Time Stations

by Duncan Shields
September 27th, 2010

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

She set up a receiving station in her office. That receiving station was anchored at 3:45 PM, August 22nd, 2018.

As soon as she turned it on, the messages from her future self came pouring in.

Advice on theories, scores from sports games, inside knowledge on upcoming relationships and a thousand other subjects. Apparently, the future her had no respect for causality.

Reality shattered.

She set up more message depots ten weeks apart and gave them addresses.

She answered questions. She’d forward questions back to the proper message depots and an earlier self would try to find out answers and forward them back to the future.

She employed people. Her earlier selves employed people.

Every message station became a corporation. Every ten days, she set another message depot up. Her corporation would get to a deserted part of the world, set up a beacon, and turn it on. As soon as they turned it on, a building would materialize around it with an employee base that had always been there.

After August 22nd, 2018 at 3:45 PM, there were no more mysteries. Reality became as malleable as smoke in the air.

The thing that’s hard to imagine is that whenever reality changes, no one notices. It simply becomes the way it’s always been. The theory is that that we are shuffling through realities like an infinite deck of cards. We can’t tell. She either ended the universe or created the multiverse.

The only way to live here is to live here, they say. I tried making some bets on upcoming games but they never pan out. Something changes, I guess, and the score changes, so that’s that. I don’t make a fortune and then lose a fortune; I just never had a fortune. If you see what I mean.

I have to accept that what is real right now is all I’ve ever known.

I wonder if one day, someone will send a message back and successfully set the wheels in motion to assassinate her and put this world back into a place where her discovery never existed. I wonder if that’s even possible.

Not that I’d notice if it happened. This world would cease and I’d be in a world where her invention never existed. I’d never know the difference.

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