A Farewell Through Time

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I woke up that morning, like any other morning. Miserable. Anxious to leave the house, to go to work, to interact with people I didn’t like, maintain shallow relationships I could easily do without. Home life wasn’t much better. My wife and I resented each other, though I didn’t know that at the time. We both hated the relationship we’d formed, had somehow gotten this deep into without either of us feeling like we’d chosen it.

We fought all the time. We’d start mornings in silence, preparing for our days without acknowledging each other’s existence, until one of us inevitably mentioned something that was bothering us, had been for some time or just thought of in that moment. It didn’t matter, really. It was an excuse to see if we could still feel something, anything, for each other or ourselves.

The answer was yes, we could. Anger, mostly. Bitterness. Blame. Dissatisfaction. And so, like any other morning, we fought. Sharp words became shouted arguments. I don’t think we ever really listened to each other during those fights, so focused on our own spiteful expression. So I couldn’t tell you what she said to spur the response out of me. Probably that she hated living with me, hated sharing her life with me, hated me in general. I do remember sweat beading on my forehead, blood burning in my cheeks, before I said it. A throwaway jab, really, a subject we’d barely spoken about beyond a vague interest in the infrequent news stories. My retort was simple, but would alter the course of my life.

‘Well, if you hate all this so much, why don’t you go back?’

Her response told me something was wrong. Silence. She wouldn’t look at me. She never did. Understandably. But this was different. She watched the floor while I waited, and our heaving breaths relaxed in the sudden lapse in screaming. I couldn’t ask her anything else, seeing the state my rhetorical question had put her in. It had been vague, yes, but we both knew exactly what I meant. And her reply was one I’d never expected.

‘I already tried.’ She’d already tried to use the machine.

It had been around for a few years now. They discovered it drifting through space near Venus, and retrieved and brought it safely back here to study its alien properties. It had clearly been designed, manufactured, and sent across the stars, thus proving the first sign of intelligent life outside our planet. This caused all sorts of celebration throughout humanity, then elation, anxiety, chaos, and eventually, indifference. Like everything else, we moved on with our lives, as we tend to do regarding things outside the scope of what directly affects us. Confirmation of alien existence aside, the machine had little to offer.

Until the researchers managed to translate the language inscribed all over the machine’s surface.

They weren’t written words, but a kind of shimmering displacement of light bouncing off the strange metals the machine was constructed with. No one knew what it meant for months. When they finally figured it out, through some kind of consciousness-altering state of instant understanding, the message was one burned into everyone’s memories, mine, yours, anyone old enough to understand. And I’ll forever be able to recite it perfectly:

’Your consciousness can go back 888 days. Only your path will be affected. To all others, nothing will change. Enjoy your experience.’

It seemed that who or whatever had made this thing and shot it out into space from some unknown distance for us to discover, had left instructions for its use. And we were beginning to understand that what we’d been given was a time machine.

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It took time for our global society to cycle through its reactions. Astonishment. Curious intrigue. Indecision. Fear for the creator’s true intentions. Eventually, testing. Human trials. We sought to understand how it worked, and the top scientists whittled away at their explanation, refining it into this:

Whoever enters the time machine will have their consciousness transported back 888 days to a former physical version of themselves. They will carry with them all memories from their present back to their past. But this alteration of timelines only works one way. For the user’s consciousness, they go back and split their previous timeline into a new one, where they have 888 days’ worth of memories and knowledge to do with as they will. For the rest of us here, still in this timeline, nothing would change. It couldn’t, or the laws of physics would collapse in on themselves. Effectively, to anyone but the user, the time machine didn’t actually do anything. Even the user themselves, after emerging from the time machine, wouldn’t change. For the time machine to work, it sent a version of that person’s consciousness back in time, but another version simply stayed here, where nothing seemed to change. Our world couldn’t be affected by someone travelling to the past, because it hadn’t already happened on our timeline.

If it’s difficult to wrap your head around now, you might imagine how we felt back then.

Over time, the machine became available for commercial use. Spend a little too much money, and you can relive the past two and a half years of your life yourself. Unless you were unlucky enough to be the version of yourself who stayed here. It was inevitable. Really, you were paying to send some version of yourself back to reap the rewards, while this version got nothing. Or the other way around, depending on how optimistic your outlook is.

