The fool that traversed time.

Get ready for a bunch of words appearing on your screen as stuff happens. No seriously, 100% guaranteed to work.

I was mistaken.

It all happened so quickly and so overt.

I was walking down the street, for once joyful, when I saw them. My instincts urged me forward, to grasp them, to hug and squeeze the life out what I love so much. It all ended when I saw their hands laced together.

My mouth went completely dry, the muscles in my tongue stiffening. Not just my tongue. Everywhere. Every muscle went numb. A shadow loomed over me, and once again every sound was tuned out. It was me and them again. Me and them, the both of us, in the same black room with no floor nor walls. But their back was turned to me.

I gritted my teeth and went after them. I touched their arm and they looked at me, startled.

“Do... you remember me?” I asked quietly.

“I'm sorry sir… I do not recall who you are.” They shook their head. Their lover turned around and looked at me.

I don't know what was in those eyes. Was it wrath? Was it gracefulness?

I was confused. I got the cliché term “my head was spinning”. It was light, a single poke would break it apart from the rest of my body.

I nodded, my gaze drifting downwards.

“I'm sorry… I mistook you for someone else.”

“Oh, that's alright,” they said, beaming. Their lover flashed a quick smile.

“I do hope you'll meet whoever you are looking for soon.”

“Yeah… Me too.”

They both stood there… Just gazing pleasantly at me. Like I was just a lost child. Like I was just wondering without a cause.

And I really was back then.

I turned away and walked. Once they were out of my sight, I ran. Ran towards the dark room I called home.

I locked the door. At first I didn't react. Nothing came out of me. Then my heavy chest exploded as hot tears burst out onto the scene. I was bawling like never before. My stomach clenched vigorously, and I bent over. Bile spewed out of my lips, the acidity gorging my taste, my smell, my sight. Everything. Everything was a hot mess like the traces of puke before me.

I could not live. I could not die. My sight was blinded. My smell was obstructed, and my mind was crumpled. And there was blood on my hands. Red, hot, concentrated blood that flows just like in me. My own blood. I was nothing more than a carcass with blood on its palms.

I curled into a small ball and remained like that. I was too afraid to move, so I just lay there.

Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there was a planet called Earth. It was blue, green, a bit yellow, and at one point half-grey from pollution. It was a little place where life began. These things called “humans” started colonising everything and placed themselves on top of the food chain. A better explanation of the history of the Earth and evolution is all available at www.somecompanythatisntfinanciallysupportingme.theysuck.com.

There was a city in the year “Probably 2050-ish”. It was glamorous with mechanical robots gliding in the sky with electric guitars playing Smells Like Teen Spirit every few hours. Superheroes where on sale and Japanese animation was the norm. Cats and dogs lived together, Muslims and Jews loved each other like brothers, and corruption was officially “old school”. Add in a rainbow with unicorns if you want. I should also include how the global pollution is now 0% and we can create completely green energy.

In this city, amidst the starry green parks with swimming pools and hover-board skating parks there was an apartment. And in that apartment, there was one peculiar human who always sat in their room and stared at computer screens. Their name was “Potential.” Potential had long white hair and sometimes liked guyliner. Sometimes he preferred mascara, sometimes not. Sometimes she liked wearing bikinis, sometimes I felt going for something else.

What? I don't need whoever is reading this to be my mommy and tell me what to wear. Whatever, this person was a person, and they did people things. They ate, they drank, they slept, they watched inappropriate videos, and sometimes that was about a honeybadger. People stuff.

So one peculiar day, this happened:

I breathed out as the sensation quickly ended. My brain was riddled with dopamine from the experience. I turned off the computer screen. It was a regular process. Then I would plop onto my bed and gaze silently at the blank ceiling, letting my mind bang itself into the numerous walls society constructed around me. Always working. Never resting.

Then I would turn over and guzzle the stark liquid in the bottle. Then… What would I do? I don't know. Maybe rummage through my empty email box, or surf the social media I don't have. It's boring. Who cares whether their picture of a cat gets 100 likes? Who cares that someone else is having a wedding? Who cares about every meticulous detail in their “friend's” life? How do they care, is a better question.

