MAY 7TH, 1968 – 1:19 A.M.

Two at the front door, with suppressors. Three in the lobby. One in the hallway. And two in here.

The man handcuffed to the cold metal chair glanced again at the clock over the door directly across from him, taking careful note of the time. The room was tight and small, the walls painted a sickly yellow, the asbestos ceiling white and plain.

A federal agent and a detective sat in the room together, looking at him quizzically, positioned specifically between him and the door. The detective had read him his rights, and he had nodded in response. For a few minutes they had sat still, their gazes jumping between him and a table to his left, upon which rested a small metal box, its surfaces shining and smooth, with knobs and buttons protruding from its top face.

Two at the front door, with suppressors. Three in the lobby. One in the hallway. And two in here.

“Who are you?” the agent asked directly, his voice stern and emotionless. “And where did you get this technology? Is it Russian?”

He was Joseph Zellerman, and he had just been arrested for trespassing at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

Joseph had spent months researching the structure, learning its building plans, spending many nights staking out in the forest outside the grounds, watching the guard shifts change and finding openings in their defenses.

His target was the target, the unknown that everyone was after, some mysterious object that had only begun to exist within the last few hours, somewhere deep in that building. Joseph was confident he was the only one capable of deciphering the exact point in time at which it had begun to exist, and so he had arrived outside the building, not one minute late, ready to be the first to steal it.

Joseph had arrived with the shiny metal box and walked the path he so meticulously designed, navigating toward the front of the building from the street, deftly bypassing every security feature he was aware of before finally arriving at the front door precisely when he meant to.

He had entered, passed the reception desk he knew would be empty, and walked silently through the lobby before arriving at the first elevator. He had just thumbed the downward arrow button on the wall when he had suddenly lost consciousness where he stood.

Joseph had been surprised to awaken handcuffed in the back seat of a police vehicle, with no sort of blunt or chemical trauma on his body to indicate what had knocked him out. He was being escorted by multiple other vehicles ahead and behind the one he was in, and his box was nowhere near him.

He was taken to the nearest police station and placed in an interrogation room for questioning. They had sat him on this cold metal chair, adjusted his handcuffs to be attached to its base, and left him alone here for several minutes before returning for questioning.

The only thing that had worried Joseph was the possibility that the agency had been tipped off. He had been sure no one else could figure out when the target would first appear, but now that he was facing the reality of an arrest, he was afraid that his machine would be taken away from him, too far for him to make use of it. Should that be the case, he could be stuck in prison for much longer than he would like.

It was a critical error, but his worries were quickly assuaged when the two men had entered the room and placed the machine down on the table next to him.

So now Joseph sat, simply staring ahead blankly, ignoring the other men, his expression blank. Waiting patiently.

“It’s fascinating,” the agent continued, genuine curiosity in his voice as he looked over at the box again. “Gotta be some kind of teleporter, right? We saw it on the tapes. One second the parking lot was empty, the next you were just standing there.”

Two at the front door, with suppressors. Three in the lobby. One in the hallway. And two in here. What’s taking so long?

“Listen,” the detective said, his voice gruff but warmer than the agent’s. “You messed with the wrong people. If this were an ordinary crime then I could assure you of the usual process, with jail time, a trial, the usual. But they’ve got some important-sounding feds on the way, and I’m afraid they aren’t so friendly.”

The detective stopped talking, the appearance of real concern on his face a stark contrast to the cold glare of the agent next to him.

“Where did it come from?” the agent asked again, leaning forward in his seat, looking Joseph hard in the face. He turned his eyes toward the floor, steadily ignoring them as the clock overhead continued to tick loudly.

“If you talk to me,” the detective said quietly, “we can work out a deal. If you explain everything now, we can make your life a whole lot easier. You’ll get that trial, probably face some charges, but overall nothing too scary. Even if you go to a federal prison, I’m certain it will be much more comfortable than wherever he’s going to take you. Just explain what you wanted and why you’re here and we can work something out.”

Their pestering questions went on for quite some time. Joseph glanced at the clock overhead several times as a half hour ticked by, and he began to worry if his trick was going to work. He repeated the count of the people in the police station to himself again. It was usually reliable when the security containing him was lax, and the officers here were definitely making it easy.

But 2 A.M. passed on the clock and Joseph grew more and more nervous.

“Why do you keep looking at the clock?” the detective pressed, his tone still feigning a level of warmth and understanding. “Do you have somewhere to be? Was another party depending on your plan once you got inside the headquarters?”

Two thumps, barely audible, came from behind the door. Neither of the men noticed, but Joseph was listening carefully for them. His eyebrows raised involuntarily, relief filling his mind. The clock read 2:04 A.M.

A look of concern crossed the detective’s face, and he glanced at the agent, who turned and left the room. Joseph supposed they had interpreted the relief on his face as confirmation of the existence of another attack; he would have to account for this change of position in the plan he was forming.

One in here, now. Two in the hallway.

The sound of exploding glass came with the echo of suppressed gunshots as shouts of pain filled the air. Louder thumps came as more bodies fell.

A gaunt look came over the detective’s face as Joseph finally made eye contact. The detective stood and backed in the corner to Joseph’s right, pulling a pistol from a concealed holster and leveling it at the door.

A few moments later, two louder bangs came, followed by two more suppressed shots. Heavy silence came over the room as the two watched the door ahead of them, Joseph studying its features closely.

The door’s hinges are to my left, on this side of the room. Detective is to my right, aiming high.

The door slammed open, and another Joseph Zellerman entered the room, already down on one knee, already firing a suppressed pistol, precisely aimed at the detective’s head and sending his body tumbling to the ground, his blood splashing against the walls.

Joseph watched, taking careful note of everything he did, as the identical copy of himself concealed his suppressed pistol in his inner blazer pocket and stepped over the dead man, reaching towards his belt and pulling a key off of it. He was tall and thin, with black hair and darker eyes that stood out from his otherwise pale complexion. There was fresh blood on the face of the copy, seeping from a wound just below his eye. A black backpack was over his shoulder, its zipper open, revealing a glimpse at an exact replica of the device on the table inside.

“Why’d it take so long?” Joseph asked as the copy walked around the chair to uncuff him. He knew it was a stupid question, and that he’d regret asking later on, but he had become impatient and frustrated.

“Three agents came out front to talk after we got here,” his counterpart said, fiddling with the cuffs behind the chair. “Had to wait for them to leave.”

Joseph grunted as the cuffs came loose, finally standing and stretching. He couldn’t just kill all of them? “Nothing weird?” he asked.

“No,” the second said simply, of course understanding what he would mean, and now standing at the exit to the room and waiting. Joseph picked up a backpack from the detective’s body, collected the device off the table, and slipped it inside, leaving the zipper open.

“Let’s go,” Joseph said, following his copy as he turned and left.

A white hallway extended out from this room, its walls and ceiling blank. Two agents were dead on the floor here, blood pooling around their heads. Joseph’s copy opened the door at the end and the pair continued through.

Now they were in the lobby of the police station, where two dead officers lay collapsed in chairs in the waiting area, and a third body rested in a chair behind the reception desk. They quickly crossed the room and stepped over shattered glass exit doors, the brisk night air greeting them.

Outside were the bodies of two other federal agents, and the pair stopped and stood over them. Joseph remembered they had pistols, so he peered at the ground, finding where one clattered away from its owner.

“Stop!” a voice yelled, and the two men turned around to find another agent standing at the corner of the station, his face distinctly panicked in the dark, a pistol held out in front of him.

Joseph raised his hands above his head, shooting his counterpart an angry look. The other simply stared at the agent, scowling vaguely.

“Get on the---” the agent could barely shout before another suppressed gunshot came out of the night, striking the back of his head. The body collapsed, propelled forward by the force of the bullet.

“Nothing weird, huh?” Joseph said angrily, and his older counterpart shrugged. Shaking his head, he bent over and picked up the suppressed pistol he’d spotted on the asphalt earlier.

A third Joseph Zellerman emerged from behind a car in the dark parking lot, joining the other two in front of the station, a backpack over his shoulder and a fresh cut on his cheek.

“We lived,” the third said to the others. “Go close the loops.”

Joseph nodded, the sequence totally clear now. He turned away from the others and headed toward the parking lot opposing where the third copy came from. He strolled across the asphalt and picked a spot behind a car at the far end, putting enough distance between him and the station to hide the inevitable sound.

