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1
THE EVENTS THAT FOLLOWED took place in a blur that I can barely piece back together in any semblance of order. I arrived in what I think was the distorted present that had spawned Druggy Daniel. The death of the version of me who was supposed to meet Suzy and mentor Danny had wiped out the connection to that alternate world. In my hands I held Daniel’s arm, which still gripped the pistol in a frail fist. Blood spurted from the end of the arm at the spot where it should have attached to his torso.
The arm faded, becoming like smoke in my hands. It dropped and vanished before it could hit the ground. The blood spatters on the driveway were gone too. I knew with great certainty that the dark version of Daniel was dead... again. I fell to the ground and vomited. When I regained control, I wiped my mouth with the back of a cold hand and travelled again. My skills had improved greatly. Was it practice or something that rubbed off from my travels with Thomas? I have no idea.
I was still sitting on the driveway but now I felt the gentle cool of a fresh, early autumn day. I stood up and swayed. I was hungry but I had no money. It didn’t matter. It was time to end the madness and go home. I walked in the direction of Tookany Middle School. I hoped that there wouldn’t be much of a fuss with my other self. I’d had more than enough of interacting with other versions of Daniel Wells, be they child versions, alternate reality clones or the Daniels of my recent past.
I thought about a movie I’d seen where all the time traveler had to do was commit to a course of action, and the results of that action would instantly echo through the time stream. If that were really the case, I would have fixed things already just by being in 1993 again. Fiction makes this stuff seem so easy. In the real world there are so many complications and crap that just doesn’t make any sense. It seemed that I would have to trigger the universe’s ability to heal itself. That’s a lot of pressure for one guy. Even Thomas had seemed a little overwhelmed when he talked about the scope of universal time travel dynamics, and that guy was, I think quite literally, a graduate of some kind of Time Travel University. I was like a guy who stumbled into a class halfway through the semester.
In another lifetime I had visited Tookany and been filled with a mix of emotions as I saw the important symbol of my past come back to life. This time around I felt nothing. My brain had run dry and was operating with pure Vulcan logic.
I had never even stopped to check the date but I knew it was the right day. If only I had possessed such skill the first time I could have avoided so much pain and suffering. I got in position roughly halfway between the place I had turned the corner and seen my young self and the place where Jeff Berger met his demise.
I stood and waited. I knew school was out for the day, and saw the same lingering students I had noticed the last time. It would only be a matter of time before I had to act. I heard the boys first, walking from a distance down the path toward the Annex building. I kept my eyes fixed on the corner from where I knew I had emerged. Then, there I was. The version of me who had set all of this into motion because he couldn’t passively observe his own past.
I can’t say that I hated him, but I felt a warm pulse of anger at the sight of his wide, naive eyes. I realized with a chill that it was that same anger that had truly caused all the problems. He saw me and his jaw slacked open.
“What the hell?” he said in a voice that was almost a whisper.
“Dan,” I said, beginning to walk toward him, “you need to go home.”
“How is this possible?” he asked. God, did I really look and sound so ignorant? He noticed the boys, laughing as they walked. Harassing poor little Danny. “Is that...holy shit.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s little us. Listen to me, Dan. The reason I’m here is because you’re going to intervene to try to help him.”
He was watching the scene unfold in front of him and I could see him getting angry. He started walking toward the boys and I followed. “But...damn it. Damn it! Listen to them. They’re treating him like shit. They always treated me like shit.”
“I know. And you’ll have words with them and you are going to beat Jeff Berger to death. Do you understand me? You lose control and kill him with your bare hands.”
That stopped him in his tracks. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. Time travel is no good, man. You need to stop this shit right now. The universe depends on it.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “The universe?” He smiled but his grin faded quickly when he saw just how serious I was.
“Yes. The universe. You need to go home.”
“But... I can’t just leave him here to get bullied.”
“Yes, you can. Because he turns out to be us. That bullying made us stronger and those guys don’t go on to be anything special. It sucks but it’s how it has to be. This power we have...it’s not permission to do whatever the hell we want. There are big, scary fucking consequences. Go home, Daniel. Please.”
He stood there, torn between the cruelty up ahead and his dreams of revisiting the glorious past on one side and preserving the safety and sanctity of the universe on the other. He locked eyes with me and slowly nodded his acquiescence. He closed his eyes and with a crackle of invisible energy disappeared from view. The boys up ahead didn’t even notice.
I prepared to make my own trip back to the present but before I could even close my eyes the world began to spin and twist around me. Colors blurred together and separated again, a whirling palette of reality. I felt gravity bend, tugging me in different directions with every passing millisecond. My travel headache, which I had become accustomed to experiencing, burst into action with a force I could never have imagined.
I bore witness to the rebirth of a complete, healthy prime universe, and it nearly killed me.