Doesn’t seem fair, does it? Of course, this is how it all appeared to the outside observers. To the people who used the machine, the consciousnesses that actually went back, things were great. But, given this overall inability to demonstrate that the time machine actually even worked, the public reception was mixed, to say the least. Some thought the whole thing a hoax. A prank by some wealthy elite with nothing better to do. Some kind of large-scale interactive performance art-piece. An excuse for the government to run secret tests on ‘willing’ individuals. But most people, like me and my wife, simply kept this information somewhere in the back of our minds, never actually expecting it to be important or useful. Until that morning.

In the heat of the fight, it took me some time to compute what she meant.

She’d already tried. When I could once again form words, my accusatory questions were fuelled by a sad resignation, rather than anger. ‘You used the time machine? When did this happen? You spent our money? You didn’t consult me first? You were willing to relive that much of your life? You kept all of this hidden from me?’ These questions came faster than she could answer them, if she even would. Only after my final question did I give her room to respond, since it was the only answer I really wanted.

‘What happened?’

Given that she was here in front of me, telling me she’d used the machine, there were only two possibilities. One, this was a future version of my wife, who’d lived another two and a half years beyond this day, and she’d used the machine to come back to this. Or two, she’d used the machine recently, and while some version of her consciousness travelled back to relive a section of her life, this version had simply stayed here to continue our miserable little union together. I wasn’t sure which I feared more. But her quiet, defeated voice confirmed it.

‘I’m still here. Another me got to go back, apparently. But I’m still here.’

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It’s difficult to explain what one feels after this event. Trying to process that you did travel back in time, but for the world to continue working without all sorts of paradoxical laws collapsing the fabric of spacetime, you also didn’t. One version gets to go back, the other gets nothing but the knowledge that you made another unknowable version of yourself much happier.

The cycle is similar for most people: intense depression. A nihilistic sense that the universe is unfair. A grieving for your individuality, that you’re not special. A pessimistic outlook confirmed by the machine’s decision to keep you here while the other you embraces the rewards.

This half explained my wife’s recent misery. We’d hated each other and our relationship before her attempted use of the machine, but it was now clear that the quality of our lives had been steadily declining since. It was within weeks of this fight, this final stamp on our marriage and continued co-existence, that she left. We ceased all contact. I don’t know what happened to her, even now. I hope she found happiness, truly. I know she did, in some way.

In the early days following our separation, I felt a confusing satisfaction that I was free from a terrible relationship, and an anxious restlessness for my sudden crushing loneliness. I hated my job, my coworkers, the few friends who bothered to keep me in their lives, hated everything and everyone, really. Without someone obligated to be in my presence, I had no outlet to express this hatred of the world, and so, that hatred turned inwards.

I’ll spare you the details of this dark period. I later vowed never to return to that place. And the first step of that vow was to do something I’d never thought I’d do, but I truly believed would radically fix all my problems, with the added cherry of spiting the woman who’d left me.

I emptied out half my bank account and booked the appointment for within the week. Waiting times were low at this stage, given the public’s view on the machine’s ability to properly function. As I made my way to the high-security facility where the machine was guarded, I felt better than I had in months, perhaps years. I rode the high of knowing that soon I’d be in my own body, two and a half years younger, ready to make drastic changes to my life, embrace the endless possibilities that would open up to me. I could repair things with my wife before they’d worsened beyond the point of mending. I could invest in all the recent stocks to easily make millions. I could recreate all the most popular artworks and music and stories from the last two years and take all the credit for myself. I could avert all the biggest disasters and tragedies within my power to stop them from ever happening. I could even simply relax, spend time catching up on menial enjoyments with the added months to my lifespan.

These rattled around in my brain as I entered the facility, walked through the office building hallways. As I was escorted to the basement. As I laid eyes on the machine in front of me for the first time. As I walked up to the great contraption constructed of impossibly smooth, polished metal and stone, the shimmering light confusing the eye like an inescapable optical illusion. And as I finally stepped in and the process began.

