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August 19 - August 25, 2025
“Don’t assume that because you know something in the future won’t happen, that you can do nothing. Sometimes the reason it doesn’t happen is you.”
Deep
“They say timing is everything. I would argue that spacing is a close second. It’s no use showing up right on time, if you fuse your leg through the coffee table.”
Haha time travel woes
“It doesn’t pay to insult another time traveler. In fact you should make it a rule of thumb to never anger anyone today, who can go back and stab you yesterday.”
Lol
It’s especially important that you do not disturb the Dr. Quickly there.” He turns and walks back to the front of the building and boards a trolley that is loading passengers, leaving the three of us to dwell on what he said. The trolley departs down the pier and Francesca turns to Blake and me. “What did he mean by, ‘The Dr. Quickly there?’” “I was wondering the same thing,” I reply.
Aha, he's likely the past version of him.
“I was investigating,” he replies. “Well, mystery solved. We’re staying here, if it’s that important to you. You can go to bed now.” “That’s not what I was investigating.” “No? What’s your little beepy thing you got there?” He scowls. “It’s a temporal spectrometer, not a beepy thing.” “My apologies. What’re you doing with your spectral beepy thing?”
Lol
“This is your ‘transport?’” I say. “Yes.” “Is it pink?” “It’s red,” Malcolm says with indignation. “Looks kinda pink.”
Hehe I can see where Greyson gets his devilish charm.
my attention is caught by a wooden sign imbedded in a car window across the street from the smoking building. The sign is still smoking as well. In the light of a police car’s headlights I can read, “The Law Offices of Waters and Kramer.”
Aha. The arsonist figured out he's in the past and is burning the prosecution office
“He’ll meet us tomorrow.” “Malcolm?” Carson asks. “Quickly,” Francesca replies. “I was just talking to Harold Quickly.”
Uh oh. But it's the wrong Quickly! Unless Malcolm is lying.
“Did you realize we were coming?” I ask. “Yes. As a matter of fact, tonight is not the first time I have met you, even though it is the first time you have met me.” “You just lost me,” Robbie says. This is getting crazy.
Indeed
“So the other you is over at Quickly’s place right now, and has no idea you’re here?” Robbie asks with amazement. “Yeah, I never suspected anything this morning.” “That’s crazy. It’s so weird that we were just talking to you and now you’re like a whole different person!”
Trippy
Carson gives me a quick look, and I get the sense he’s trying to convey something to me but I don’t understand what. The next moment he grabs the doorknob of the room to the left, and vanishes. Why didn’t I think of that?
Well duh
“Maybe you should pull it out,” Francesca says. “That’s what she said,” Carson mutters. Francesca takes a swing with the back of her hand and smacks Carson in the shoulder.
Lol
“You’d be surprised how wrong textbooks can be, too. I’ve realized that people are happier thinking what they know is true. Telling them the actual truth doesn’t always improve things.”
For sure.
“I can’t believe we’re back. It’s so surreal.” She holds her hands to her face. “I can’t wait to see my own house again.”
I can't wait to see what's gonna go wrong lol
No. This can’t be happening. “Holy shit!” I blurt out. “What?” Francesca says. I don’t have to explain. The Jeep slows down and comes to a stop next to us. Blake has the Bimini top on the Jeep, but the sides are open and the doors are off, so he’s starting to get wet too.
Oh crap! They never left!
“We will fix this. I’ll come back for you.”
How in the crap will this be fixed??
I cut out to the main street and head north. Why are there two of him? And what am I going to do now?
Something must have gone wrong in the past with Carson and Robbie. This is probably a new timeline.
I look at the Blake next to me. He looks so stress-free. No sign of devastating loss on that face. Blake is going to be destroyed. My Blake.
Heck yeah he is. But this one too, since he didn't even propose yet. What a mess!
“That was an alternate Mallory?” Blake asks. “And the alternate me . . . so he’s going to . . .” Blake stops moving. “I gave her the ring. We’re in the wrong life and I gave her the fucking ring?” He spins away from me and yells at the sky. He turns back and grabs me by the shoulders and shakes me. “Where is she, Ben? Where’s MY Mallory?”
Crap I didn't even think about that. His ACTUAL Mallory.
“So what do we do?” Francesca says. “We can’t go back to our lives if someone else is already living them.” “Yeah. I know. I want to find out what happened to Robbie and Carson. If they made it back, then they might be as confused as we are, but maybe they know something we don’t.”
It definitely has something to do with them.
“I was wondering if I was going to find you here,” he says. “I saw Blake’s Jeep in the driveway.” “Oh my God,” Francesca says. “Robbie?”
Oh! Did Robbie STAY?!
