Thank God for the paradox

 

 

 

Why fate? Jon asked.

 

Because. What else could it have been? I was listening to you for 5 years through that wall, when you went to the toilet, when you watched TV loud, when you danced and played. And i didn't know. You were just a pair of pretty blue eyes for me, a kid to say 'hi' to when we'd meet in the elevator.

 

I could've just as easily lived elsewhere. Maybe we wouldn't have met at all then.

 

But you didn't. You were meant to live across the wall, meant to plant that seed of curiosity in me, whenever i'd bump into you.

 

Maybe.

 

If you hadn't, who's to know would I have talked to you on that parking lot, fifteen years later, when we met again. But I did, cause I knew I saw those eyes somewhere before.

 

Perhaps.

 

Wouldn't it be so cool to relive that moment, again? All those goosebumps, meeting you.

 

I know what would be even cooler to relive right now.He grinned.

 

She knew what was going through her fiance's head. She kissed his forehead, apologizing that she has to go to work and get out of bed. They whispered in each other's ears. She left.

 

A day earlier, her grandfather didn't even notice her when she arrived to the lab, being too busy with his project. So nothing new there. It was going to be the greatest discovery of all time, she remembered his enthusiasm, it was going to change everything. So nothing new there.

 

Jan, her fiance, is fine, she answered her grandfather at the lunch break in the lab. She herself was fine, too. Yes, weather was sort of weird for the time of the year. No, she didn't know the power couplings on the wave transducer were giving off 0.7% more points to the resonance cascade in the time machine. She sighed.

 

A week before that, coming home from the lab, she fed the cat, got the laundry out of drier, missed Jan. He cleaned the bathroom, she saw, and left her cooked lunch to warm up. She missed him.

 

A month before that, work at the lab was the same, except that time grandfather didn't even bother to make a comment about the weather. At home, the cat was fed, Jan being home early. They stayed in bed the whole night.

 

Six months earlier she and Jan got engaged to be married. She moved in his place and they began their life together. She was never happier.

 

Two years before that she met Jan, again. She was sitting in her car, on the parking lot outside her grandfather's lab, talking on her mobile phone. As she was finishing up her conversation, a blue car pulled up next to her. Jan's blue eyes smiled at her for the first time in fifteen years.

 

Two years later, getting to lab, champagne awaited her. Breakthrough. Grandfather extatic. No, she didn't hear the great news. Yes, a real, human experiment would be needed. Yes, she would do it. The next day she stepped into the time machine, eager and ready, just before the moment in time of her choosing.

 

She was in front of her own car, parked on the ground of her grandfather's lab. She could see herself in the vehicle, talking on the phone, but that wasn't what interested her. She ran outside the parking lot, her eyes hunting for the blue car that she knew had to come. It did, fast, round the corner, swerving heavily to avoid her, sliding off the asphalted road straight into the ditch.

 

The wailing sound of the car horn was relentless. Her eyes were fixed on the Jan's bloodied face, pressed against the steering wheel, all smashed in, all in pieces, all dead.