Chapter 19: October 25, 2002

Megan was confused.

The man—the handsome stranger, who had never actually given her a name despite her calling attention to not knowing it several times—had come to her door, right when she was about to start getting herself off. Right when she was already starting to get aroused.

She had been annoyed at first, but intrigued. Older men didn’t just knock on the doors of random college girls, right? And he’d seemed to have a purpose.

And he knew the passphrase. The secret phrase that she had memorized and wondered at a million times.

Just like her fantasies, he had shown up, demonstrated that he was safe, and then, she had thought with her libido. Let him kiss her. Touch her.

Take her virginity.

And then as he was leaving, it was like he had just... disappeared. The door had closed.

Maybe he had actually left, and she’d lost focus just long enough? She was feeling a little light-headed after all that sex, and maybe that was it.

But she needed to know. She went to the door, touched the handle.

Cold, metal, normal.

She twisted it, and pulled it open, half expecting to disappear herself.

But there, across the hall from her door, was a woman. Standing quietly, stolidly, like she had been expecting that. A purple shirt, with a low scoop neck framing an amethyst necklace. Black jean shorts. Brown hair, cut—

Megan opened the door more, getting a better look. Their eyes met, and Megan realized that the woman looked eerily familiar. She reminded her of her mother, but also who she saw every day in the mirror. Some more weight, some more curves, but still ... the frame was there. The shape was there. The eyes...

The eyes were the same.

Megan finally spoke. “Are you ... who I think you are?”

“Yes.” The response was curt, simple, stoic.

More silence, and Megan was thankful to have a relatively quiet floor. There was an unease in the air, and she felt a strange tension, like the universe itself might want to tear apart. “This shouldn’t be happening, should it?”

“Not at all.”

More silence. More tension. Finally, again, Megan spoke up. “Then why?”

The woman’s gaze fell down thoughtfully. “First things first: there is no sunburst without the Sun.”

“I figured that,” Megan replied softly. “That was you, wasn’t it?”

“Close enough. You’ll learn the details later.” She shook her head. “But I digress. We need to talk, Megan. Briefly.”

“About what, Megan?” Her curiosity was burning.

Her older self looked ... sad? “This isn’t going to be the same thing that my older self told me when I was standing where you are now. She’d told me the same thing; each time, we change it, just a little. You see, time is a palimpsest. Endlessly mutable. You can write and rewrite it over and over again, and no one’s ever the wiser. Everyone remembers the latest version. Even me; by the time I return to my time, I won’t remember what I now remember. It’s always changing.”

Megan nodded. She learned the word—palimpsest—while growing up thanks to her pastor. But it didn’t make any sense. Obviously, time travel was real—the stranger had to have been from the future, too (and she felt a very strange moment of elation as she realized that Doctor Who would probably be revived in that future, and it was very odd to think about that among the very serious conversation she was having with herself)—but why tell her this now? “I’m not sure I understand. Are you... rewriting history with me, right now?”

“Yes,” her future self confirmed. “But not by much. I like the timeline as it currently is.”

“What?”

The woman sighed, rubbing her forehead, just like Megan always did. Some things would never change, apparently. “You can think of it like a story. Written, edited, rewritten, and so on. Trying to get the details right, trying to make everything consistent. Trying to find the right story to tell. You make one change, and the effects ripple through the timeline, making everything match up. And at this point, I—you, we—have finally rewritten history enough to become the story we want it to be.”

“So this ... isn’t what it used to be?”

“Oh no, not at all. I don’t even know if we were the first time traveler, to be honest. At this point, we’re the only one—the only one aware of it, at least. You met another one—the man you just had sex with—but that was literally his only trip that I know about. And when we have kids, they’ll occasionally come along for the ride, but they won’t remember it.”

She took in a breath. “Kids?” She put a hand on her abdomen, looking down. Had he... ?

“Not for a while,” she replied, shaking her head.

Megan looked up into the woman’s eyes. “So then why are you here, if this shouldn’t be happening?”

A deep sigh, a guilty look. “This is what I know: some earlier version of the timeline was not good. I had told people the truth about time and about my time travel, and they ... abused it. I abused it. I don’t know the details; they’re lost under revision after revision, just that it was bad. Just that...” Her breath caught for a moment as she choked. “You used to have a brother.”

“What?” The revelation stunned Megan. A brother? But... how?

“He was erased. Changing history does that, to make things consistent. Probably more people were erased than that. And changing the timeline further would erase more. It’s terrifying to think about—and if you think through the implications, especially with some of the people we apparently used to know in a previous revision, then you start thinking about how to weaponize it. How to erase people from the timeline. How to erase cultures from the timeline. How to erase entire populations from the timeline.”