As qualified as I may be in modern alchemy, I am not a psychologist. I do not know why humans can sometimes act like monkeys on marijuana. I do know how everything in the universe is interconnected via “enigma particles”, so that's always a plus.

Maybe I was a machine, just like the ones they invented a few weeks ago. A human with the mind of a machine, they called it. Capable of processing information as quickly as the brain and even following the three laws of roboethics Isaac Asimov thought up of. Maybe that's just me.

Nah, it couldn't. There's blood in my veins, not oil or whatever powers those things.

Anyway, then I would go online and check up the latest news on Modern Alchemy projects. But it's always the same. Nothing resembles what the medieval alchemists did. No philosopher's stone. No turning lead to gold.

The projects are usually something about evolving the human race, creating new and more advanced robots, or better controlling the nature. It's all so boring. I am a modern alchemist, but nothing satisfies me. So I sit there, looking dumb at the screen for a while, maybe watch some videos, before crashing onto my bed and falling asleep.

The next day, there's no more food. So I sigh and head out of the door.

As soon as the sunlight hits my skin and chatter evolves around me, my nerves tense. It's a habit. People in front of me, people behind me, people everywhere.

Their happy faces make me cringe in the daylight. How can they be so happy? What even is there to be happy about? The friends will all go away eventually, their loved ones will die one day, and they will be all alone again. Why are they so happy then?

I can feel the walls closing up on me again. They want to crush me! My breath will be sucked out and I will suffer on the spot while no one notices me. But I must not let the walls crush whatever is left of my soul. I must fight on.

I walk faster, the dazzling buildings shining along with the Sun. Smoke, grass, blue skies, clouds. Images blur before me. I finally arrive at the local restaurant.

It's a place I visit somewhat regularly, when I do go out at least. The sound of people gets diluted in the deep brown oak-covered area. A fresh smell of lumber enters my nostrils, and I'm already mesmerised. I sit down and order the usual: french fries with mayonnaise and Nutella. (Oh wait, am I allowed to use that for fear of copyright? I'll just stick with “super-good-chocolate-butter” then).

Then I hear a sob.

Naturally, I ignored it. Maybe it was some child or some emotional being not needy of my attention. However, it persisted. Curiously I averted my gaze to the source and was struck.

It was a girl. A girl bit younger than I. A girl nevertheless. One I haven't seen in ages.

Just looking at her made my heart jump frantically. The sound escaping her lungs died out as her beauty spoke lovingly to me.

Perfection. Not too sunken, not too pudgy. Just the right chin length, her face just narrower than its width. Her lips, a meek pink, no trace of lipstick applied. Slightly thinner than average.

Her forehead was exposed, her hair charmingly flowing down each side. A lush, thin blond, all the way to her waist. Just below her forehead were two soft eyebrows, crossed deeply above her puffed-out eyes. A stark blue, my own felt the urge to break down, the urge amplifying by the second.

I don't know what happened to me then, at that moment. It's as if something clicked. Suddenly it was just me and her in the room. Yeah, I know it's a cliché, but everyone around me vaporised into the air. All I wanted then was for her to stop, for her frown to dissipate back into a smile. And the next thing I knew, I was sitting with her.

“Are you alright?” I asked as tenderly as I could.

“Do I look alright to you?” She replied silently.

My mind, for once asked to come up with a solution, remained asleep.

“What happened?” I continued. She just shook her head. Nothing escaped her lips apart from sobs. I felt my cheeks getting warm.

“Someone I knew died. Someone very close to me...” She said before bursting out with another cry, covering her flooded eyes with pale, skeletal-like hands.

I almost jumped. I could see them… See them all gazing menacingly at me. All staring disapprovingly at the person in my seat. Next to me was a girl, bawling her heart out, and I was right next to her. To them all I was the one who caused it.

Someone will quickly rush over and grasp her. Then she will cry on his shoulder and he will assure her everything will be alright. Before I know it, they will be kissing and engaged and…

No! I cannot let that happen.

Cautiously, very cautiously, I placed my hand on her shoulder. It must have been awkward to those around me. And for me too. I want to say how her warmth pierced my hand and dowsed me in a veil of heat. I want to say how perfect her shoulder felt.