I have to remind myself that you don’t remember the sensations. So I’ll describe it as best I can, but just know that words can’t do it justice. The machine began with an eerily silent tremble, and as that trembling grew it spread to my own body. My very cells and atoms rumbled against each other. An intense warmth flowed through me, like a thick liquid enveloping the synapses in my brain. I lost all sense of self, of feeling or thinking, and became a vessel for intense, vibrating heat that built and built beyond the point of comprehension. I can’t say how long it all lasted, but they say it’s no more than a 30 second process. When that endless 30 seconds was over and it all died down, I took a deep breath, ready to begin my new life.

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Of course, speaking to you now, you can guess how it went. My first sense of failure came as my ability to think returned, and I realised I was still in the machine. Had it worked, had I been the version of myself that got to go back, I’d simply be in my younger body, 2.5 years earlier. Yet there I was, dumbfounded, confused, suddenly uncomfortable with myself, standing in the machine’s chamber, the world around me completely as it had been.

Those feelings I mentioned before—the depression, pessimism, nihilism, a reaction to losing all sense of uniqueness and individuality. Well, they all hit me hard and fast. Like most, I spent some time wallowing in this intense misery, this newfound view of the universe, and that I wasn’t important in it—this version of me, at least. Another version of me was the most important being in that respective universe, wherever it may be. But that only made it worse. This universe, this place that I was forced to continue living in, wasn’t—isn’t—my universe. Here, I’m nothing. No one. Just like everyone else.

Once I managed to climb out of the post-failed-travel depression, or perhaps as a means of doing so, I shifted my attention to trying to understand why. I’d spent my entire life thinking of myself as so important, the most important thing in existence—and I don’t mean in a selfish, superior sort of way, just in the way that we all naturally do. After all, your consciousness, your personal perspective, is the only thing you can ever really know and be certain of. This personal, individual vantage point inevitably makes you think of yourself, your own experience, as the most important. Until the machine doesn’t work for you.

Afterwards, most people try to just move on. Knowing that some other version of themselves gets to redo this portion of their lives. Most people will never be the same, never again feel that very human sense of proud individuality. And that was all true for me, too. I just wasn’t satisfied with this solution. I tried to move on, tried to return to my routine life, but I found myself losing interest in everything around me. All I could think about was the other me, the younger, or technically the same age, me reliving my life, the life I deserved to relive, and fix, and exploit. But here I was. Stuck in some other universe that wasn’t mine. That never had and never would be.

Instead of growing complacent, embracing the monotony and trying to forget, I got angry. This wasn’t fair. Why did I have this gift of consciousness, of being so sure of my uniqueness, my individuality, my own special perspective, if I would be forced to stay in this world where, ultimately, none of that mattered? Why had my cosmic unimportance been decided for me?

These weren’t questions I expected to receive answers for. But I did know one thing: there had to be others who felt the same. Who’d tried and failed to go back, gaining only an unsatisfied rage at their lack of individuality. I wasn’t content to accept this truth, this reality that wasn’t mine, and I knew I couldn’t be alone. I knew you, all of you watching, reading, or listening to this, were out there.

Fuelled by this anger, I took to the quickest method of finding people who felt like I did: the internet and social media. Every day I spoke of this message, this perspective on consciousness and individuality, and expressed my discontent with all of its implications. This began as simple angry rants that provided no real solutions or suggestions. But as more of you began to flock towards my words, proving you felt the same, I knew I had to think of a way to overcome these feelings, solve this issue, rather than simply explaining it to those who already understood it.

That’s when I shifted the focus of my message. As proved by our failed attempts to use the machine, we weren’t special, or unique, in this universe. But, logically, there had to be one, single, truly individual, person who was. We were in this person’s universe. And we deserved to know who that person was.

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Finding this individual wasn’t going to be easy. On a planet of billions of people, the chances were incredibly slim. But we had theorists working hard on the problem that helped to narrow down the search.

By our estimates, we had to assume that this person lived in or at least close to our city, the same place where the time machine stayed, because for this to be their universe, they had to at some point use the machine. We could rule out anyone who was unlikely to ever even access the machine, because if they couldn’t, this couldn’t be their universe. Subsequently, this person, in all likelihood, had already used the machine for this to be their universe, because to all outside eyes and perspectives, nothing would ever change. This person would have used the machine at some point in the future, or already had in their timeline, and gone back to relive their two and a half years without anyone, at least on a large scale, being aware. Our world was never going to change when this person travelled back—only their world, their perspective on the world, would.