He bent over, placing his pistol on the ground and pulling the machine from his backpack and placing it on the blacktop. It was a cold and heavy gray box, about six inches square and three inches tall. Its surfaces were smooth and unblemished, and its top featured a screen, a red and yellow button, two dials, and a keyboard. He pressed the yellow button and the screen came to life, presenting a map of the world, showing a detailed representation of the position, elevation, and ground composite of his current location. An arrow pointed offscreen, indicating its target coordinates were in that direction. In the top-left corner the current time and target time were displayed.

Joseph twisted the dials, carefully instructing the machine to place the target coordinates over his current position. He tapped at the keyboard, and the screen showed the target time changing as he typed. The current time was 2:10 A.M., so he set the target time to 1:55 A.M.

Once he was certain it was all punched in correctly, he picked up his pistol and the device and stood upright, and without another moment’s hesitation, pushed the red button. A timer appeared on the screen, counting down from three seconds.

The air around him cracked as it was compressed, unwillingly making way for the vacuum that his body now filled after the machine transported him fifteen minutes backward through time.

He could already see multiple agents in the distance, alive, guarding the front door. Slipping the machine into his backpack, he made his way through the dark, skirting around the property and positioning himself behind the vehicle where the third Joseph would appear. This late at night, there were no closer vehicles he could hide behind.

Two at the front door. Three in the lobby. Two in the hallway. And one in my room.

Right now, there were five agents at the front door, with a car just in front of them, its headlights on and engine running. He waited impatiently, watching as they conversed for several minutes, frustrating Joseph further as his annoyance with the situation grew. He knew he was capable of killing all five of these men, but that would cause a paradox, and he knew such things were impossible.

He wondered what the failure point would have been had he attempted to kill them all. For a paradox like this to be prevented, a failure point must exist to represent where the timeline decided another loop was needed. Though Joseph was smart enough to commit tricks like the one he was currently pulling, he could admit that he didn’t know why loops sometimes happened in specific ways.

After all, it certainly wasn’t he who decided that shooting all five agents here and now wouldn’t work. If it were up to him, they would all be dead already.

So he stood in the darkness, irritated, watching the agents mindlessly chatter on about what the ‘teleporter’ could be until eventually the conversation ended. Three of the agents entered the idle vehicle in front of them, and after another breath, they pulled away, exiting the property and disappearing down the road.

Without further hesitation, Joseph took aim and fired two careful shots, ending the lives of the agents who guarded the glass doors. He closed the distance across the parking lot, approaching the entrance, ready to finally get this over with.

Three in the lobby.

Aiming precisely, he fired through the window at the officer behind the desk, the glass loudly shattering and skittering all across the tiled floor. Joseph stepped through the threshold and turned to fire on the two men sitting at chairs in the lobby, both shouting in surprise before their sudden deaths. He crossed the room and approached the next door.

Two in the hallway.

The hinges to the hall were on this side, so he pulled, opening the door from the side where he could not be seen. He held it open, leaned against it, and thought for a moment. No paradoxes, but there was no sense in not being careful.

He didn’t know where exactly in the hallway the agents were standing, but he knew that he survived the encounter, so even if the agents shot first, they would have to miss. And he did remember, both of them managed to get shots off; there were two loud bangs, with his suppressed shots immediately succeeding them.

Joseph spun around the threshold, pointing only his head and arm through the doorway and taking aim at the first agent he could see. Two bangs came from their weapons; one bullet zipped past his shoulder, his shirt ruffling with the wind as it rocketed past. The other came far closer, searing through the top level of skin on his cheek as it flew by.

He fired his weapon twice, aiming perfectly from one to the other, getting each through the head and sending them tumbling to the ground. The gash burned hot on his cheek, fueling his frustration. He remembered seeing the wound on both of his future renditions now, but he had forgotten about it in the heat of the moment. It would have been unavoidable, though; no need to chastise himself for not preventing the inevitable.

Joseph supposed the timeline had decided it would be more convenient if he had simply forgotten about the wound before entering the hallway.

The final room was just ahead. The detective was to the left, aiming high. The door opened inward to the right. Just as he had intended to remember. He took a deep breath, grabbing the handle quietly. The timeline never changes, he reminded himself.

He threw it open, falling to one knee in a smooth motion, and took quick aim at the detective, shooting him through the head before he could react. His body fell against the wall and slumped to the floor.

Only a few more minutes of this left.

“Why’d it take so long?” the angry voice of his younger self exclaimed as Joseph slipped the pistol into his jacket. He bent over to find the handcuff key on one of the agents, grabbing it and walking behind the younger Joseph, mimicking the actions he remembered seeing himself take. He kneeled over and slipped it into the keyhole of one of the cuffs binding the younger’s arms to the chair, fiddling with it to get the mechanism to unlock.

“Three agents came out front to talk after we got here,” he said as the first cuff came undone. “Had to wait for them to leave.” He hated when he asked future versions of himself dumb questions, but he could never stop himself.

The second cuff came loose, clattering to the floor as the first Joseph stood and stretched.

“Nothing weird?” the younger asked.

“No,” Joseph said simply, just wanting to get this last interaction over with. He had somewhere to be, and incessant questions that could cause more complex scenarios only irritated him further.

“Let’s go,” the younger said, and Joseph left the room, the other following just behind. They picked their way across the station, stepping over bodies and through doors before finally arriving back outside.

He stepped out and stood for a moment, waiting a few seconds as the younger Joseph searched the ground for his weapon, until finally the last agent cried out, “Stop!”

Joseph turned to the right to watch the end of this man’s time. His copy did the same, shooting Joseph an angry look.

“Get on the---” the agent shouted before the gunshot came, quietly echoing through the night, exactly the same as he had just witnessed moments earlier. The agent collapsed forward, landing in the same position he had seen previously.

“Nothing weird, huh?” the younger quipped, and Joseph just shrugged. He disliked interacting with himself. He watched as the younger shook his head, bent over, and picked up a suppressed pistol from the body of one of the dead agents.

Finally the third Joseph came walking out from the parking lot, backpack over his shoulder, gun still brandished.

“We lived,” the older said to them, now hearing it for the second time. “Go close the loops.”

Joseph walked past his future self, positioning himself right behind the car where he saw his third copy come from. He bent over, gently placing the gun on the ground and adjusting the coordinates on the machine to point directly over this spot. He set the target time to 2:09 A.M., just one minute ago, grabbed the machine and the gun in either hand, stood upright, and finally pushed the red button.

The crack sounded and he stood, looking out at the parking lot, listening to the gunshots sounding from inside the station. The agents were dead in front of the glass doors, the blood around their heads pooled slightly less than before the jump.

He watched as an agent he hadn’t previously seen came around the rear corner of the building, slowly approaching the front glass doors, his weapon drawn, a terrified look on his face. Saved only a few minutes by the timeline’s decision to add another loop, the man creeped forward, approaching the next corner of the building just as the gunshots inside stopped.

Joseph stood, invisible under the dark of night, invincible under the protection of the timeline, as the man inched toward his inevitable doom. He sometimes pitied people who didn’t know better, those like this agent who had no idea how much more capable time travelers were than him. It was like watching someone fall off of a skyscraper. They were technically still alive, but their imminent death was impossible to prevent, so one could only watch curiously and wonder what terror they must be feeling in their final moments.

The glass doors opened just as the agent rounded the corner. He pointed his weapon at the copies, yelling “Stop!” in a panicked voice. One raised their hands in the air, and the other simply turned and stared, both waiting patiently as Joseph trained his aim on the back of the agent’s head.

He got three words out before Joseph fired, ending the man’s life. The youngest rendition of himself exclaimed sarcastically at the second, bending over to pick up the weapon he still held now as Joseph jogged across the parking lot to meet them.

“We lived,” he said, finally able to say the words himself, knowing it was impossible to say anything else. “Go close the loops.”

One turned and walked toward the lot on the other side of the building, and the other moved past him, positioning himself behind the car where he was just standing. He listened for the two loud cracks as they traveled backward through time, the air filling the sudden vacuum, finally closing the loops.

He shook his head to himself, turning and walking away on his own. He’d never seen alternate versions of himself at the CIA headquarters, so it most likely was his only attempt. It was probably better he didn’t try again anyway; he was certain that someone had been tipped off about his time and location tonight. It would seem that the reason the government learned to guard Langley from time travelers so fiercely in the future was because of this event.