But… I cannot.

All I did feel was my own body temperature rising, the pounding in my ears, and maybe some skin and bones under my palm. It was nice, though many will say that the feeling of your heart and gut violently clenching is not. It was new to me, and I liked this freshness. A perfect splatter of colour on a white canvas.

She looked at me. Those stark blue eyes. Filled with tears. Begging desperately.

“Hey,” I mumbled softly, “I am a modern alchemist. I will help you out, okay?”

That's how the events went. Right now I'm on my bed, in front of my television, controller in hand. I still haven't figured out how I will help. She just knows I'm a modern alchemist and will do something to help her out… Whatever the heck that means. I know the name, the face, the address, and the time of death.

My brain is done with emotional drugs and I hit normal life again, as I am still just sitting here, controlling my character through a game. The game itself isn't that great, but it kills time.

I sigh as once again the “time travel” phenomenon explains everything and solves all problems. Yipee, Mr. “Whatshisname” gets to spend two more days with his girlfriend until the apocalypse hits once again because he was too ignorant to find the magic paper.

Video games, I know.

But it did give me an idea. Just this week, enigma particles were proven to be able to jump through time when they are “excited” enough with energy. You supply them enough energy so that they are able to “jump” and hooray, Back To The Future is no longer a fantasy. It's similar to electrons jumping out of their ground states to excited states. Only here, the enigma particles do not try to rapidly get back into their “ground states”.

What if I try to revert back time and save the person that died? Or what if I somehow prevented that event from occurring?

I know it sounds dumb. Reversing back time? Me, an unemployed, lazy human, achieving a feat that only exists in fiction? Enigma particles can traverse time, but I, if you haven't realised by now, am not. I'm only made of proteins, which are consequently made of atoms, nuclei, protons and neutrons, quarks… The list goes on.

The face of the crying girl flashes in my mind. My breath quickens and I dash to my computer, determined to find anything about time theories. There must be something that I can do. I cannot write this off as a failure from the beginning, like any other project I rejected. I must try.

That was how I spent the next week: sitting behind my computer with a few notes and a pen. Scribbles and crumbled up paper lay everywhere around me. The only thing that ever appeared on my monitor were articles, news, and calculations. General relativity was the idea everything I did up to now revolved around… But it's not like I did much.

My eyes sunk, bags forming under them. Soda bottles with only a few drops left lay on my bed, a sheet of wrappers and cans covering them. Crumbs, chunks, little bit off pieces stuck to any surface. No modern alchemist before explained the consequences of sleep deprivation combined with malnutrition and lack of sunlight. At least I'll be first in that aspect.

I think I met a dead end. Both in this task and in life. I don't know how to continue. I cannot come up with anything that makes plausible sense. Passing a high energy current through the enigma particles while I would be immersed in it, a scenario similar to a “time machine”, would only excite the enigma particles. My own body would get burned. Injecting myself with the enigma particles would do nothing, as it would require all of my body cells to have a portion of them. Additionally, simply injecting it would make it pass through my blood stream, and who knows what the effects would be after that.

I got so far as to finding the exact amount of energy required to send the enigma particles to the day the person she specified died. But apart from that, that's it. I've spent a whole seven days holed up here, trying to find the wish granting device. What's better is that every second I waste will cost me more and more energy.

So now I'm back on my bed, my face stuffed into the pillow, my mind blank once again. I finally got those internet jokes when they talked about your mind malfunctioning. Maybe something like: “The brain is amazing, it works all the time but never during a test.” And double for when you are in love I suppose.

Her face, her body, her pleading voice always pops up in my head and urges me to go on. But now… Now I feel like I lost her. I cannot complete the task, I cannot do it. I cannot grasp her heart that is so dangerously close to me, it hurts. Someone that may finally sympathise with me, someone I may finally share feelings with, at the tip of my fingers, but not there yet. All these years in isolation leading to this moment, this one moment that may finally make a darn difference in my life, and I'm going to fail.

But I can still go back… It's been only a week. I can still forfeit the whole thing, I can forget about her, and I can return to my normal life. I can still go back. I will go back.