This is around the time we started referring to ourselves as Insignificant Universal Inhabitants—and this person we sought desperately to discover as the Primary Universal Owner.

Our goal in finding the Primary was twofold. Firstly, we wanted to learn from this person, know who they are, what kind of human they’d made themselves into, all in the hopes of answering why. Why this person was special enough to own this universe, to have their individuality proven against anyone else’s. Would it have anything to do with the kind of person they were, or would it be entirely random, that the rest of us billions just happen to be living in their universe and not our own, our own universe out there somewhere for the same random reason? I knew the latter was likely true, but it didn’t really matter.

The second reason I hoped so desperately to find this person, was much simpler. Closure. Just knowing that this person existed without knowing who and what and why they were ate away at me and my fellow Inhabitants, and if by some cosmic decision I didn’t deserve to experience my own unique universe, then I would ensure I at least deserved to know who did, here.

These were the goals I shared with all of you, and that I believe you all shared with me. Of course, once the Inhabitant movement grew to numbers I couldn’t comprehend, there were inevitably going to be others who shared different goals. Some of you treated the Primary like a religious figure worthy of worship and prayer to solve all your problems. Others among you believed the Primary was infinitely unknowable, that such a person shouldn’t or perhaps even couldn’t actually exist, and never would, and that the machine was an extraterrestrial device made to remind us of our cosmic insignificance. The darkest of you, those I tried to distance myself from, believed that by finding and executing the Primary, you might inherit the mantle of Primary yourself, and would finally be able to travel back with this spiritual title.

These beliefs aside, I knew the chances of discovering the Primary were incredibly slim. Our best hope was that this person would learn of our search for them and come forward of their own volition, but given the growing expectations around this person, I began to doubt they ever would. Many tried, of course, fakes claiming they were the Primary, but they were all easily disproven, unable to provide logically sound explanations of the future they’d returned from. But, beyond putting out frequent, urgent calls for the true Primary to reveal themselves, and our many expectations and sub-followings growing, there was little else we could do.

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The Inhabitant movement went far beyond any semblance of control I might’ve once maintained. As the weeks and months passed without success in finding our Primary, our excited purpose turned to anxious desperation. Some forced people to use the machine who hadn’t yet tried, to see if anything would change, though I knew that wasn’t how this worked. Others, instead of our usual warm welcome and gentle curiosity for the Primary to come forward, turned to threats of violence backed by entitled rage.

As for myself during this time, regretfully, I began to grow desperate myself, though I didn’t inflict this desperation on the world as much as within myself. I started doubting I’d ever meet this person, if they even existed, and that perhaps our ‘scientific logic’, the assumed rules for all the time travel and unique universes we’d been operating under, were entirely meaningless fabrications, made by minds trying foolishly to understand something far beyond human comprehension.

Those who turned to me during this time for guidance received none. What could I say? I could barely provide answers for my own internal battles, let alone hope to assist anyone else in their time of need. My mental and physical health seemed to rapidly deteriorate during this harsh period. As it was for many of you, there appeared to be no hope of saving myself from this constant anguish, this inevitable spiral into oblivion the came with the impossibility of ever receiving the definitive answers I so desperately required.

But then it happened. Everything changed in an instant. She arrived.

She was a beautiful young woman, normal, as far as outward appearances go. Yet she was the most special human being in existence. She was the Primary. She explained it to me, and to those who were lucky enough to listen. She had used the machine and go back two and a half years, and it brough her to this point, from a future not too distant but different enough. She’d been ‘back’ in her ‘past body’ for about a week at that point, and had heard of the Inhabitant movement, that we were searching for our Primary, for her, and it had taken her some time to work up the courage to approach us, to reveal herself as the one we’d awaited.

Her explanations were insufficient, you could say—they were always going to be. She only had slightly more plausibility than the previous fakers, and so there were many who simply didn’t believe her. She had answers to all our questions, and she gave them with an unsure confidence, like she knew it was the truth but that she also knew there was no way to prove it. To me, it didn’t matter. Something within me, some unknown sense, knew it was her. I knew she spoke the truth, that she had come from the future, returned to this universe, our universe, her universe, yet I also knew that, like her, I couldn’t prove this in any way.