Joseph wasn’t often the victim of his own choices, but he supposed it was obvious now in hindsight. All of the travelers knew that Langley was an impenetrable fortress. Evidently his attempt to steal the target the moment it started existing was not just a total failure, but an event that would lead to their permanent understanding of time travel and how to defend from it.

No matter, though; the loop needed to be resolved at some point, by someone. He was displeased that it ended up being him, and that he ended up injured because of it, but perhaps he could use this knowledge to his advantage somehow.

He touched the dried blood on his face, thinking for a moment before deciding on his next move. At least he finally knew how he got this scar. None of his future counterparts he had met had told him, but that was par for the course; he never told his past self what he knew would happen unless it was totally necessary.

Joseph pulled the machine from his pack, deciding on his next destination. He adjusted the settings on its surface, double-checking he had the correct time and coordinates entered, and activated it.

The night air cracked as the time traveler disappeared, the repercussions of his choices rippling permanently through the eternal timeline.

JUNE 14TH, 2025 – 8:45 A.M.

The delicious aroma of frying bacon filled the early morning air as Luke Demetriou prepared breakfast, whistling a jovial tune as he bustled around his kitchen. It was a Saturday, and his wife had come home late from work at the hospital, so he had woken early to treat her. Evelyn was now resting peacefully upstairs, but he knew the scent permeating the house would summon her soon.

A bagel was getting crispy in the toaster as Luke cracked open a couple eggs into another pan. He opened the fridge and removed a container of spinach, placing it on the counter next to the stove with the remaining ingredients that would comprise his signature breakfast sandwich.

It was Evelyn’s favorite, and he smiled at the thought of her coming down to greet him soon. Light streamed in through skylights in the ceiling, their windows opened downward to let in the soothing summer air. The dining area beneath them was set nicely, two chairs at either end of the small round table accompanied by a pair of ceramic plates, metal forks, knives, and empty cups.

Their home was humble, smaller than average and tucked away in a corner of a large neighborhood against a forest, but they both found it comfortable. Life was pleasant and easy for them, and they greatly enjoyed their peaceful lives together. They were both in their early thirties, with plenty of life ahead of them.

He worked as a mechanical engineer at a manufacturing company, while she worked as a nurse at the nearby hospital, and they both made plenty of money. They had a good amount saved in their bank, but they never had decided to move to a bigger house or indulge themselves with expensive items. They rather enjoyed traveling the world together, taking vacations every few months to visit whatever country they had most recently set their hearts upon. The couple was always eager to escape the air of loneliness that always hung over their otherwise comfortable little home.

Luke and Evelyn were both orphans; Luke’s parents had died in a car accident when he was six months old, while Evelyn had been dropped off in a basket in front of the orphanage shortly after her birth. They had grown up together in the same orphanage, had been close friends for their entire lives, and when they finally married, they both knew they wanted children to complete their family.

But Evelyn was infertile, and she was unable to conceive for many years. They had suffered greatly together over their inability to be parents. The opportunity to treat a child the way they could never experience was something they needed, and even a small house like theirs always felt empty.

Three years ago, against all odds, their son Sebastian was born, and life for them had been renewed; raising a child was a wonderful source of happiness for them, and they fell even more deeply in love over their adoration of him.

When Sebastian was barely one year old, his mother had taken him to the grocery store, and had him sitting in the upper section of their cart. She had turned her back to him for only ten seconds to select an item from the shelf of the aisle she was in, but when she had looked back at the cart, Sebastian had vanished.

The boy was never seen again. The store’s security footage showed someone approaching the cart, removing the child, and walking by right behind Evelyn. The kidnapper had walked around the store with the child until finding a blind spot between several of the cameras, and at that point he had disappeared.

There was no video of him leaving the store, only entering it; the investigators suspected the perpetrator had changed clothing on the spot and concealed the child before finding an exit. They managed to track down and question every person who had exited the store in the suspected timeframe, but all seemed innocent; or at least, none could be proven guilty.

The couple had a sad and stressful couple of years while they learned to cope with their loss together. They had decided they did not want another child, and the wounds healed as time passed, but the scars never went away.

So their house still felt empty and lonely despite the joy they found in each others’ presence. They could afford to move to a bigger house in a nicer area, but could never bear to go through with it. This was their home, and they were content together here.

Despite the pain it brought him, Luke liked to reflect on his life during these quiet moments he found to himself at times like this Saturday morning. He was thankful for what he had, thankful for Evelyn and their small wealth, that they could live a comfortable life together despite their hidden pains. It was important to stay positive and not dwell on the past. Though he would always wonder where his boy was, he could maintain a positive attitude in the love he felt for his wife, and knew that taking care of her was too important to allow himself to crumble into the deep terrors he could let himself imagine.

A loud crack echoed through the open windows, from somewhere out in the forest behind his house.

Luke flinched, his introspection pierced, knocking a fork off the counter as he hurried over to the back window to check the trees. There were a few dead ones in his backyard he had been worried about, but everything looked normal; he figured it must have been a large branch cracking somewhere in the woods.

He started whistling again, shaking his head as he returned to his station. He picked up the fork on the floor and tossed it in the sink before grabbing a spatula to flip the eggs.

Another crack sounded, louder this time, now seeming to come from the front of his house.

Luke put the spatula down, his brow furrowed as he glanced out the windows for the source of the sounds. After another moment of standing quietly, another loud crack pierced the air, and with it, a heavy thump on the dining room table.

Luke whirled around to look at the table and found that a silver metal box had appeared, sitting heavy atop the shattered remains of one of his plates. It was small, and its top face featured numerous buttons, a few dials, and a glowing orange screen.

After another heartbeat the front door burst open, and Luke spun wildly to find someone standing at the entrance to the kitchen, wearing a full black armored suit, its helmet bearing a tinted plastic face shield and gas mask. They stopped, looked around, spotted Luke, and suddenly tore across the room straight at him.

He stepped back, bewildered, watching with sudden terror as they sprinted, closing the distance between them in barely a second, before finally picking up the box on the table and pressing two buttons on its surface.

After barely a moment to breathe, to Luke’s complete surprise, the armored person, the device, and one of his dining chairs all vanished with the same resounding cracking noise.

Luke put his hand to his forehead, eyes wide, not sure what he had just seen, barely able to process it.

After a few breaths, an identical device appeared on the table with another loud crack, in the same position as before, atop the shattered remains of his plate. There was no visual effect to it, no motion, no clear indication of its arrival beside the sound it made; one second it wasn’t there, and the next it was.

A chorus of cracks rang out from every direction outside his house at the same time, echoing off the forest and down the street, in unison with the metal box appearing on the table. Luke took a few steps back into his kitchen, looking from window to window, completely unsure of what to do and unable to stifle the growing panic.

Brief silence, and then a gunshot rang out.

Luke bumped into his countertop and gripped the edges, his knuckles going white as he tried to steady himself both mentally and physically. Another sharp crack sounded from the same direction as the gunshot. Seconds later, another, and then another. He was overwhelmed, lost in panic and could barely stand as he waited for the next inexplicable moment to come, trying to decide what to do next, unable to tear his eyes from the shiny box on his table until finally his back door burst open.

Evelyn, his beautiful wife, was standing there, but Luke immediately noticed something was off about her. She was wearing different clothes instead of the nightgown she’d fallen asleep in. Her black hair was flecked with gray, and her face seemed older, as though a long time had passed. Her expression was stricken with terror, her brown eyes locking with his and matching his own panicked demeanor, and in that moment he knew it was definitely her, that something terribly wrong had happened that she needed to tell him, that he needed to take her and get as far from here as possible right now.

“Luke…” she said quietly, and after a heartbeat, her head yanked forward, accompanied by the roar of a gunshot from just outside the house.

Luke screamed as his wife collapsed to the floor, his mind breaking down as the overload became too much, multiple cracks sounding outside again as his knees gave out. He crawled over to Evelyn and cradled her body, tears pouring out of his eyes, his mind at a total loss for the events of the past few minutes as his wife’s blood spread across the kitchen tiles.

The front door burst open again as yet another crack echoed outside, and he heard footsteps, dashing toward his dining table and stopping for a moment. Luke looked up from the floor, his vision blurred by tears, to find a man lifting the second box off the table before turning and sprinting toward him.

