It's done.

"-Clara !"

"-Yes doctor?"

"-Come over here! You can enter now!"

I call my assistant. She will love this. She will just love this!

I have been working on this for years now. It's revolutionary!

"-Yes doctor? What's this?"

She entered the room and saw the machine.

It's huge and humongous. As it was supposed to be.

One doesn't desconstruct atoms to a particle-level without a huge thing like this, after all.

"-This, my dear, is the work of a lifetime. Do you remember my quantum-time theory?"

"-Vagely."

Classical quantum mechanics says a particle can be anywhere in space. Even if it has a relation to the atom's nuclei, it can be on the other side of the gallaxy.

But what about time?

If a particle can be anywhere in space, why not in time?

This was the basys for my theorem, and also the basys for my work. Particles can actually be anywhere in time, as long as they are in a quantum state.

And that's why time travel is possible.

Because all you need to do is to make things to reach quantum state and them quantum-program them.

That's also why i need such huge machinery. For now, at least. Wait untill the DoppoMarket® and the CirulanGovernmentCo® hear about it. They will surelly trive for it and supply me with an endless amount of NanoQuantum® resources. I hope.

"- You mean this quantumnizer is meant to break the time barrier?!"

"-EXACTLY! Wonderfull, isn't it?!"

I stand proud in front of a shinying-eyes Clara. I can feel her admiration waves from here.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"-This will change everything! It will be the greatest invention since the nano-builders.... no! Since quantum programmation, sire!"

"-Indeed it will my darling! Except...."

It's useless.

At least as a means to alter the past.

I mean, wouldn't it be wonderfull?

If i could just send a Memory Pack to the past and give my own self from 3000 years ago a little extra incentive in the form of knowledge about Quantum Programming ?

Surelly i would have been able to buy at least a few extra TransNanoBrains®. Mother would have been proud of me. And alive. Instead of locked into that primitive and godless reincarnation cycle.

But i, myself, would never be able to enjoy it.

I wonder when will she reincarnate?

It's been 3000 years already, isn't she done with clinging to her past life memories and stuff?!

"- The Past-Present paradox sire?"

"- Exactly my dear. It's useless to try and do something about it."

Time isn't a steady flow.

It is like a huge lava river, begining at the beginning of everything and ending at the Endless Void. A huge, infinite, lava riverbed with it's top consisting of cooled-off rock formed by the eruption of nothingness in the form of pure energy, extending into nothingness for billions of years until it ends on pure, raw, brutal New Time, still hot and without a single crust on top of it!

But it is also a branched riverbed. And there's water running on top of it. This water is us. Matter. Mind. Consciousness. Spirit and Soul.

When we lose our bodies, our water, that is, our consciousness, gets transported to the end of time. Then it gets in contact with that enormous molten time stream, and then it becomes aether. That's a free soul. A ghost. Free from the limitations of having a body. Still stuck with it's other bodies in timelines where it didn't die.... but, in itself and it's own individuality, fluttering through the currents of hot energy steam, the astral plane. It then will travel back, impulsionated by the flow of hot energy towards the cold dampness of the past, until it loses enough energy to find a new body for itself... this is reincarnation.

This is where mother is trapped, and fortunatelly i was able to trace her soul before she tasted the End of Time. I have quantum programmed it, so she should reincarnate in all possible futures in front of me. I won't miss her. Not in a single timeline. Not a single one.

But what if we get out of the main riverbed and go back in time?

What will happen with us?

Well, it would create a paradox.

Because in our own past, we hadn't been here. It was only because i lived the life i lived that i am where i am now.

If i was to send a Memory Pack for myself, then that would breach the crust of the lava river of time. It would pop a new branch in it. It would be like a new End of Time being formed in the Past, and new, an infinite number, of small Time Lava branches would spill out.

Eventually souls would reach that new End of Time, and then reincarnation would begin. Eventually a new Time Crust will form. And that will be a new Timeline.

So, even if my consciousness still gets a new boddy to inhabit, and my free souls from the timelines where it happened for me to die still have a new Branch of Time to reincarnate to....

What of it?

My mother wouldn't return to me. It would be alive for another me, on another world. And the me of this world...

"-Then...."

What's this reaction?

Clara seems anxious. I'm detecting high levels of emotional distress from her.

"-Then what?"

"-....will....will you...."

Oh my. She's even crying. It's been decades since the last time.

Oh, i see.

I lightly spread my arms and present my chest to her. She grabs me and is presently dripping tears on my SoftSkin® implants. They are immediatelly absorbed, of course, but i can't help to feel a weid sensation from the fact of making skin contact with her for the first time in many years.

"-Do not worry dear. I wouldn't do it."

"-Really?!"

"-Yes. I'm not such a fool."

"-Thank you doctor."

"-Don't worry. Even though, somewhere else, maybe i have done it."

Infinite timelines. Infinite possibilities. It's useless even to fight against them. Since every fight with minimal sucess chance will generate both failures and sucess, acceptance and inaction are the best course.

"-What matters is here and now doctor. Thank you for being you."

What matters is here and now.

Indeed. Praised be our Lord and Saviour. Praised be the Core.