Perhaps it was the endless hours we spent in each other’s company. This relationship began with in-depth explanations of the future to convince me of her Primary title. But our conversations soon extended the machine, the universes, the paradox solutions, the reasons why this was her universe, that she was our Primary, and what it meant for her and for everyone else on the planet. I was so enamoured with everything she had to say that we discussed less and less these gargantuan topics, and learned more about each other, who we were outside of all the larger universal implications. We spoke of our dreams and goals, our pasts and potential futures, our failures, our successes, our mistakes and regrets—everything. Over time, we grew closer to each other than either of us had ever been with anyone else before. We spent less time with the outside world, with the movement, preferring only each other’s company to all alternatives. Given the choice, I’m sure we would’ve both kept it that way until our inevitable ends. But that was not our destinies.

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I admit, I was still highly fascinated by her, considering she was our Primary, that this world was effectively hers and no one else’s, and that I’d been searching for her for so long. But after spending endless hours together, growing closer and more comfortable, I realised that beneath it all, she was still human. A remarkable human, yes, but human. And though it took more time than I like to admit, I grew to love her, for the person that she was, and not for the universal laws that had brought her to me.

It was purely some miniscule cosmic chance that she happened to be the Primary in this world. It could’ve been anyone. And trying to understand or explain why was as fruitless a pursuit as trying to understand the machine itself. But other Inhabitants didn’t see it this way. I couldn’t blame them; I was the one who’d taught them their expectations, given them hope that the Primary’s sudden presence would provide cosmic solutions to all our previously unassisted problems.

Though I and our Primary would’ve preferred to simply abandon the movement, content to spend all our time only with each other and forget the rest, our fates wouldn’t allow it. The movement, my followers, though I didn’t consider myself any kind of leader by this point, demanded she provide the divine answers they’d been promised. She, of course, had none to offer. She still hadn’t been able to prove the “simplest” of tasks, in their minds: that she was indeed the Primary. No one knew her like I did. No one could believe it without concrete evidence, couldn’t take her on faith, as I did.

It pains me to think of now, but there was a brief period where my own doubts began to emerge. It was possible, after all, that she was just an incredibly gifted liar, capable of painting such a believable story, the story of her entire life and who she was, that she’d fooled me. Though I thought she was special, there were no grand demonstrations of her uniqueness, nothing to explain why she was the one who’d come back in this universe. But it was only a very short time of my faltering faith. In the end, my love for her, my commitment to her beyond anything to do with the movement, took importance.

But, again, this was not enough for everyone else.

Things got worse. People demanded she prove herself. The few who’d taken her on faith began to dwindle until everyone, the entire Inhabitant movement, it seemed, became dedicated to forcing her to verify that she truly was who she claimed to be. Though I’d been there from the start, largely started the movement myself, I’d lost all credibility by this point. No one else was content to trust her based only on her word. No one knew her like I did. That was enough for me to lose my position, and what little power it still held.

We became fearful that something bad would happen to her, to us. All we had was each other, our experiences, our relationship. We contemplated running, hiding, leaving this life behind to start a new one, far from the movement and the machine and everything that had once been so important to me. But we knew that running would only prolong the inevitable, that we’d eventually be found and discovered, our lives thwarted. Eventually, we decided on a solution together, one we weren’t sure would work, but soon felt like the only effective option.

As far as I knew, people had only every used the time machine by themselves. The strict usage of the machine didn’t allow the option of trying anything else. But now, by this time, when people had become so focused on discovering the Primary and not on using the machine themselves, there was little security around the usage of the machine. And so, for the first time, we went together into the machine, a pair rather than the individual, hoping that whatever might happen, wherever it might take us, we would be safe, together. It had worked for her once already, we figured, so perhaps it might work again.

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We entered the machine together, and we waited. Time seemed to stop, or move at an unknowable speed, it was impossible to tell. But suddenly, everything was moving. Though we hadn’t physically moved from the space, nor had the machine itself moved as far as we knew, there was an insurmountable movement between us.

It was as if our very consciousnesses became alive. It began small, at first, but grew gradually, quickly, it was hard to tell. My vision blurred, my hearing became only a deep, low rumble. I lost all feeling in my skin except for a mild vibration, tremoring throughout every muscle in my body. None of this was unpleasant. It was all with a slight warmth, a heat from both inside and out of myself that spread throughout my physical body and my mind. Like being submerged in a thick, soft liquid, an enveloping blanket that folded perfectly into every part of my being.