Luke rested his head on the floor, blood smeared across his face and through his hair, sobbing desperately as the man leaned over and grabbed his arm, pulling him away from Evelyn’s body.

And suddenly, with a loud crack, they were elsewhere.

SEPTEMBER 25TH, 1932 – 12:38 P.M.

Luke was now laying in hot sand, the tiny grains sticking to the blood soaking his face and clothes. For a few moments he continued to tremble and shudder, holding his arms around himself as the panic slowly subsided. Everything had suddenly become calm, and his mind slowed down a bit, allowing him to gain his bearings.

The tears stopped flowing and he opened his eyes, trying to breathe deeply to calm himself, his brain switching gears from total terror to a wild desperation to flee, to run without stopping until he was far away from the imminent danger. He turned over, getting one knee beneath him and leaning up to gain his bearings.

He seemed to be in a desert, wide open and arid, small bushes peppering the surface of the sands. The horizon was distant and flat, and the sky was blue, the sun hanging high overhead and beating down with an intense heat. The flight response subsided as total confusion overcame him, a crazy feeling washing over his mind as he doubted the reality he was experiencing. What in the world was going on? Was he dreaming?

A man stood to the side, watching him steadily as he gained his bearings. Luke only felt more confused and scared as the moments passed, his emotions boiling into a more and more perplexed mess. He made eye contact with the other man, and his stomach twisted at the sight, his mind burning with the horrifying realization.

The man’s eyes were varied in color, piercing blue dotted with spots of green and brown. Heterochromia, as he knew it was called, because the pattern of the discoloration was exactly that which was in his own eyes.

They stared at each other for a long few moments as Luke studied the other man’s features, an instinctive fear building deeply in him as he realized that every part of the man’s face was identical to his own, as though he were looking into a mirror. Messy brown hair, soft jaw, skinny nose, receding hairline. Somehow, the man standing there looked identical to him in every way.

“Evelyn’s alive,” the man said, and Luke’s heart twisted at the words. The confusion waxed further, a thousand questions filling his brain as his instincts decided the best course of action was to simply submit to whatever was about to happen.

“What?” he mumbled, still unable to process anything that had happened.

“I’ll explain everything,” the other man said, his voice calm and controlled. It too was exactly as Luke’s own voice sounded.

“H-how?” Luke stuttered, sitting awkwardly in the sand as the other man looked down at him.

“She’s safe at your home,” the man said with Luke’s voice. “We have plenty of time to talk here before you go get her. I need to explain everything first though.”

Luke just stared, dumbfounded.

“We can take a moment,” the man said, sitting in the sand himself. Luke noticed a backpack over his shoulder, sagging deeply under the weight of some heavy items inside. “I remember needing it. Just breathe for a little bit.”

Luke inhaled deeply, closing his eyes and trying to take hold of his mind for a moment. They were no longer in danger, he could take a minute to think and process everything that had happened.

Some time passed as Luke recounted the events of the past few minutes in his head. He breathed slowly, trying to remember the techniques to avoid panic attacks he had learned from therapy. He and Evelyn had needed a lot of time to learn how to handle stress.

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But this situation was entirely different, and he needed an explanation as soon as possible. He managed to calm himself enough to process the immediate; he felt the sand beneath his hands, smelled the arid desert air, and saw the empty blue sky. He grounded himself within the moment, acknowledging each of his senses in turn and calming the fear. After another few seconds, he turned and looked at the other man, who turned back at him at the same time.

“Okay,” Luke said, breathing deeply. “What’s going on?”

The other man reached into his pack and pulled out the metal device that had appeared on Luke’s table, setting it down on the sand in front of them.

“This,” the man said, “is a time machine. And as you can tell, I am you, a little bit further in the future than you, relatively speaking.”

Luke’s eyebrows raised in disbelief. He supposed there was no better explanation at this point, but it certainly was a wild conjecture. He opted to stay silent and let the other man continue.

“Right now, we are somewhere in the Sonoran Desert in the year 1932. I took you here because I never told anyone this is where I take you, which means no one will try to appear here to attack us. So we’re definitely safe.”

“Attack us?” Luke asked quietly, the unsettling feeling making his stomach turn.

“Yeah, and I’ll explain that in a few minutes. But since I’m you, I remember this whole conversation, and thus I remember nothing crazy happened by the time we leave here. Therefore, we’re safe.”

Luke considered the statement. It made sense, after all. If this man truly were him in the future, then he would truly remember all of this happening. The scientific part of his mind was already at work, ready to try to understand the significance of this. The stress retreated further as he mulled over the information; his work had always been a source of focus and calm for him.

“So we can save Evelyn?” he asked again, trying to stifle his curiosity.

“Yep,” the man said, his demeanor casual and patient. “I remember saving her.”

“How?” Luke asked, desperation edging his voice. “Can we stop whoever… killed her… before it happens?”

“Well, no,” the other man said slowly, a look of pain crossing his face. “She truly did die when I saw her die.”

Luke blinked. “I don’t understand.”

“You can’t change things,” the other Luke said slowly. “Anything that happens in the timeline is permanent.”

It took a moment for him to understand. “So why can’t I just take this machine and get her out of there right now?”

“That’s what you’re going to do, rescue the one who’s still sleeping upstairs. The one who dies is much older. She did look older, remember?”

The connection suddenly was made in his mind, and things started to make more sense. “Well, why can’t I go outside the house and stop whoever shot her?”

“Because you can’t,” the other man said. “You just can’t. The past is immutable and you can’t stop something from happening. You can try, but something will stop you.”

“How? What would stop me?”

The other man paused as he gathered his thoughts. “Okay, so here’s how I understand it. The timeline is unchangeable. Everything that has happened is permanent. So anything that you go back to change in time has already been accounted for in the timeline. If you do intend to go back and stop whoever that was from pulling that trigger, then some sequence of events has already occurred to stop that from happening, because you know you witnessed Evelyn’s death.”

“Well, what sequence of events would that be?”

“Who knows? Maybe you trip over something. Maybe someone else tackles you before you get there. Maybe the guy wasn’t actually going to shoot her, but when you run into him, you make him pull the trigger by accident.” The man looked away as bitterness came over his face. “I don’t know what exactly it would be, but I can assure you, if you tried to go back to stop it from happening, you would fail.”

Luke thought for a moment. “Do I try to do it?”

“No,” the other man said. “At least, not between your relative time and mine. I might still go try.”

“Alright then,” Luke said, straightening his back. “So the idea is, I travel back into the house and pull her out of there, from where she is in our bedroom?”

The other man nodded.

“And, from her perspective, a considerable amount of time goes by between that point and when she dies?”

“Seems like it.”

“What, you don’t know for sure?”

“Maybe someone dyed her hair and forced her to wear makeup,” the other Luke said with a tight smile. “She could be much younger. I hope that’s not the case, but you should anticipate any possibility.”

It was a grim idea. Who would play a kind of trick like that? He shook his head, looking away while he processed the information.

A sudden thought crossed Luke’s mind. “So do I have to memorize this conversation? What happens if I say something the wrong way when I become you?”

“You won’t,” the other man said simply. “It’s impossible.”

“How? I really can’t just wait until I’m you, and intentionally say something different?”

“Nope,” the other Luke said. “It’s a strange feeling. I still feel as though I’m choosing to say all these things, but if I try to do something that I don’t remember happening, I just can’t do it.”

The thought was perplexing. He could freely choose what to do while still being prevented from doing exactly what the timeline dictated? It was eerie to consider.

“So wait,” he said slowly. “Am I… invincible? It should be impossible for me to die now that I’ve seen myself in the future, right?”

“Yep,” the other man said. “Watch this.”

In a quick motion, the other man whipped a pistol out of his backpack, pointed it at Luke’s head, and pulled the trigger.

Luke flinched hard, panic ripping through his mind suddenly as he heard the click, but the moment passed and he realized he was still alive. The other man aimed the gun off to the side and pulled the trigger again, and the gun roared, the recoil bending his arm back as the echo of the gunshot resounded through the atmosphere.

“Pretty neat, right?”

Luke just blinked, his mouth falling open dumbly.

“From what I gather, the timeline will find the simplest route to resolve what would otherwise become a paradox. You can’t die, since I’m sitting right here. But, with my free will, I pulled the trigger. So the simplest thing to stop this gun from killing you is to make it misfire.”