“No.” She couldn’t believe it. She would never!

Would she?

“Genocide.” The word held heavy in the air. Her older self continued, “Again, I don’t know if it was us, or someone else, or if it’s still been ... successful, for lack of a better word. But it was attempted. And that is why it had to be stopped. At some point, we decided to stop it.”

“By talking to me?”

“I guess,” she shrugged. “But I was talked to, and things worked out. Marriage, kids, love. You’ll get there soon enough.” Her face grew extremely serious. “But you must never ever ever let them know the truth. They must always think that time is fixed, that if they deviate at all, it could be the end of the space-time continuum as we know it. We have the power, and I don’t think we can trust ourselves, much less anyone else.”

“Can I... accidentally change it?”

“Of course, it’s possible. Likely, even. But as long as you keep the broad strokes the same, then it will still be fine. A good friend will also make some very good guesses, and will figure out that you’re not telling the complete truth. That time is more malleable than you let on. But he won’t push you on it, and you must remain insistent that he is wrong, at least to some degree.”

Megan was still aghast. “Do you really think he would ... weaponize it? As a good friend?”

“I don’t know, and the same goes for my husband and my kids. But I don’t want to take that chance. We cannot let them be Boromir, tempted by the ring. It’s a heavy weight, and we have no Mount Doom to toss it into. All we can do is make the best life for ourself possible.”

She frowned. “Do we?”

Her older self shrugged. “We try. It’s not ideal—pregnant earlier than we’d like, not as many friends as we’d like, the weight of knowing the future—but we make do. It’s a good life. A stable life. Like I said, I like the timeline as it is; I imagine you will, as well.”

Megan chewed on that for a while. Time was endlessly malleable ... but she had bent it around to be not fixed, but something very close. “How do you know I’ll keep it this way?”

“I don’t, though when I asked my older self that same question, she told me that she had been me, and though it may seem appealing right now, as you work through the implications ... well, we’re the same person, who will see things the same way, aside from the years of difference between us. Maybe this isn’t the best timeline, but it’s a good one, and do we want to run the risk of dipping into a bad timeline by changing it?”

“Point taken,” Megan said, considering that. Either gamble with the timeline and risk erasing people entirely, or live with the unideal timeline she would apparently have.

It wasn’t a great choice.

“But I think you’ll make some small changes, anyway. I know I did, though since your memory will change, and mine did, I don’t entirely know what they were, just that I knew I would do it. I suspect I changed my relationship to one friend, though; I don’t know if he was the best man for my older self’s wedding. It’s hard to keep track.” She shrugged. “And yes, anything you write down will also change. Time will keep itself consistent within its bounds.”

“So an endless canvas, but be careful, lest you tread too far?”

“Or you will hear the sound of thunder,” the woman confirmed. She smirked. “You get the reference, though the actual change in that story was a butterfly.”

“Is that all it takes?” Megan wondered, remembering the story from when she had read it in high school. “One butterfly?”

“I doubt it—at least, at the scale we live. It’s smaller things: clothes, relationships—”

“People.” Her mouth went dry. A brother? What had he been like? What would their family have been like?

Were her parents even the same people because of meddling? What if in a previous incarnation they weren’t the over-religious people they were for her? What then?

“You will drive yourself mad thinking through all the possibilities,” her older self said quietly, a tender note in her voice. “And you’ll never know. I’ve thought through them, too, and you need to learn to let that go. To accept that we have the timeline we have—plus or minus our small modifications over meta-time, whatever that even means—and to live the best life we can.”

“But it’s good?” Megan looked down at her hand, the one that still had some of her spit on it from when she had jacked off the stranger.

The woman nodded. “It’s good.” A pause. “One word of advice, passed down to me from my older self, from her older self, and so on, through who knows how many revisions: avoid Ryan Sweeney. He has friends that I think we got—get?—mixed up in, and those friends are bad. Fuck up the timeline bad.”

“The letter said as such, at least with avoiding him.”

“I know, but I need to impress the point more. Not that I know why it’s so important—but there will be a news article you read later. Several, probably, because there will be research you will want to do, and you should do it. And those details may make clear the sorts of things we were involved in during those previous revisions.”

Speculation popped through Megan’s head, but she nodded, knowing her older self couldn’t answer them. “Okay.”

“I need to go, now, before I accidentally change things too much. We will see each other one more time before you’re me, and it will be much shorter—but on the eve of a significantly important decision on your part. Know who you are by then.” She smiled. “But, I know you will, because I’m you.”