As all this happened, I lost all awareness of my position, where I was, even who I was. I had no memory of the machine, or the world, my followers, Primaries, Inhabitants, nothing. I simply was, existing as pure consciousness, the barest minimum of such, and so was without fear or anxiety, making the experience not even particularly enjoyable, but simply happening without emotion tied to its significance.

These feelings grew for a time I can’t say, until eventually I began to sense something present with me, something other than myself. Myself was all I knew at this point, so even the concept of there being something else in any way was now foreign to me. But I sensed it, and through some primordial intuition, my consciousness knew that this other thing was another consciousness, like mine, like me, in fact so similar to mine it was hard to even call this second one an ‘other’. We were the same, almost identical, two base forms of awareness sensing each other, feeling the same feelings, moving towards each other, like insects moving to light, an instinct telling us to be closer, to find each other.

And we did. There were no physical differences to tell us that we’d met, that we were joining, forming into something beyond ourselves, but we both knew it was happening. Now, in some vague back room of my mind, I had the knowledge of my entire life. I was unable to remember exact memories, relive exact experiences, like normal, and I still couldn’t say exactly who or what I was, but all of those memories, everything that makes me me, were all suddenly there. And then, an instant or hours later, so were hers. Again, I had no understanding of memories, and wasn’t able to remember specific things, but I now knew this other awareness in its entirety, as much as I knew myself. I had a complete understanding of this other person, everything that made her who she was, every memory and experience, every feeling and emotion she’d ever felt, every individual characteristic throughout her entire existence that formed her into the person she’d become to that point, I shared entirely. And she shared mine. We suddenly knew each other more than any human being, any normal consciousness, ever had, or ever could.

The process was free of judgement, fear, or shame. Our melding of consciousness was filled with elation, with an ecstasy like that warm thick blanket draping over us tenfold, folding us into each other to become one, sharing an entire life’s worth of experiences in a moment. In the time this was all happening, I was still unable to properly grasp this understanding. There was no ego, no outside perspective of this melding. It was simply happening, and I felt it happening, but was otherwise free of all control or awareness. And it was incredible.

I wish I could say I knew when, where, the process ended. But I awoke before any of that. It all only came to me in a dream, this glimpse of another universe, this other possible timeline. But in this universe, our universe, we waited. And nothing happened. Nothing changed. Like all the Inhabitants who’d tried before us, we were stuck here. And the movement, those who had once been my followers, were still unhappy.

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That’s where they found us, sitting inside the machine, holding each other, waiting in vain for something to happen, to fix the mess I’d created. The Inhabitants, who’d once been my followers, took us out, not violently, but they were angry, and they had every right to be. I’d promised them everything and provided nothing, in fact only provided answers for myself in the form of my relationship with our Primary, which benefitted no one else. And once we were out of the machine, they vowed to destroy it.

Their reasoning was clear: if this woman was our Primary, she was unable to definitively prove it. If she wasn’t the Primary and they were still out there, they, too, would be unable to prove this claim. Without ever being able to know with total certainty who the Primary was, the entire endeavour had become a pointless exercise in seeking answers where they’d never be found. The machine, its very existence, was a symbol to this inevitable, pointless cycle, and so to remove the machine would be to remove the temptation to ever seek this impossible solution to all our problems.

I agreed with this. I didn’t try to stop them, or defend the machine. They had no intention of hurting us, so there was no need to protect myself or my beloved Primary. I wasn’t surprised when they failed at their task. The machine had come to us from outside the realm of our understanding, and so whatever it was built with was impossible to even slightly dent or scratch, impervious to any human attempt to dismantle or destroy. And as I watched them struggle without any sign of success, I considered more and more their perspective.

It was one I shared, but to what extent I hadn’t properly considered until now. The machine, from all I’d seen, had only ever brought mass melancholy to the human race, at best mild depression, at worst all-out nihilism. By its nature, only one individual would ever truly experience the joys it had to offer, while the billions of the rest of us had to live with the knowledge that we’d sent a different version of ourselves to the past to be happy, while we remained here, proving our cosmic insignificance, and how hopeless it had all become. We’d lost what it meant to be human, for better or worse. That sense of individuality, that we’re all uniquely important on a grand scale, even if it’s only ourselves that believe so, which is in the very nature of who we are, only ever able to experience life and the world from our own perspectives.