“Who controls the timeline?”

The other Luke simply shrugged.

“The timeline decides things on its own?” Luke pressed.

“I guess? No one really knows. We all just try to manipulate it, but in the end, it ultimately decides what happens of its own accord, somehow.”

“Okay… so who’s ‘we’?”

The other man laughed. “Man, I forgot how many questions I had asked.”

Luke cracked a small grin, the first positive thing he had felt. Everything was making sense; now he just needed to understand why it happened. There was also an odd comfort in talking to his literal own self, the perfect familiarity making an otherwise complex conversation a total relief.

“Alright, I’ll start from the beginning,” the other man said. “There’s a salt mine in southeast Ohio where the CIA has hidden something we can only call the Target. There’s six time travelers, including myself and Evelyn, who are all after it, because, though we know nothing about it, we know that the CIA is capable of guarding it from time travelers despite not themselves having a time machine, which means it must be valuable.”

Luke furrowed his eyebrows. “That’s really vague. You have no idea what it does?”

“No, and as far as I’m aware, none of us do,” the other Luke said, a certain weariness in his voice. “There’s a dearth of available information in this business. All of our future selves are withholding a lot from our younger selves, because otherwise you deprive yourself of free will, which you’ll come to learn is extremely valuable. That same timeline pressure that stopped my bullet from killing you earlier, and that is stopping me from saying things I don’t remember, can bend your own direct will just as easily. It’s a bit terrifying.”

A chill went down Luke’s spine at the concept. “Well, what do you know about this Target right now?” After a moment, he added, “… that you can actually tell me?”

“I…,” the man began before stopping, his face appearing confused for a moment. “Well, I can’t tell you right now because someone else is supposed to soon. It’s not long until you know those details, but it’s not my place to tell you.”

“Alright, different question then,” Luke said, feeling a little disconcerted. “How is the Target so secure in this mine? Can’t you just teleport inside with the machine?”

“The machine does not discern altitude,” the other man explained. “It drops you at the highest solid point for whatever latitude and longitude you entered. So if something is buried deep underground, you’d need to physically force your way in, without the help of a time machine.”

“But, the machine appeared on my table.”

“I had the ceiling windows open, remember?”

“Ah,” Luke mused, thinking over his limited experience so far. “So, why did everyone appear at my house at all?”

“I actually don’t know that yet,” the other man said. “I suspect it’s because a time machine appears there of its own accord. It’s not often a time machine will simply appear somewhere without a traveler. For some reason, at that instant, it appeared in my house on its own, and thus, all the other travelers wanted to get that box for themselves.”

“But why?” It wasn’t making sense to him. “They already have a machine if they’re capable of appearing there. Why would they need a second one?”

“Again, I just don’t know yet. It hasn’t been that long between you and me.”

Luke’s mind burned with more and more questions as other ones gained answers. He didn’t even mind the midday heat that was making him sweat, the situation had become far too interesting for him to care, but he felt he should make sure they didn’t stray too far from his imminent mission.

“Can I ask more questions? Or are we pressed for time to save Evelyn?”

The man laughed, the exact same laugh as Luke’s own. “It’s 1932. It’ll be almost a hundred years before everything at my house happens. And we can still go further back in time if we need to. There’s plenty of, uh, time.”

“Okay then,” he said sheepishly. “How does the machine work?”

The other man reached into his bag and produced a second time machine, walking over and placing it down in the sand in front of Luke before sitting back down. His bag was clearly empty now.

“Push the yellow button,” the man said.

Luke complied, and the screen turned on, displaying two times in the top left corner. One was 12:51 P.M., September 25th, 1932, and the other was 8:52 A.M., June 14th, 2025. The rest of the screen was a blank orange, with two target indicators overlapping in the center.

“In the top left corner,” the other man began, “the first date shown is the current time at your current location. It’s sensitive to worldwide time zones, so if you’re going to do intercontinental travel, make sure the time you enter is accurate to your destination time zone. The second time is the target time, which is when you’ll arrive after the jump. Both only have minutes as their most precise unit, so you’ll always land at the zero second mark for that minute. Also, the target time automatically switches to whenever you left, which is why it shows the time at your house now.

“The targets in the center are the current location and the target location.” The man reached over and tapped the minus key on the keyboard a few times, and the screen zoomed out to reveal an orange-tinted map of the world. “Use the two dials to set your latitude and longitude. Remember, no differentiation for altitude. And, the target location also switches to wherever you just came from as well.

“The red button will activate it. The screen will show a countdown from three, and at zero, any interconnected group of items that are touching the machine will be removed from the current time and deposited at the destination.”

“Any items at all? What, is there some kind of weight limit?”

“Something like that, but I don’t know what it is exactly. It’s high enough to bring two people in a single jump. I don’t think it can take three.”

“Okay then,” Luke said, finally reaching down and grabbing the time machine. He twisted the dials and typed at the keyboard as he’d been instructed, lining up the target coordinates to be in the forest outside his house, and reducing the target time to 8:48 A.M.

“Looks good,” his future counterpart said after a glance at the machine. “All you have to do is walk in the house, grab her, and teleport her out of there. There’s a hotel in Alaska you need to take her to. Here’s the coordinates.” He pulled a slip of paper from his pocket and handed it to Luke. It showed two numbers and a time: 64.8582, -147.7031, and 4:48 A.M., June 14th, 2025.

“Okay,” Luke said, suddenly very unsure. “And you said nothing goes wrong?”

“Yes,” the other man said. “You have nothing to worry about. I remember running inside, setting the location, grabbing her, and then pushing the red button.”

“Alright.” Luke took a deep breath, and picked up the heavy machine, holding it delicately. “Anything else to tell me?”

“I don’t remember being told anything else,” the other man said. “Good luck. I’ll meet you at the hotel, I have a lot more to tell you there.” He put a hand down on his own machine.

Luke took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and pressed the red button. The other man nodded at him as the time machine counted downward, and after another breath, he vanished.

JUNE 14TH, 2025 – 8:48 A.M.

A loud pop sounded, and suddenly Luke was standing alone in a familiar forest, a large pile of sand gathered around his feet. The sensation was unique in that there was not a direct accompanying feeling to it; the messages his senses were relaying to his brain simply changed instantly from the dry hot desert to the cool summer forest.

The early morning sun was casting long shadows through the trees, shrouding the area in almost complete darkness despite the beauty of the pink sky above. Through the trees and leaves he could see his house, so he started off in that direction. A chill ran down his spine as a breeze blew through, making him feel a little unsettled, as though he was being watched.

He grew nearer to his house and, sure enough, through his back window, he was able to see his own confused face peering into the woods, trying to determine the source of the sound. He didn’t remember seeing anyone though, and sure enough, the younger Luke turned away from the window and disappeared.

Luke’s heart was pounding as he approached. How strange it was, knowing that he only came and checked the window because he himself had come back through time to this moment. It was oddly disconcerting, as though he wasn’t really making choices right now, but rather following a predetermined path through space. The natural feeling of having free will was strangely absent from his mind, though he might’ve just been deluding himself.

Luke emerged from the forest and walked around his house, tracing an invisible path that he knew he couldn’t avoid, moving through time exactly as he should. He rounded the corner to the front of his house, stepping past the garden and through his driveway until arriving on his own porch.

The second crack came from just behind him, and Luke whirled around to find the armored soldier standing there, in the center of his front lawn, holding a time machine of their own.

For a silent few moments they stared at each other, both perfectly still, as though the soldier was also confused by him being there. The third crack came from inside his house and the soldier reacted first, finally sprinting toward Luke and shoving him aside as he pushed the front door open. Luke stumbled but quickly regained his composure and watched from outside the house as the soldier looked around, spotted the time machine just out of his view, and took off in that direction.

The time to go was now, while his younger version was distracted. Luke quietly stepped through the door, moving straight up the stairs in the entry hall. He heard the crack of the soldier disappearing just as Luke reached the upper landing, and he moved quickly down the corridor until he arrived at his master bedroom.

He pushed the door open to find his wife stirring, her eyebrows furrowing with confusion as the first chorus of cracks echoed all around the house outside. She looked up at him, her eyes barely open, and his heart softened as they made eye contact.

Evelyn was alive.

