Time Enough for Hate

Author : Edward D. Thompson

What would you do with a time machine? Braydon knew HIS answer.

Sheila had been the love of his life. Sweet, supportive, lovely, and caring. But all those late nights in the lab perfecting the device took its toll. The day it finally worked he came home early. Actually, he worked all night and well into the next day without calling to let her know, but he was so SURE. And he was right, it finally worked. So he went back in time and came home early to surprise her.

Surprise them.

Sheila and his best friend Allen; her best friend’s husband.

The device was simple, small. It fit on his belt. He only had to grab and it took him and whatever he was holding wherever and whenever he wanted. He left Allen someplace in the late Jurassic; Shelia in an isolated plain in the early Cambrian.

The device made him rich: fame, a better life, bigger house, and lots of attentive women. And made it easy to manipulate evidence to show Sheila had run off with Allen. But there were always those late nights when the drink would get the better of him.

Other men would drunk-text an ex; Braydon went back to her:

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It was warm, and the air was thick and over-rich with Oxygen, his breathing labored. In the clearing, a young women on her knees: the center of a crowd of men. A crowd of him. Some of him yelling obscenities at her, some begging her forgiveness. In places, versions of him fighting over her. And more than one of him curled up on the ground, sobbing. If he waited long enough, one of him would stab her and the crowd would close in around her and tear her apart.

This time he didn’t wait to watch. He thought about it though, wondering which of him would finally give in to that rage and pain that just wouldn’t die. For now though, he sat on a rocky hillside and quietly sipped a drink from a flask as several of him watched a large and sharp-clawed Allosaurus out-run a terrified, shrieking Allen.