With all of this on my mind, and as the movement tried in vain to damage the machine, I held my love, my dear Primary, one last time, stepped forward past the barrage, and entered the machine once more. I can’t say if it was my burning desire to fix all this, that I felt personally responsible, or that someone simply needed to do it, and I happened to sacrifice myself. But, for only the second time since its arrival, the machine worked. Just not how I expected it to.

Like my dream with my Primary, where our minds melded together, the experience happened instantaneously, lasted for eons or microseconds, it was impossible to know. A great vibrating warmth flowed over and through me, stripped my physical self away to leave only a baseline awareness incapable of direct thought or expression. A pure existence. This state lasted some indeterminable amount of time before, as if nothing had ever happened, like waking from a dream, I opened my eyes.

It was gone. I was no longer in the machine, but in my own home, the same home I currently lived in. I had successfully used the machine to time travel. Me, this me, the version that actually got to travel, not the one who stayed and experienced nothing. But it didn’t take long for me to realise something was different.

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The obvious problems were that I was in my home and not the machine. Even if I’d gone back 888 days, I should’ve been waking in my previous home, the one I’d shared with my wife during our crumbling relationship. It took a little longer to figure out exactly what had changed, where and how I had travelled. I hadn’t gone back 888 days. It was the same time, the exact day and year as when I’d left, yet this was not the same world. Here, the machine had never arrived, had never existed in the first place. I later realised this day was two and a half years, exactly 888 days, after the machine’s initial arrival. But here, in the universe, it had never happened. The machine had never been discovered, brought here, used at all. Everything had been as normal as ever. I was the only person who remembered the machine ever existing, except now, of course, here, in this world, it never actually did. Rather than travelling back 888 days, I stayed in the same moment, but travelled to a different timeline. The machine, capable of more than I even imagined, had in a way projected its time travel mechanism outward, instead of inward.

It took time to come to terms with what I’d done. I knew it was better this way, to live in this time, this universe, where people maintain their all-important individuality, unburdened by the choice to travel back in time, and the curse of cosmic insignificance. But I can’t ignore the fact that this is just the timeline I get to enjoy, that I’ve become the Primary of this world, where everything is back to normal. I know that the other version of myself stayed there when I travelled, that he sat in the machine hoping to make this sacrifice that will never occur. I feel tremendously sad for that world, stuck with its problems that can’t be fixed, problems I am largely to blame for.

That me, at least, gets to stay with her. My love. That idea I still find too difficult to fully face.

All I can do now is be grateful that I returned to a world without the issues I’d grown so used to. Where all of you are as happy as you can be, satisfied with your individuality, your unique perspectives, as you all should be. It’s better this way. But, of course, the few people I have told about all of this find it impossible to believe me. I know they never will, I don’t expect them to. I know how crazy it sounds.

That’s why I’m leaving. I wrote this letter, made this video, to record the experience before I forget any of the details with time, before I forget that it really happened. With time, I might actually come to believe that I am crazy myself, that I imagined the entire ordeal of the last 888 days. But I know it was real, that it happened. I’ll never be able to prove it, of course. But I must accept that.

So, take this all for whatever you think it’s worth. The ramblings of a crazed madman. The strength of the human mind and its imagination. Or the truth beyond what you thought possible. Nonetheless, this is a farewell to all of you. You won’t see me again. For those who know me in this universe, I’m sure you’ve seen this coming, given my behaviour since I returned. For those who knew me in another life, another universe, but have no memory of that time, while only I get to remember all of you; I’m sorry for the damage I caused, but I’m glad that here, you’re happy.

And of course, most of all, to my Primary. The most special individual to ever exist in this or any universe. It fills me with pain to know that you’re out there, that you might even see this, but have no memory at all of who I am, of the time and the love that we shared. That’s a big part of why I must leave. But it gives me hope that, despite the separation, you’re out there, too, living your life, content with your existence, and happy.

I’ll miss you. But I have already missed you for some time. Goodbye.