“What’s going on? Do you hear those sounds?” she murmured, smiling and shifting toward the edge of the bed as Luke made his way across the room and knelt down next to her. It was dark enough in here that she couldn’t see the blood on his face and clothes. Her blood.

“Hey, Evelyn,” Luke said softly but urgently as he read the note he was given, trying to ignore the chaos of pops and gunshots outside. He put the machine on the bed and started entering the coordinates. It helpfully adjusted for the time zones automatically as he zoomed out and moved the target location across the world, reducing the hour counter by four and saving him a few seconds of entry. “There’s no time to explain right now, just give me a minute.”

“What?” she said, the sleepiness fading as concern came over her, the cacophony waking her further. “Luke, do you know what’s---”

The gunshot came from downstairs and Luke heard his own scream just after, and Evelyn looked at him in horror, scrambling to get the sheets off of her and stand up.

Luke finished entering the coordinates, then reached over to his nightstand and grabbed his wallet from it. He then took her phone from her nightstand before finally pushing the red button.

“Hold still for a second,” he said quickly to her as the screen started counting down. She complied, her arm trembling with fear under Luke’s grasp as the commotion downstairs grew more and more wild.

“Luke, what in the world is---”

JUNE 14TH, 2025 – 4:48 A.M.

The world changed from the dim blue of their bedroom to cold asphalt and bitter air as they arrived in Fairbanks, Alaska about three minutes earlier than they had left. A blanket and their pillows had come on the trip as well, everything suddenly appearing together in the middle of a parking lot in front of a large building. The sun was low in the sky, lighting everything in a gentle blue, while cars occasionally drove back and forth on a road just beyond the property.

Evelyn gasped as the air was knocked out of her from falling two feet to the road, rolling over and grabbing at her blanket as confusion swept over her. Only now Luke saw she was wearing her forest green nightgown, and only then he realized he should have collected some warmer clothes for themselves.

“Luke,” she wheezed, trying to lean up and get her arms beneath herself.

Luke gained his bearings, shaking off the disorienting feeling of teleportation and leaning over to Evelyn. He took her hands and helped her sit up, brushing her messy hair out of her face. She wrapped her arms around him, breathing heavily as they sat on their blanket in the middle of the lot together, the sudden calm as comforting for Luke as it was the first time.

The air popped loudly just to their right, and they whipped their heads over to find a copy of Luke standing there, a pile of smooth sand gathered around his feet, the time machine held in one hand. Evelyn’s mouth fell agape, looking back at her husband and studying his face, verifying the copy was the same person.

“Hey, you made it,” the future Luke said casually, slipping the time machine into his loose backpack. “Glad---”

But Evelyn had pushed herself away from them both, getting her feet beneath her and backing away.

“Who are you?” she yelled, her voice stricken with panic and cracking as she bumped into a parked car. She looked back at her husband and her face only grew more terrified as she seemed to finally notice the blood covering Luke’s face.

“Evelyn,” they responded in unison, a strange echo of the same voice overlapping. They glanced at each other, and the future Luke nodded to the present one.

“Hey,” he said gently to her, and she looked at him desperately. “It’s okay, I promise. We’re safe now.”

Evelyn wasn’t convinced as she continued to look wildly between Luke and his future counterpart. “Who is he? How did we get here?”

“He’s… me,” Luke said, struggling to find a concise way to explain the events of the past few minutes. He held up the box and gestured to it. “This is a time machine, and I’ll be him, a little bit in the future. It transported us here, to Alaska, outside this hotel, where we’ll be safe.”

She slumped against the car, her face twisting with desperation and confusion as she tried to process it. “What…? What was happening at our house?” she whispered, searching Luke’s bloody face for answers.

“Other time travelers,” the future Luke said shortly. “Let’s go inside and get a room first so we can talk. I promise we’re safe here.”

With that, he turned and started moving toward the entrance of the hotel. Luke turned back to look at Evelyn, who clearly was still not understanding. He walked over to her, taking her hand and pulling her into a gentle hug. She reciprocated, holding him tightly. She was shivering, her bare arms exposed to the frigid air, and Luke realized he was cold as well.

“You’re sure we’re safe?” she whispered to him, looking over at the other man, who had just passed through the entrance.

“I don’t know,” Luke whispered back, “but he saved both of our lives. I talked to him already, he’s definitely me. It’s weird.”

“When did you talk to him?” she asked, exasperated.

“I was making breakfast when everything happened downstairs. He used his machine to get me out, explained everything to me, then sent me back to get you and meet here.”

She looked at him pleadingly for a short moment, her warm brown eyes catching the low morning sun. “I don’t understand, but I trust you,” she said in a small voice, hugging him tighter. “If you think we should go in there with him, then let’s go.”

“I do,” he said, offering a smile before turning to follow his future counterpart through the entrance, holding Evelyn’s hand all the way there.

They opened the doors and were greeted by a blast of heat, a comforting contrast after the bitter cold of the Alaskan morning. The lobby was clean and simple, helping to calm their nerves as they looked around. To the right was an area for guests to purchase meals, with scattered tables where several people ate breakfast. The other Luke stood to the left at the front desk, his wallet in his hand as he talked quietly to a receptionist. He looked back to see them coming through the entrance and gave them a tight smile.

After a few moments, the receptionist produced two keycards, and the future Luke took it, thanking her and beckoning the others to follow him to their room. She gave Luke a worried look, noticing the blood still sticking to his face and clothes, but didn’t stop them from walking away.

They ascended an elevator to the third floor and passed a few warmly lit hallways before arriving at their room, where the future Luke let them in.

“Make yourselves comfortable,” he said as they passed through the door. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

Luke and Evelyn slowly made their way in, closing the door behind them. It was a simple hotel room, nothing that was any more special than they had seen in their travels; dark brown walls decorated by a single painting and television on one wall, a black carpeted floor, a king-sized bed and a couch to the left side. The other man found a spot on the couch, propping his feet up on an ottoman while the couple awkwardly sat at the side of the bed together.

“So,” Evelyn said quietly, breaking the silence, “why are we here?”

Fifteen minutes went by while the other man recounted all of the things he had explained to Luke earlier. Evelyn was as inquisitive as he was, asking questions to expand on the mechanics of time travel and build her own understanding of it. Luke could see it in her face as she made the connections, coming to realize why everything had happened the way it did, and the importance of why they arrived here now. They discussed how paradoxes were impossible, the mysterious Target, and how they didn’t know why everyone had arrived at their house.

But the future man did not tell her that he had seen her die, much to Luke’s own dismay. Was he not supposed to tell her? Would it interfere with the manner in which he had seen her die to let her know exactly how it happened?

“Luke,” the other man said, snapping him out of his thoughts. “You can tell her if you want to.”

“What is it?” Evelyn said with concern.

Luke looked at her, then back to the man on the couch, slightly confused. “You should know if I tell her, right?”

“I do,” he said, “but again, it’s sometimes nice not to be robbed of free will by having your future self tell you what to do.”

Luke shrugged and cast his eyes down at the floor, trying to stifle the building emotions, still slightly disconcerted by knowing that the man on the couch knew everything he was thinking.

“So what is it, Luke?” Evelyn asked again.

She definitely deserved to know. Even if it caused her pain, even if it gave her anxiety, she had a right to know what would happen to her.

“Evelyn…” he tried, his voice cracking before trailing off. He glanced at her and she looked back, love in her eyes, watching compassionately as he struggled to find the right words.

“I saw…” he shook his head and broke eye contact, running his hands through his hair.

“It’s okay,” she said softly. Evelyn put a hand on his back, rubbing gently. “You can tell me anything.”

“I… watched you die,” he whispered, tears forming in his eyes as the words finally escaped him. Her face changed from compassion to one of total shock.

“How?” she said with a sudden sharpness.

“At the house,” Luke said, his voice cracking. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, the devastating image of his wife’s death still clear in his mind. “Someone… shot you.”

Evelyn looked at the floor, shaking her head lightly but not saying anything. The two Lukes gave her a moment to take it in before she spoke again.

“Is it… soon?” she said, her eyes searching his face desperately.

“I don’t know,” Luke said, wiping a tear away and sniffing. “You looked older. Like in your forties or so.”

“You’re not sure?” Her face was poorly concealing what was clearly extreme terror.