I'm breaking my body for only one human. One human I could have never thought of before. One human of the billions there are already. Is my own life worth destroying for just one small, petty, incompetent human? Yes, I cannot lose her if I dowse my infatuation before it grows even stronger. Her face keeps appearing in my mind, but if I quit now and forget about her, I bet in a week I can forget her. Besides, I don't know anything about her. I don't know if she really does have someone close who died. What if, she was manipulating me.

What if her whole “saddened” look was to manipulate me into sympathising with her. What if this is all a ploy and at the end, she will dump me like an old bag of garbage. Maybe she'll just flat out ignore me. Maybe she'll laugh once everything is over as the “dumb butt who sacrificed a whole week to work on an impossibility”. I bet she is doing that now! Yes, I must stop now. I cannot let my life be shattered. This project ends now!

It's been three days after I stopped working on the time machine project. Someone well renown will probably do it before me anyway. They would have a team, a laboratory, and any scientific gadget they could think up of. All I had was a few hasty notes and a computer. It's logical to assume it would take me alone more time than any team.

So it's back to the usual life for me. I think I got her out of my head at the moment while I'm casually eating my chunk of cake. Well rested and well fed.

I munch on until my gaze looks up. And maybe I shouldn't have. It was her again, sitting a few tables before me. I scrunch up and quickly finish my cake. Wiping the crumbs off my lips, I leave a few coins and prepare to leave before a hand tugs on my sleeve.

“Hey,” she says. My heart risks a cardiac arrest as my eyes perceive a full image. Her eyes were still a stark blue, but now highlighted by mascara and eye-liner. Again the bone-freezing emotion comes back.

“So… You said that you would help me. Do you have any plan?”

“Yeah,” I mouth back. “I'll reverse back time.”

She chuckles. Not in the evil kind of way, like high school girls laughing about someone falling on the floor. It was… Somehow warm.

“How will you do that?” She says through giggles.

“Well, I read that enigma particles can traverse through time itself. So I'm finding out if there is any possibility that a human can too via these particles.”

She kind of stares at me with a small smile. I cannot believe I didn't notice it before. It's… Spectacular.

“Well, that sounds interesting. But honestly, you don't really have to-”

“I'm almost there. I've been working the whole week on it, I'm certain the answer is right at my fingertips,” I blurt out with an uncertain smile.

“Oh, you worked a whole week on it? Wow… I didn't know. That's some determination right there.”

“Yeah, my profession requires persistence and patience.”

She nods with a grin. She tucks behind a lock of hair while averting her gaze from mine.

“Thanks.”

“What for?”

“For everything. You're working so hard on this, so determined. I wish all the best to you, even if you fail.”

She's so innocent and warm. I beam a smile at her while she nods once again and walks past me. Once she's gone, I slowly, very slowly, sit down, and slam my head on the table. What on earth have I gotten myself into?

“Is the table a comfortable bed?” I hear a familiar voice. I groan as I instantly recognise me.

Older than me, check. Short brown hair, check. Matching beard that covers half his face, check. That's my alchemy teacher.

He snickers before plopping right before me.

“So what's up? Girl problems?” He winks at me. He hasn't really caught up with his fame. The well known modern alchemist that subsequently also became my teacher, and occasionally a beer buddy.

“Yeah,” I groan back, my eyes meeting his. He leans back and smiles.

“Youth these days.”

“You aren't that much older than me.”

“Hush, let me enjoy my elder wisdom I can reign over you.”

I roll my eyes.

“So anyway, have you gotten yourself into any projects yet?” He asks.

“Well, yeah,” I say hesitantly, “I'm working on a time machine.”

His eyes widened as childish joy entered his eyes.

“Really? You know how enigma particles can traverse time?”

“Yeah, it's well known.”

“How far are you into it?”

“I've been working a whole week on it. I managed to calculate the amount of energy required to traverse me back to the time I need. However, that value grows by each second, so I created an equation that will give me the energy needed to go back however far possible.” He stares at me like I discovered the Philosopher's stone.

“You did this all in one week?”

“Yeah, although I have no idea how to apply it to my body. It needs to be sent back in time, so maybe if I somehow fuse with it my cells and have it replicate throughout my body...” I get cut off with him on the verge of bursting with energy.

