Microstory 44: A Few More Hours With Sophie

This is a story I came up with, and finally wrote, as a way of dealing with my dog's passing.

A few weeks before my dog died, she broke out of her fence. She wasn’t trying to escape; she considered the entire neighborhood to be her territory. Since the rest of her pack slept inside, but she slept outside, she thought it was her posting. She thought it was her job to keep watch, and to investigate danger. There’s no telling how many times she managed to find a vulnerability in the fence and go on patrol, then come back before we could discover her missing. I had moved out by this time, but I was staying at my parents’ home because they were on vacation. It took me hours to locate her, and it was very upsetting to me once she passed, because that time we were apart made me feel that much more empty. I regretted every second I spent without her, because she left me too soon, and I wasn’t anywhere close to being ready for it. Several years later, I’ve become successful. I’ve published several books, and produced many television series. I even found myself starting a technology company with a strong Research and Development department. We’ve been working heavily with exotic particles. Not long ago, we accomplished time travel. We followed the necessary precautions, and ran multiple computer simulations and safe tests, but yesterday, it was time for human trials. Despite protests, I broke protocol and tested it out on myself. The mechanisms for navigation weren’t ironed out, and I landed on the night of my dog’s final patrol. After arriving at my old neighborhood, I quickly found Sophie. She was scared that she would be in trouble, but she wasn’t. I spent hours with her, wrestling and hugging her. We even went on a short walk. At the end of it, I said my final goodbyes and secretly released her to the younger version of myself. While he was arguing with her for making him stay up late to search for her, I felt relief. As it turns out, I wasn’t really apart from her during her last patrol. I just hadn’t experienced it yet.