from winning arguments to seeing long dead musicians in concert. For example, it is estimated that sixty percent of the people in attendance at Woodstock were time travelers.

I never gave in to that temptation. However, I did use it every morning. It was part of my normal daily routine. Wake up, pee, shave, shower, dress, coffee, travel back in time. Always to the same date, always to the same time, always for the same twenty minutes it took me to do what I needed to do.

They say you can't really change the past.

I finished my cup of coffee and looked at my antique pocket watch. I was right on time. I rinsed off my coffee mug and put it in the sink, then looked in the mirror. The face that stared back at me had been through a lot in its forty two years. There had been plenty of hard times, loss, death, battles with mental health. But there had been plenty of good to go with it. I had been happily married for fifteen years, and had two good kids. I had a decent enough job and a house of my own. I had a few good friends, bowled on the weekends, went on vacation once a year. It was not a spectacular life, but I was content, and how many people could say that?

As I stood in front of the mirror and straightened my tie, my wife came over and kissed me on the cheek. She had to be at work in five minutes and wasn't even out of her robe yet. She didn't have the same reservations about time travel as I did.

"Time to go?" she asked.

"Yes," I said. "I will be back in twenty minutes."

I had a time machine. Technically, I could come back the second I left. I just didn't like the idea of existing in two times at once. If I was going to be somewhere in the past for twenty minutes of my life, then I should not exist somewhere else during those same minutes. That was some bad mojo, as far as I was concerned.

My wife yawned and walked away. She was probably going back to sleep.

I took one final look in the mirror. My reflection nodded approval.

I stepped into the time machine and entered the date I wanted to travel to. I went to the same date every time, so I had it memorized. This was the seven hundred and thirty sixth day in a row I would be doing this. I punched the final button and closed my eyes as the Time Wave filled the chamber. My atoms lost their cohesiveness and were shuttled backwards in time thirty five years, two months and six days.

The sensation of your atoms reforming is something I will never be comfortable with. When you are travelling, your atoms are so spread out that your consciousness ceases to exist. As they reassemble, you become self-aware half way through the process. It is a huge shock to the system, and I never have gotten used to it.

The Time Chamber opened and I stepped out at my destination. You couldn't travel anywhere at all; you had to pick a location that had a Time Chamber. Luckily, there was one only a block away from where I needed to be.

I walked down the street, looking up at the sky as I made my journey. I had done this so many times, I had every fold of every cloud memorized. There was not a single detail of this time, date and location that I did not know intimately. The exact temperature as the sun beat down on my face. The squirrel that ran out in front of the oncoming car, then quickly changed directions, narrowly avoiding being run over. The smell of the barbecue going on two houses down.

The words the mother was saying to her child.

I walked towards them just as I had so many times before. I stood in the street, leaning against a tree where they wouldn't notice me.

They say you can’t really change the past.

The boy was sitting on the porch of his home, a stack of comic books by his side. The mother was hovering over him, index finger out, disgusted look on her face.

"Maybe your father has no problem with how you are," she barked. "But I am not going to sit by and let my son become the town weirdo."

"I didn't do anything wrong," the boy said.

"It was just your birthday last week," she said. "Why didn't you want a party?"

"I don't like parties," he answered. "Big groups of people make me nervous."

"Who gets nervous at their own birthday party?" she asked. "Why would your friends make you nervous?"

"It's not who they are," he explained. "It's any group. They wouldn't be my friends anyway."

"They would be if you weren't so strange," she said. "If you acted like everyone else, you could have a party like a normal kid."

"I didn't want a party," the kid pleaded. "Dad said if I didn't want one, I didn't have to have one. He said he would give me the money he would have spent on the party so I could buy comics. That was what I wanted. It's my birthday. Why can't I do what I want?"

"Because kids your age don't act like that," the mother said. "It's a good thing you like being alone so much. You are going to be alone forever. Nobody is ever going to want to be with you, with the way you act. So just sit here by yourself and read your comic books. That is all you will ever do with your life. You will be the town weirdo everyone talks about."

The mother stormed off and slammed the door behind her. The boy tried to continue to read his comic book, but couldn't see through the tears in his eyes.

I walked up to the porch and knelt down in front of the boy. He looked up at me, and even though he had never seen me before, he had an expression on his face of recognition.

They say you can’t really change the past.

"Hi, Tom," I said.

"Do I know you?" he asked. "How do you know my name?"

"You don't know me," I said. "Not yet anyway. I just need to tell you one thing, and it is the most important thing you will ever hear in your life, so I need you to really pay attention. Can you do that?"

"Yes," he said.

I pointed at the entrance to his house.

"Your mother is wrong about you," I said. "I promise you. She is wrong. Never forget that. No matter what. She is wrong."

The boy looked at me and his face broke my heart. I could tell he didn't really believe me.

I know for a fact that I am telling him the truth. I lived his life, and I know the problems he has. I know the struggles ahead for him. He will have terrible self-esteem and no self-confidence. He will battle depression and anxiety. He will go through life feeling like there is something wrong with him. That he doesn't fit in anywhere.

He does belong, though. He knows it as an adult. Once he is able to, he goes back in time every single day to try to convince himself of this fact. All he wants to do is stop the hurting inside of himself. He tries every day, and every day he fails. I know he fails, because I still feel the pain of my childhood today.

I walked away from myself, just as my mother opened the door to see who I was. I didn't want her to see me. Or maybe I didn't want to see her.

Either way.

They say you can't really change the past.