“Come with me, now,” he mutters as he urgently leaves. I scramble and promptly follow up behind him.

“I just knew you were something special,” he says to me joyfully, “I knew you had one smart brain. I knew you were going to figure out the next great leap in human history.”

“Hey, I have no clue what you are going on about.”

“You'll see soon,” he says as he opens a door to his laboratory. A human sized test tube was laid out before me. “This is the first of its kind… A machine built to bring us to the next level.”

“It imbues human cells with enigma particles,” I read off the label.

“Yes,” a trace of disappointment left in his voice, “It combines with your DNA and within a few days, your entire body is composed of enigma cells.”

It seemed somewhat odd that he was presenting this to me. Then I realised it and a smile stretched across my face.

“How?” I sputter.

“More like, how on earth are you going to let me use this for my own personal benefit?” He grins eagerly. “Come on, find your notes and get here asap. We need make the next step, no, jump in science.”

A tube entirely filled with a blue liquid awaited me. I gulped as my mentor scanned through the notes I made.

“Most brilliant! Let's start away shall we?”

“Um… What does this tube contain?”

“Ah yes, it's a solution of a catalyst that binds the enigma particles to your cells. Naturally, those would be your skin cells, but as well all your internal cells. The catalyst is amazing in that way. After a few days, you will be ready to jump back in time.”

“By effectively electrocuting myself,” I laughed out loud. Fortunately, the energy requirement I would need is within the range a human can withstand, but just barely. One more day and it would be a death wish.

“The few days worth of waiting are expected to ensure that all cells in your body have a part of the enigma particles. There is always the chance of a few cells not gaining those particles… But we don't have time”

“Thanks for cheering me up,” I murmur. He went silent for a while before speaking again.

“Is she really that worth it?” I look at him, startled, then look back down sheepishly.

“It's for science too...”

“A human willing to sacrifice everything they have for another...” He laughed. “My, you people are sometimes weird. But by all means, for science.”

I nodded as he opened the tube. I entered and the liquid completely enveloped me. Into my nose, into my eyes, into my mouth. I tried remaining as calm as possible.

What didn't help were the needles protruding out of my skin and into my vessels. A few more seconds.

I clenched my fists and gargled on the liquid. Foul, vile, just pure rotten taste. I didn't dare open my eyes.

The tube opened and I started violently coughing out the liquid. Through my teary eyes I saw my mentor once again, however this time with only a look of sympathy.

Three days are up and I'm sitting with a bunch of conductors stuck to my body. Today is the probably the biggest day of my life… No, THE biggest day. I may die. There is a chance I will die. The circuits will fire larger currents than necessary. All the cells in my body may not have absorbed the enigma particles, so maybe my liver won't travel with me. Maybe I miscalculated the energy requirements. Maybe the jumping process will provide too much of a strain on my body.

But I don't care. Her face is in my mind. And she is urging me on. I've got this far. I helped create this step in science, and I must now test it. Her heart could be mine once I save whoever it is she wanted. Besides, my life hasn't been of much use in the outside world. Now is the time to prove myself.

My mentor is standing with the switch in hand. He hesitates.

“You know there is always the possibility of turning back you know?”

I sigh.

“Cliché much? I know what I'm doing, if I wanted to turn back I would have done it before you injected me with those catalysts.”

“Alright alright,” he says. “Well, here goes nothing.”

And he presses it.

At first, there wasn't much apart from the near-death electric shock my body experienced. Then the particles got excited within me and jumped. If torture wasn't the word to describe the sensation, then I wouldn't know what would.

The particles travelled and along with them did my cells. Stretched apart from one another, more and more. My body travelled slugishly after it, the feeling of being “spaghettitied”, just like a black hole.

Fortunately, the whole experience lasted only a blink. However, my stomach was turning and my head exploding. I was sitting in the same lab, but a whole month before.

I got out and saw the same view as always, glistening buildings of the everyday utopia. But… Something was off. I walked on. It was probably just my gut.

After a while, I realised I overshot by a few days. That gives me time to plan ahead and how to prevent this man's death. I would first need to locate him and then probably track him. I know he dies in a murder case, three days from now. I should be fine as long as I get back.