The future Luke cleared his throat, and they both looked over at him. “This is an important lesson to learn,” he said. “With time travel, things will not always be as they seem. I told him you could have been forced to wear makeup and had your hair dyed gray, so you may not have actually been in your forties. These time machines have no limit. You can just keep typing numbers and you’ll keep moving further and further through time in whatever direction you want. So, travelers regularly visit the distant future to acquire powerful technologies to use against each other. Simple disguises are a common attack vector.”

This information clearly did not help Evelyn. “But,” the future Luke continued, “on the other hand, you may also have never died. Those same technologies could have been used to fake your death, in order to elicit a specific reaction from myself at the time. There’s no way to truly know, for better or worse.”

Luke looked over at Evelyn, who was still very subdued. He put an arm around her, pulling her close, and she leaned into him.

The future Luke looked blankly at them, in spite of the rollercoaster of emotions he had just put them through. “The easiest defense against disguises is through some kind of code. If you trust someone, you tell them the code, and you’ll know when you see them that, if they use the code, they are who you think they are.”

“Okay,” Luke said, tilting his head slightly. “Can it be a hand gesture? I feel like people could overhear it if I said it all the time.”

“Anything,” the other Luke said. “And I already know what you’re about to think of, so I can prove that I’m really you.”

He spent a few moments thinking, trying to come up with a gesture that was specific enough to not be mistaken, while vague enough that one couldn’t guess it was the code just by looking at him while he did it.

“Okay, I have an idea,” Luke said to the future man. “So can you prove that you’re me?”

He watched as the future man rolled up his sleeves, grabbed his left wrist with his right hand, then released his grip to grab his right wrist with his left hand. One after the other, fast enough to seem like a nervous reaction, exactly as he’d just thought of it a moment ago.

“Is he right?” Evelyn asked, and Luke nodded.

“Well,” the other Luke said, standing straight and stretching. “My time here is up. I’ve got somewhere to be, and someone else is coming to see you in about an hour.”

“Who?” Luke said.

“He’ll knock,” the future Luke said, “Don’t open the door for him, he’ll have a spare keycard. He’ll then perform your code, so you’ll know you can trust him. His name is Oliver.”

Luke nodded. “What about this room? Should I just keep purchasing it?”

“Yeah,” the future man said. “You have money saved to afford it for a long time. You’ll both be safe here, as long as you don’t ever tell anyone where you are, besides Oliver. I recommend withdrawing all your money as cash and purchasing a different room under a fake identity.”

“How would I get one of those?” Luke asked, his brow furrowed.

“You have a time machine,” the other man said with a wry smile as he reached into his backpack and removed his own machine. “Be clever, you’ll think of something.”

Luke watched as the other man fiddled with the device for a moment.

“Wait,” Luke said, a sudden idea crossing his mind. “Can I try something?”

The other man smiled knowingly as Luke pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and opened a stopwatch app. He tapped the start button, and the timer activated, flicking forward one second at a time.

“I’m really glad I thought of this,” the future Luke said as he pulled the same phone out of his pocket. He opened his own stopwatch app and pointed the screen at them: twelve days, fourteen hours, eight minutes, and ten seconds. “Personal relative time is much easier to keep track of with a constantly running stopwatch. It helps me know when I haven’t slept or eaten in a while.”

The future Luke slipped the phone back in his pocket and hit the red button on the time machine. “See you around,” he said, blowing a kiss at Evelyn, who blushed nervously. After another moment, a loud pop sounded, followed by a small rush of wind, and the time traveler was gone.

There were a few moments of silence between the couple as they sat huddled together at the edge of the bed, taking everything in. The comforting presence of someone who was confident was suddenly gone, replaced by the frightening feeling of inadequacy and naivety. It felt very vulnerable, having such a powerful device, but knowing there were people far more capable than them, willing to commit far worse evils than them.

“Maybe you should go get cleaned off,” Evelyn said suddenly, breaking the silence. She cracked a small smile. “I don’t want to ask whose blood that is on you.”

Luke couldn’t make himself smile back, despite the comforting presence of his other half. “I didn’t bring any fresh clothes,” he said quietly. “Maybe they have something in here?”

Evelyn shrugged, clearly doubtful, but still Luke stood to go check. They both knew that hotels didn’t keep spare clothing in their rooms, but Luke felt a need to do something, anything besides sit and stew for an hour. He mindlessly looked through the stand-up closet and the desk’s drawers, allowing himself a few moments to digest the information with some busywork.

The moment passed and Luke was still wearing his bloody clothes and Evelyn was still sitting in her nightgown. He made his way back to the bed and sat on the end, leaning forward and running his hands through his hair, feeling the spiked ends of where dried blood caked it.

A knock at the door.

Luke and Evelyn looked at each other, a sudden tension in the air. It had only been a few minutes, so it shouldn’t be Oliver yet. He stood and slowly made his way across the room before finally peering into the peephole on the door.

Another Luke was standing there, an empty look in his eyes, covered in blood, holding a basket of clean laundry.

“It’s me,” he said, feeling strangely disoriented. He glanced back at Evelyn, a mix of concern and fear in her eyes.

She didn’t protest, so he opened the door, revealing some future version of himself. The new man walked into the room just behind Luke, placed the basket on the ground, and grabbed his left wrist, then his right. Luke felt some relief as he watched this, but it wasn’t entirely reassuring.

“I don’t like this,” Evelyn said quietly, shifting uncomfortably on the bed and voicing his own thoughts. The future Luke walked over to the couch and sat down, placing the hamper on the floor and looking curiously at the two of them as the original sat on the bed beside Evelyn again.

“So what’s going on?” Luke asked himself, trying to hide the fear in his voice. The copy did not answer, instead looking to Evelyn.

“I think,” she said, “you’re supposed to go get clean laundry from our house. He doesn’t look much different from you now.”

“You think so?” Luke asked nervously. “I feel like I shouldn’t be messing with time already.”

His duplicate looked from one to the other as they spoke. He recognized his own slight mannerisms from videos he’d seen of himself. It was odd to see in reality, but somehow reassuring to consider that he wasn’t actually a stranger.

“Well,” Evelyn said, “if you just go back to sometime yesterday while we’re working, you should be able to just walk right upstairs, grab some clothes, and come back, right?”

The copy offered no answer, but it made sense to Luke. He looked over at the time machine on his bed, its many buttons suddenly intimidating him.

“I guess so,” he said. “I have no choice, do I?”

And as he wondered about choice, he could feel it, the very slight push of time trying to correct itself, the eventual momentum of a causal loop insisting that he begin working to resolve it. Though he had made no choice of his own to go back in time, this was something that he would go do, at all costs.

Maybe it was all just in his head though.

But still, he pulled out his phone, its screen lighting up and helpfully stating that the current local time was 5:15 A.M. He took a mental note of it; the copy had been sitting here for maybe two minutes, so it probably appeared outside three minutes ago.

Luke opened a global map application and entered his home address. He turned over to the time machine and pressed the yellow button to activate the screen, then entered the coordinates his phone displayed. The pointer was directly on top of his house, so he shifted it over to the clearing he had chosen for the previous day. He adjusted the target time to be noon yesterday, when both he and Evelyn would be out working.

“It’s okay, dear,” he said gently to his wife, who continued to watch him with concern. “I’ll be right back. Look, I’m already right there.”

The other man smiled tightly as Luke stood off the bed, taking a few steps away as Evelyn looked at him apprehensively. He hesitated for only a few seconds before pushing the red button on the time machine.

“I love you,” she said quietly as the timer ticked down, but before he could respond, there was a loud crack, and he was elsewhere.

JUNE 13TH, 2025 – 12:00 P.M.

The midday sun shone brightly overhead as the time traveler appeared in the forest behind his house, in the same clearing as he would appear the next day. Without hesitation, he made his way forward, breaking through the edge of the trees and entering his backyard.

The door would be locked since no one was home, but he kept a spare key under a mat on the patio. He retrieved it, unlocked the door, and went through to his kitchen.

It was oddly quiet in here, knowing what would be coming tomorrow. Luke passed silently through the dark rooms of his house, walking carefully through the kitchen and dining room before arriving at the foot of the stairs and heading up toward his bedroom.

The room was empty, as he expected. The blankets on his bed were still ruffled from when they had gotten ready this morning, and the lamp on his nightstand was still lit; he usually forgot to turn it off before leaving. The closet door was open, and he walked in and flipped the light on to find a few baskets piled up in a corner.

