I mentioned that we cannot travel into the future. And it is not for lack of trying. The direct approach, to simply send someone the other way, does not work out mathematically, or so one of the theoretical physicists explained to me one day but even though I consider myself well educated, I understood only a fraction of his multi-dimensional mathematics.

But there is another obvious way to do it: Send someone a short distance into the past and then, as he simply sticks around the alternate timeline, the simple progression of time carries him into the future. It will be the future of an alternate universe, but since we discovered with high probability that timelines are not chaotic, it is very likely that events there will unfold in more or less the same way, at least for the near future.

This one is so obvious and trivial, of course we tried it. It was not, as they say, a big success. We have a number of different theories about what exactly happened - consciousness detached from body, an impossibility to return against the stream of time, a so far unknown different kind of split in the multiple universes, a multi-worlds kind of paradox, or even a trigger to a locked-in syndrome. What we ended up with, is Sebastian. Or whatever is left of him. They keep him in a separate room, closed off from everyone else. He is stable, physically. Absolutely nothing wrong with him. His brain is not dead, in the legal sense, but his consciousness is. Doctors not in the know would diagnose a coma, but our doctors are in the know.

It has since become one of the core principles that all travel must be a reasonably safe distance into the past and all travellers must return with room to spare before the moment they began the journey.

That has been especially hard on Joshua, as if he didn’t have enough problems already.

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So you thought that time travel to the past sucks, and is way too dangerous. That might be because I told you all the bad stories and few of the good. It is also interesting, thrilling and enlightening, if used right. We have had some success understanding past events better by simply going there and getting an eye-witness account. We understand that these things are not entirely reliable, our experiments have proven that going back to the same place several times can get you the same events, or different ones. But mostly, and I say that with a reason, mostly they are pretty close or similar. Very rarely you get a freak time stream.

It has its dangers, the past. But the future, if there is one thing that is cruel about time, it is the future. And not just because of poor Sebastian.

Joshua is the guy over there. He seems happy and funny, doesn’t he? Joyful bloke, can’t take anything serious. Because he is sure that he can always go back and fix it. By brain, of course, he knows that this is the real reality, at least for him and us. But by heart, he thinks that if anything bad happens, he can just go back and pick a different time stream. And who knows, maybe one day we will be able to do just that. But that day is not today.

But Joshua only understands this with one half of his brain, the rational half. As soon as he relaxes even a little bit and goes about without constantly checking his every thought and action, he becomes this - what you might call joyful, or carefree. We try to take care of him a bit. He already lost his house three times playing poker with some of us. We stopped taking his bets seriously, and we take care of him when he goes outside as best as we can. He is not entirely suicidal, because in his twisted version of how reality functions, he still needs to be alive and more or less ok in the future in order to be able to travel back and fix things. But everything that is not a danger to life, you have never seen anyone with a stronger „so what?“ attitude. Looks nice on the surface, but deep down, if you know him a bit like we do, you notice that he is so detached. No purpose in life, no gravity. If everything can be fixed, then nothing matters. That smile you see on his lips is the smile of someone who isn’t really there.