My stomach growls and I head into the nearest shop. I grab a few snacks and head to the counter. Once I'm up, I stare directly at the guy behind the desk. They don't respond.

I clear my throat. No response. Blinking, I try speaking up. Nothing.

Someone else comes into my place and the guy serves them. Now I'm confused. Is this a trick they are playing on me?

I tap the shoulder of the person next to me. Nothing. I grab their shoulder, but still nothing!

Have I gone mad? Am I in the afterlife from the failed experiment? No, it cannot be. The newspapers have the day 16 April, the three days before my predicted arrival. I must be alive, but simply not registered? If I am alive, why does no one respond?

Then it dawns on me. I jumped back into the written past, a written past where my actions were decided. I am as of right now in my room, probably gazing longingly at my computer, but also here, in front of the desk. Is it truly possible that I created two me's?

I charge out of the shop and down the numerous streets. I barge in front of my apartment and quickly gaze into my room.

There I was. My clothes, my hair, my body. My isolation, my everything. It was all the same as then.

I crumple to the floor. It couldn't be that now, after all this time and effort, I'm only a ghost? There must be more. There must be a way I can overwrite this timeline.

I look at myself again and my mind runs. Two me's, while the timeline is written for only one. One me observes, the other carries out the actions I once commanded. What if those roles switched, and the me from the future became the me from this past? How is that possible? I cannot switch bodies… But… I could make sure that only one me occurs.

And I hope to whatever entity that may govern us that I'm wrong, because I do not like the idea one bit.

My breath starts shaking as I enter my room. The other me doesn't notice anything and keeps staring at the screen. I go to my “kitchen” and grab whatever sharp object I see. I then slowly waddle to the other me. I close my eyes tightly. No light reaches my eyes as I bring my hand up and thrust the knife into the other me. They drop dead with blood splattering out of their wound. But slowly, very slowly, they fade away. And then they are gone.

Matter cannot be created nor destroyed, but only in the third dimension, I think to myself.

It worked though. There was blood on my hands now. But only one me. I can now tamper with the past.

Was it worth it? I don't know. My head is spinning in chaos. I killed someone to save someone else. As long as there is a me, does that count as murder? I am still alive, but I overwrote myself.

It's the day when Tobias will die. And I'm right here, ten minutes prior to the event. It's light outside, a rather unfitting time for a murder to take place. My heart is racing as I eye Tobias closely.

A man his age suddenly approaches Tobias holding a gun. Instantly I spring into action. I shove the man down and pin down his arm. Tobias stands there, bewildered, looking at me fighting off this one man.

“Go! Get away!” I yell at Tobias. The man is overpowering me, but I hold my ground. Tobias must not die. Her heart cannot be shattered again because this man died.

“Tobias, you will die if you do not get away from here. Go! Leave me!”

But he only shakes his head and approaches me quickly. He lands a blow to the man, who goes limp a second later. I shake him off and jump up.

“Thanks,” he says with a beam. His smile radiates warmth (look, another cliché term I became familiar with).

“It's all fine,” I reply, trying a smile in return. He cracks up.

“That is the most crooked smile I have ever seen,” he laughs. I chuckle with him. “But it's still awesome. Keep it up.”

And now I'm here. On my bed once again, my eyes all teary. I was so stupid! All this time, I should have known he was her boyfriend. I should have known! Who else would it have been! I was such a fool, to believe I had a chance.

But they are such a fitting pair. They both emit an aura that just eases the soul. They're so perfect… Where do I fit? I practically sacrificed my life for this one girl! I shattered the barrier between reality and fantasy, but I shattered my heart. I was such a fool.

I don't know what do. I don't belong in this time -ine. I have already murdered myself… I'm scum. I've lost. My emotions got the better of me and now, now, now I'm broken. Again. I can feel it again. The walls choking the life out of me. My soul is stained and I cannot cleanse it. I'm shattered…

I cry myself to sleep. The next day is bleak. I don't do anything. I got an email from the girl and Tobias inviting me to a gathering. I really want to accept it. But I cannot. I don't know if I can handle it. I don't want to be with them. I don't want to be with anyone. I want to be alone so I can finally rot away.

