Author: E. Avery Cale

23:03:57.489
Due to the events of the day, I feel it is time to initiate a new, unplanned, phase of my work.

I must be careful.

How to get the power? Administration will never approve. They need me and they know it or the work will not continue but this I think is a trade they would make. End my work and turn me out to face the consequences of my actions rather than give me the power I need. The data from our first three missions is the taste, the beginning, but more than they could have hoped for and payment enough.

No.

Problematic.

There is no other way to find the energy to send me back.,

No, no no, wait.

The power to go back to just before, to just this morning. That I can get, drain from the building, the whole campus if needed.

The day must be redone.

Jonathan found me in the Verisimilitude Machine, and did not like what he saw.

I told him it was stress relief.

Which it is.

Maybe.

Maybe that does not make it right.

He did not think it did.

Maybe he is right.

He talked of leaving, with the kids, and I believe him.

Chief Administrator will of course side with Jonathan. He feels the family distracts from my work. I would be much more productive if I was alone. If it was just me and the VM.

This is a lie.

Did I not design the machine, build the prototype, construct the lab, guide our team, secure the funding? All while having the family.

I will not lose them.

I was relieving stress.

Was caught.
Simple.

It must be undone.

I could go back, back back back back, all the way back, undo it all every time, never take up the habit.

Impractical.

Dangerous, potentially.

And impossible, without rerouting the Grids.

Today then, just today, decide just this once not to give in. This once. Undo today.

No, no no

Leave the Paradoxes in science fiction.

Observe record return.

No experiments, no risks.

Leave them untouched, the possibilities and the impossibilities and the joint where they may be uncoupled or where the universe may catch itself up like a string caught between two gears and snap or spin out some tangent of realtime, some awful nightmare land. Touching brings, could bring, terrible things, terrible worldending things, things unravelling all that built the machine. Silly impossible things.

But no, no no no, I have solved them! The old fears and myths.

Never interfere, only observe. The otherwise is unthinkable. Paradoxes in theory only because if we slipped into them we would never know as we would never be or not be.

No identity can become two, no one go back to a time when one already is.

No, no no no, I have found a way.

Back in time yes, the subject is sent back in time, but the space remains the same.

I need only find where I was this morning, before, position myself in exactly the same place, send myself back.
The space remains the same.

One-to-one all atoms aligned in exact relation me my present and me my past. The one slips into the other yet only the one remains, can remain, the one that moves, the one that still is after the other has moved on and left only the empty, the waiting shell.

Substrate independence.

Since midnight last I have not left the lab, have been working or in the VM. The recordings taken by the health monitor will give me what I need.

So I set the computer. Align the atoms.

Go back, back back. Not too far. Exactly far enough.

I-now and I-then becoming one in body, no different, the real I the I that is and goes back being the only I that is, and I will act. The coming will be changed and the day undone and the future that I have made that cannot be lived with will never be.

Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.

I go back.

23:03:57.489
Due to the events of the day, I feel it is time to initiate a new, unplanned, phase of my work.

I must be careful.