Megan nodded, her mouth still dry. “Thank you. Good bye, I guess? Someday I’m sure I’ll see you in the mirror.”

“Just as I saw you.” Another smile. “Good bye, Megan. Best wishes. Just remember: you always have the possibility of changing time itself. Be careful how you use it.”

As Megan closed the door, she felt her blood run cold.

In a daze, she walked over to her chair and sat on it, her head swimming with what had just happened over the course of an hour. Her virginity lost to a complete stranger. Her future self doling out heady advice.

A lie that she must always, always keep.

Paths of history that might once have been written, but had been erased and written over.

A palimpsest.

She fell asleep in her chair, and her dreams were deep and terrifying.

Megan sighed. It was done: she had talked with her past self, the second of two conversations like that she’d ever have.

The other was on August 10, 2006. When she and Rory conceived Xavier. She had recognized the date, had left with Xavier as though they had gotten unstuck; Rory never tracked it closely enough to notice. She had taken him down the street, around the corner. She had watched Rory arrive home, oblivious as always. Her past self appearing as he barreled out of the door, and then her retreating inside while he went to get food.

She’d come back from around the corner then, had entered her house, Xavier strapped to her body, and they’d had a conversation. A small one, a short one. Where she had explained to her younger self that there was a choice: to stay, and have sex with Rory, and conceive the very son she had strapped to her; or to masturbate and leave before he got back, with echoes rumbling through time.

She never understood why she needed to get pregnant in college, why she couldn’t have waited a few years, enjoyed marriage and sex and life before kids. But some past revision of herself probably had a reason, and she had a feeling it had to do with what sort of person she was in those earlier revisions. Perhaps Xavier was a constant, and the father was all that changed; she wasn’t sure.

As the younger self, she had not been happy. She liked Rory well enough, but to get pregnant as a senior in college? It was frightening and overwhelming. Not to mention the weight of knowing the consequences of that decision.

She’d cried about it. Been somber over dinner, speculating on the non-choice she had in front of her—and Rory had noticed.

He believed time was fixed, and he needed to keep believing that, or bad things would happen. Very bad things, because he, too, could get unstuck. And he seemed like a good person.

But Megan knew better, as the echoes of revisions hung upon her. Even people who wanted to use it for good would become corrupted, and would meddle more than they should.

After that conversation, she—the older her—had gone to Tyrone’s house, and come back later, as though she’d been unstuck. Rory had been asleep.

No one was the wiser.

It tugged at her brain, now, and she could feel it wanting to edit, wanting to change her.

It couldn’t yet, though, not completely. It would be done once she popped back, but not quite yet.

She still had one more task. One more loose end.

As she walked back to her house—though it wouldn’t be that for years—she ran through the things she knew again. The things she had researched while still in college, and in the years after. The newspaper articles. The history. The name: Ryan Sweeney, and the friends he kept. The truth about time, about how she had at some point made a decision to stop it. To make a new life for herself.

It was a detail, years in the making. A detail that would haunt her the rest of her life. A detail that she could never, ever tell anyone, not even her past self, for fear of changing things too far. That younger self would figure it out eventually, just as she had.

The house itself was mostly like it was in the future, before the additions. Maybe a little more run-down, because Rory had been good for it.

Taking a deep breath, she knocked on the front door. Almost expecting Rory to answer it. Almost expecting for all of her planning and thoughts to be blown out of the water.

Instead, it was answered by a trim-looking white guy with close-cut hair and a chip in his jaw. “Yeah?” he asked gruffly.

“I’m given to understand this is a place I can get ahold of some ... goods.” She tried to choose her words carefully. Drugs were an entire scene she knew nothing about, but she had to pretend to.

“Don’t usually see people your age,” he replied, obviously giving her a once-over. “Who told you we’ve got ‘goods’?”

“Ryan Sweeney.”

He nodded recognition at the name. “How’d you get to talking with him?”

She smiled. “You’d be surprised what sorts of things can happen when you post a personal ad on Craigslist.” She hoped the implication would be enough.

Anther nod. “So what’re you lookin’ for that Sweeney said we’d have?”

“Something to take the edge off. Parenting is ... a lot.”

He smirked. “Where’re the kids?”

“Back home,” she said. Technically true. So many technically true things. “I got a ... little time to myself. Mind if I come in?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, stepping back. “I’m Danny.”

“Nice to meet you,” she replied, entering the building.

It was surreal. She knew the layout, of course—but the furniture was all wrong. The walls were all wrong. There was... wallpaper in the kitchen? And the drywall seemed to be shaped just a little differently, with different dents. Had it been replaced in the interim?