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skonen_bladesI came around the corner looking down. I was going through my keys with one hand while carrying my bag of groceries with the other. I was on the top floor. I was pretty winded from walking up the stairs. The elevator hadn’t worked in days. It was an old building. I looked up towards my apartment at the end of the hall.
And dropped my groceries. Someone was standing in front of my apartment door. It was me. Me about twenty years older with a wild stare and a knife in his hand.
I stared at myself while the other me slowly grew a smile on his face that didn’t reach his eyes. With a grunt he raised his knife and ran towards me with insane abandon. He twitched his head back in mid run to look at the ceiling and started yelling like an Islamic warrior.
I dropped to my knees and jerked my gun out before he got to me. I put six bullets in him. He went down in a mess of defeated sighs and disappointed twitches. His scream wound down to silence like a robot running out of batteries before his throat closed with a click. His blood pooled out around him in a slowly growing lake.
I stood up and looked at him. This was getting serious.
This was the second one this month. I must do something really bad in the future to make myself want to come back in time and kill me. I’m a police officer but I’m not in charge of anything important. Just a detective with the temporal investigation squad. Being a Temp means I spend the day going through the encyclopedias in the time safe and seeing if there are any discrepancies with the encyclopedias in the regular library. It’s boring work. When I find something, I kick it upstairs to the bosses. I’m not important.
Going back in time and killing yourself is pretty much the most illegal thing a person can do. No one has succeeded in doing it yet. Something always happens to make it not happen if you see what I mean. If anyone ever succeeded, the theory is that all of existence would get caught in a loop. So far, reality has protected itself.
There's a saying in the agency; "Being a temporal investigator means never having to have said that you were sorry". It highlights the ridiculousness of our job. Every day we check the past without really knowing if we're already living in a changed world. I mean we're pretty sure because of the time safes but it's all theory.
I killed the first version of me that came back over three weeks ago. I'm still doing the paperwork.
That means that there should have not been a second version of me to come back for another attempt. Also, if the 'me' that came back three weeks ago was from an earlier time than the latest one, then the one who I just killed should have never been. Either way, I shouldn't be able to remember both of them but I can. I'm getting woozy just thinking about it.
I make a mental note to try to take the next one alive if one shows up. I try not to think about how getting information from a future version of myself is going to twist the timestream into moebius knots.
I’ll tell my captain in the morning. Right now I need a drink.
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And dropped my groceries. Someone was standing in front of my apartment door. It was me. Me about twenty years older with a wild stare and a knife in his hand.
I stared at myself while the other me slowly grew a smile on his face that didn’t reach his eyes. With a grunt he raised his knife and ran towards me with insane abandon. He twitched his head back in mid run to look at the ceiling and started yelling like an Islamic warrior.
I dropped to my knees and jerked my gun out before he got to me. I put six bullets in him. He went down in a mess of defeated sighs and disappointed twitches. His scream wound down to silence like a robot running out of batteries before his throat closed with a click. His blood pooled out around him in a slowly growing lake.
I stood up and looked at him. This was getting serious.
This was the second one this month. I must do something really bad in the future to make myself want to come back in time and kill me. I’m a police officer but I’m not in charge of anything important. Just a detective with the temporal investigation squad. Being a Temp means I spend the day going through the encyclopedias in the time safe and seeing if there are any discrepancies with the encyclopedias in the regular library. It’s boring work. When I find something, I kick it upstairs to the bosses. I’m not important.
Going back in time and killing yourself is pretty much the most illegal thing a person can do. No one has succeeded in doing it yet. Something always happens to make it not happen if you see what I mean. If anyone ever succeeded, the theory is that all of existence would get caught in a loop. So far, reality has protected itself.
There's a saying in the agency; "Being a temporal investigator means never having to have said that you were sorry". It highlights the ridiculousness of our job. Every day we check the past without really knowing if we're already living in a changed world. I mean we're pretty sure because of the time safes but it's all theory.
I killed the first version of me that came back over three weeks ago. I'm still doing the paperwork.
That means that there should have not been a second version of me to come back for another attempt. Also, if the 'me' that came back three weeks ago was from an earlier time than the latest one, then the one who I just killed should have never been. Either way, I shouldn't be able to remember both of them but I can. I'm getting woozy just thinking about it.
I make a mental note to try to take the next one alive if one shows up. I try not to think about how getting information from a future version of myself is going to twist the timestream into moebius knots.
I’ll tell my captain in the morning. Right now I need a drink.
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Date: 14 Sep 2006 02:18 (UTC)