Word Count 1030
I thought the device was the answer to all my problems, more than that, it was a key to happiness. A magic pill that would make all the problems in my world fade away.
I remember a line from a version of a particularly cheesy film, that a version of my girlfriend liked, it said; "You never know what you have, until it is lost."
Of course in that version of events I pretended that I was as moved by the movie as she was and I probably got laid. I can't even remember what timeline that was, let alone what I did when I was there.
Time. What does that even mean anymore?
In some ways I've been doing this for years, or you could look at it another way and say that I found the device about a week ago, or three months; who knows? I've given up even thinking about it. All I have now is this journal, the one weird constant throughout this whole ordeal.
The first time I used the device, I jumped forwards just a few hours so that I could see the football scores. Nothing big, memorise the results, maybe even who had scored first in a couple of the games, then afterwards hop back to the present to place the bet.
I just stared at the TV as the results rolled in. Some things kind of happened like they were supposed to. But many things were wrong. The future was wrong.
Doubt began to creep in, had I really travelled in time? It had felt real enough when it happened, I'd watched an entire afternoon of football results, then went back in time and watched them all over again. Just like deja vu, except I planned it.
But it wasn't the same, some things happened like they were supposed to, other events changed slightly, the rest were completely different.
Of course I tried again, each time I would jump to a point in time with a sporting event and view the outcome. At first it was one offs, like a single tennis or football game.
These single events seemed to stay consistent, in fact I won money on Novak Djokovic multiple times. But when it came to predicting a multi-game event, things were not so consistent.
One day I was sitting at my desk at work, browsing social media instead of working and I scrolled past an article and my entire world went on pause as my whole head throbbed in time with my heartbeat.
I scrolled through the article many times, but I couldn't find any signs in the piece that it was a joke or some kind of spoof and it was recently dated.
I sat back in my chair, staring into the faces of my co-workers. None of them seemed aware that anything was wrong, or different in any way.
Tom, the guy I hot desked with asked me if I was okay. I just looked at him, I think I opened my mouth but I'm pretty sure no words came out.
That was the first time I realised I was in a different timeline. The article was about rising cancer rates. When, as far as I was concerned, they cured the last form of cancer in the 1960s.
I began to search the internet, obsessively seeking out change. The more I looked, the more I found, people alive who should have been dead, wars lost that should have been won, eradicated diseases killing people. Literally everything of importance you can imagine had changed.
How could I live with myself? I was sure that my actions had somehow changed history. I knew I had to go back and try and make things back the way they were.
I now know the limitations of the device, I can't go back to before I found it. Although I have no idea how far forwards I can jump, a test I'm not willing to perform.
My many timelines theory came about when I found myself returning to a previous set of events. It gave me hope for a while, if I could return to a previous timeline, then perhaps I'd be able to go back to my own. However that was a long time ago and the situation has never arisen again.
There is a global pandemic in this latest timeline, they're calling it Covid. I can't count how many pandemics and wars I've seen as I've traversed the continuum.
My timeline was peaceful, there was no such thing as an energy crisis or global warming. I had a good job, a girlfriend, parents, friends. For some reason which I can't remember (and believe me I've tried), I wanted more than I felt the world could offer me, and now I'm completely powerless to make any place I end up resemble the one I've come from.
I retained no useful information from my time, yes we've cured cancer, but I didn't. I know that we cracked cold fusion and don't use fossil fuels, but no idea how.
Even if I did know, I'm not sure it would help. As I've found out on several hundred occasions, it is near impossible to see the future in one timeline and then go back and act upon it.
For all I know, stuff has already happened, or not, to change the outcome of the timeline I'm currently in. It's highly possible that I've fucked up humans ever curing cancer, or colonising Mars or whatever. Or perhaps all of these timelines already existed and I'm just bouncing between each one.
Anyway, I've decided what I'm going to do, for one last time I will jump back to the moment I found the device. But this time, instead of just trying to live it out and hope for the best, I'm going to kill myself.
Hopefully that will eradicate all versions of me and the splits I've caused in the continuum.
If it works, maybe someone will read this one day and...
Well, if it works nobody will read this, because this will never have existed.
Or maybe it does.
Or maybe I'm insane.
I'm going now.
Cryptogee