This… project, or whatever, was all a horrendous failure.

I grab the notes from my pocket and start crumpling them up. I don't need it anyway. Time shouldn't be tampered with. I already set up the butterfly effect. Without a written future I can rely on from now, the dangers are infinite. But my mind says otherwise.

I can still make things right. I still have enigma particles imbued in me. And the energy requirement would be lower than last time. It's only been four days. I only have to go back that far. The energy requirement is much lower, just a slight jolt may do the trick. Yes, that's it…

I stop. Do I really want this? Is this the right thing to do? I successfully prevented one death, wouldn't going back in time and preventing that from occurring be the same as doing the deed directly? Maybe I wouldn't be holding the weapon, but I allowed it to happen.

What about her? If I go back and not do anything… I will have to meet her broken face again.

So the choice before me is this: would I rather be in a world that I do not belong to superficially, but she is happier, or return home where she is heartbroken. Who matters more, me or her?

I bite my lip violently. I know it's selfish. I know it's not the right thing to do. I made myself into this… Mess. I should carry the consequences. But I hold the power to change the past. I can fix myself, at least somewhat. I hope so. I'm willing to do anything at this point. If only my short-sightedness… No. It's no good moping any more. I must create the circuit and effectively jolt myself back. Then… I will have to kill the me that killed the past me. After that it's just a matter of not causing any disturbance of events, something rather easy for me.

I did just that. All of it. I set up the circuit and went back in time. Then I eliminated the other me, becoming that time-line's only me. And now, I wait. I wait for the day that announces enigma particles to be able to traverse time. While I wait, I think. My mind begs the question whether my original life was the kind I wanted to go back to. Friendless, jobless, and bored. It wasn't appealing any more. I've done so much in what is now the future. I can publish my work and become renown. Then I could score it with anyone I want and maybe I'll be happier.

Or I have a better idea.

I'll just make friends now. There is a whole community of modern alchemists on the internet. I can easily organise a meet up with someone and help them with some project. I may offer my blood to help their studies into enigma particles. Maybe team up with my mentor for a while. The possibilities are limitless… Just like time itself.

It's decided. I have run away from my crush, my feelings, my thoughts. I cannot run away from my life now. I have to fix it step by step.

I dial the police and notify them of Tobias' murder. Naturally they don't believe me, but agree to keep an eye on him.

Hours later, they confirmed that Tobias has been saved from the man. I grin and sit back and grin. We all win now.

It's a month now after my last time travel. I've already engaged in three projects, including the enigma-time complex. That's the whole process of how to time travel and it's energy requirements. I've befriended the teams and we all go out at times. We are all known and changing the world. I was a fool to live a secluded life like that. I feel better, no longer alone. It's so refreshing to know that no matter what, there will be someone behind me. To be honest, it's kind of anticlimactic. My struggle with a crush has ended so that I forgot about her. Now if only would write a book about that… Maybe even myself. “The fool that crossed dimensions”. That's a fitting name.

So what am I really doing now? Just more theories about what a time traveller would expect from the various actions they take. My mentor and me are able to make speculation into first hand experience, but I refuse to do that. Enigma particles can only travel back in time, not forwards. I would age more and more, until one day I die the day I travel from my oldness. I like my life now, and I don't want to waste it away just revisiting events.

However, today I unexpectedly met her. My ex-crush with Tobias. They were happy as always. After a while they both gaze at me and hold their breaths. I beam a smile back at them. To them I'm probably now a revolutionary scientist. However, they are the real reason I rose to fame. I should probably thank them. Without her, I wouldn't sit down and make those equations.

It's ironic. I suffered for her, loved and despised her, but now I'm much better off. Emotions do weird things, they dictate our actions, that dictate the transcription of the future. Now, it would be interesting to see how one could control their emotions… Oh look, I found my next project.

Author's Note

It's fully intentional to be satarising/comedic/self aware. It's also fully intentional to be dark and broody. It's a mish mash of stuff that turned into a short story. It cannot be categorised into a specific "genre".
That being said, hope you enjoy it (or not).