Luke bustled about his bedroom, collecting his and Evelyn’s clothes, enough so that they would last a while but not so much that their current counterparts would notice anything missing this evening.

He placed the basket on the bed, resting the time machine next to it and thinking for a moment to consider if there was anything else he’d need. He remembered he had a backpack in the closet, which he figured would be generally convenient.

He found it tucked in a corner behind some old boxes, a black backpack he had most recently used for college almost a decade ago. Brushing the dust off of it, he slung it over his shoulder and went back to the bed where the laundry basket and the time machine were.

After spending a moment entering the coordinates and the target time for tomorrow at 5:12 A.M outside the hotel, he pressed the red button, lifted the laundry basket, and took a few steps back.

JUNE 14TH, 2025 – 5:12 A.M.

Luke appeared outside the hotel in the precise spot where they had arrived twenty-four minutes ago, holding a laundry basket under one arm and a time machine in the other. Their blanket and pillow had blown away somewhat, scattered further down the parking lot, and the pile of sand where his future counterpart had appeared was mostly dispersed.

He entered the front door of the hotel and the receptionist looked up, giving him another strange look as he passed by. He went up the elevator, down a few hallways, and finally knocked on his own hotel door.

After a moment, his younger self opened the door, a nervous frown on his face. He really did look terrible, the blood had clearly stained his shirt dark red and was spattered all over his face and hair.

Luke followed the younger version of himself into the room before resting the basket on the ground and performing the code gesture with his hands. It was the first time he had interacted with himself from the past, and it was incredibly disorienting. He watched the younger Luke as he copied the precise movements that he remembered making, as though it were a recording of a video.

“I don’t like this,” Evelyn said, the same as she had before. Luke really wanted to greet her, but knew that he would be prevented from trying; the feeling was distinctly impeding. Instead, he simply sat on the couch and looked at the two of them, waiting patiently.

“So what’s going on?” his younger self said. He knew he couldn’t tell them, and he knew that the inability to do so transcended his own free will; some greater force would stop him, he could feel it now that he was here. It was extremely unsettling. He looked over at Evelyn, whose mind was clearly working faster than his own.

“I think you’re supposed to go get clean laundry from our house,” she said, exactly as he remembered her saying. “He doesn’t look much different from you now.”

Luke looked in turn at each of them as they had a short conversation about what to do. Finally the other Luke took out his phone and tapped it a few times, before picking up the time machine and configuring it.

“It’s okay, dear,” the younger man said gently to his wife, who was looking back nervously. “I’ll be right back. Look, I’m already right there.”

He gestured toward Luke, who mustered as much of a smile as he could and waved to them. It once again felt more like matching the movements of a prerecorded video than making the friendly choice to wave, and he again felt very disoriented.

The copy stood and walked toward the center of the room.

“I love you,” Evelyn said sadly, looking back to the other man. With a loud crack and a puff of wind, he vanished.

“I love you too,” Luke said, standing up and walking over to her as he felt the time pressure suddenly lift. It was such an odd sensation, the appearance of the return of free will, though he was sure he was psyching himself out. It really never felt like he was forced to do anything; everything he did for the past minute had felt perfectly natural and the way he would ordinarily do them, but his mind couldn’t help but feel smothered.

She looked up at him uncomfortably, and shifted slightly away from him as he sat next to her.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, feeling gauche.

“It’s just… weird,” she said slowly. “It’s like it’s not really… you.”

Luke wasn’t sure how to respond to this. “I was just gone for a few minutes,” he said quietly, knowing immediately it wasn’t an adequate response. From her perspective, her husband was suddenly gone, and he was a whole different person.

“I know, but… It’s fine, I’m just not used to all of this yet.” She looked away and wrapped her arms around herself.

Luke looked at the floor, unsure how to console her for the first time in a good while. After a moment of standing awkwardly, he decided she just needed some space, some time to process everything that just happened and that she had just learned. He himself needed it in the desert not long ago.

“Well,” he said slowly, “I’m going to shower and put on new clothes before this guy gets here. I have a bunch of your clothes in that basket if you want to get changed.”

“Okay,” she said succinctly and without moving, still looking away.

Luke watched her sadly for a moment before turning and walking over to the basket, selecting a few articles of clothing, and heading to the bathroom.

His shower was refreshing, allowing him time to reflect on everything that had happened in what had to have only been an hour for him. Just an hour ago he was peacefully preparing breakfast for his sleeping wife, but that already felt like an entire lifetime ago. Things had changed so fast.

He’d seen Evelyn die.

Tears came down his face, washed away by the hot water as the stifled emotions from the past relative hour briefly overcame him. He allowed them to fill his mind, acknowledging each as though old friends, considering them fully before letting them rest. They hurt in different ways, each of them, but they were not unfamiliar, and he had already learned how to survive in spite of them.

They had dealt with the loss of a child. There was no emotion that was new to him.

Luke left the bathroom in fresh clothes, his skin and hair finally feeling clean. Evelyn had changed into more casual attire, laying flat on the bed and looking up at the ceiling with a fixed gaze. He tossed his bloody clothes on the ground next to the basket.

“Luke,” Evelyn said quietly, catching his attention as he sat at the couch to relax. “I’ve been thinking about something.”

“What is it?” he asked gently, glad to see she wasn’t so upset anymore.

“It’s… I’ve been thinking about our son.”

A dagger went through his heart as she said it, her voice heavy and thoughtful. “What about him?” he said quietly.

“We… we have a time machine, right?” Evelyn said. “Can we use it to save him?”

Luke’s chest was burning. He was surprised he hadn’t thought of it himself. “We could, couldn’t we?” He glanced at his phone, which displayed 5:32 A.M. “There’s still time before Oliver comes. He said it’d be about an hour, so that’s still a half hour or so from now.”

“Do you remember what day it was? ”

Of course he did. “February 4th, 2023. About 11 A.M., at the Wegmans in Abingdon.”

Evelyn exhaled loudly. “Then why not?” Her voice broke as she said the words. “If we can get Sebastian back, then we should try.”

Luke sat down on the bed, putting a hand on Evelyn’s shoulder as waves of heat ran up and down his spine, his mind racing, his eyes filling with tears as all the suppressed emotions flooded to the surface again. At some point in time, their boy was alive, and they had the power to go get him.

But a sad thought had struck him. “Evelyn, what if I’m the guy?” She looked at him, her own eyes red and wet, a shocked look hitting her face. “You know… the kidnapper. Do you think it could’ve been me, now?”

She looked away, out the window where the sun was still low in the Alaskan sky. “But why?” she said dismally, each word strained. “Sebastian disappeared, just so we could have him now instead of two years ago? What’s the point?”

“I don’t know,” Luke said quietly. “There is no point. He should still be with us right now, if it was me. I would never want to do that to us.” He put his head in his hands, raking his fingers through his hair as he thought.

“We have to,” Evelyn said with sudden confidence, turning to look at him directly. “Whatever choice we make has been accounted for, right? So if we don’t do it, then whoever that kidnapper is, steals Sebastian and we never see him again. But if we do it ourselves… then you were the kidnapper all along, and we can have him here, now, and he’ll be safe.”

“He’ll be safe,” Luke repeated softly. They couldn’t change the past, but they could try to manipulate the circumstances, right? “I would have no choice anyway, just like with the laundry a little bit ago. You’re right. We need to do it.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes while the reality of the situation set in.

“But,” Evelyn said, “I just realized I can’t come with you. There was only one guy that took him on the store’s security video, remember?”

Luke thought for a moment. “You’re sure?”

She nodded. “I trust you.”

He put an arm around her and used the other to slip his phone from his pocket, searching his map for the coordinates to the store and writing it down on his phone’s notepad. After brief consideration, he decided to add the other significant locations he knew about as well. He didn’t want to go to a time without the Internet and get stranded, so he wrote down coordinates for his house and this hotel as well.

He picked up the machine and entered the time and location. “I love you,” Luke said to his wife, pulling her into a tight embrace. “I’ll be back in a minute with our son.”

“I love you too,” she whispered, pulling away as Luke stood. A hopeful smile lit her tear-streaked face. “See you in a minute.”

Taking a step away from the bed, he pressed the red button, smiled back at Evelyn, and after three seconds, he was gone.