“No. No no no.” I put my hands on my head. Carson dead. Two Blakes. Stenger loose. This is just a nightmare.
Yeah I'll say
“They caught the younger Stenger?” Francesca says. “Yeah. It was no good for me to tell them they had the wrong one. The guy that killed Carson is still out there. And there’s one more thing.” He stops altogether for a second and looks at the floor. When he looks back up his jaw clenches. “He has Carson’s chronometer.”
What a dang MESS
“I know what I have to do,” Blake says. “You aren’t going to like it, but I’m going to need your help.” His voice is somber but his eyes still look wild. He doesn’t look at me. He just keeps staring into the darkness. “I’m going to have to kill him.”
Ohhhh boy. Kill his other self?!
Blake holds the back of his head with both hands and stares at his feet for a few moments, then turns to look at me. “What are we going to do, Ben? How are we going to live like this?” “I don’t know.” I don’t want to live here. Not in this place. Even if there weren’t two of me.
Gonna have to go back. Or go nowhere.
“So we screwed stuff up when we went back,” Blake says. “We screwed something up so bad that we never time traveled.” He pauses before he continues. “But then how are we here? If we never went back, how can any of this have ever happened?”
Was it when the lab burned? Clearly whatever initially went wrong in the original timeline didn't happen here.
“So the universe is a fractal. Did Quickly cover that with you?” “No,” Blake says. “Okay. That’s a lot of your problem then. I’ll start at the beginning. You can’t think about time as a line. It’s only linear in places it’s never been changed. And it can potentially be changed anywhere. It’s better if you think about it as a sort of spider web, or a snowflake.”
Okay, I'm with you so far. Keep going....
“So what did we decide on? Six?” Blake asks, as he plugs our chargers into the wall. “I think we should get there a little earlier to give ourselves time. We’ll just have to be careful to not run into me or Carson before they get the gun away from Stenger. The lab is a big place. We should be able to hide out and get ourselves some prep time. Let’s go with 5:25. That should be plenty of time.”
Thing is, Stenger was yelling at someone before the confrontation. What if it was YOU guys?
Francesca is breathing heavier. “I’m not facing a serial killer with an empty gun. I can’t even lie at Balderdash. This isn’t going to work. We should just get out of here and come up with a better plan.”
Oh just jump back to Montana and get the right bullets! Time travelers, remember?
“How far did you send us?” I whisper. “Just a couple minutes,” Blake whispers back, looking at his chronometer settings. I poke my head up cautiously above the edge of the countertop. “Forward or backward?” “Forward. Are they still here?” The room appears to be empty. “I think they left.”
Dude, backwards would've been better!
“We can still make it!” “For what?” “Stenger loses his gun. It happens any minute now. Come on!” I sprint for the door.
But you've changed things now! Since they've got Francesca.
Stenger smirks. “If you shoot me, you’re never going to see your friends again.” Friends? Who else is he talking about?
Obviously the other you and Carson. Or....Mym and Quickly.
There are three more closed doors at the end of the hallway. I reach the first one on the right and lean my head close to the doorframe. From beyond the door, another thump is followed by a muffled grunt. There’s someone in there.
Probably Quickly. The original one. Maybe his death in the fire is what thwarted the eventual time travel blunder in 2009
“Malcolm?” I gasp. I rush into the room. Malcolm begins to thrash around, shaking his head. His eyes grow even wider. “Malcolm it’s me, Ben!”
Okay nevermind lol. But where the heck is the original Quickly?
“I’m Ben.” I extend my hand. The man ignores it. “I know.” I wait for him to give his name, but it doesn’t come. I drop my hand back into my lap.
Probably his own self.
“I’ve never told anybody about that,” I say. I look at the man’s face closely. “If you know that, then that means WE once tried to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a rabbit.” The man sips his tea and sets his mug back down on the table. “No comment.” I lean forward. “So that’s it? You’re me?” “No.” “No?” “No.”
Hmmm. I'm sure he is, but why is he saying no?
I put my hands to my hips. “So what now?” He looks me up and down. “I forgot what an impatient little shit I was.” I scowl back. “So, you are me.” “No.” “No? That’s it? No? You care to elaborate on that a bit, man?”
Yeah!
“We’re the same person,” the man says. “I am Benjamin Travers.” “Okay, so you are now,” I say. “But I’m still not you.” I cock my head and stare at him. He’s not making any sense. “The life you’ve had and the life I’ve had were the same up to a certain point,” he says. “So what happened?” “Some of the decisions I made were . . . different.”
Ahhh. An alternate version.
Is there anything you didn’t screw up? I think about Dr. Quickly and his encouraging smile as we’d master new lessons. He wouldn’t be very happy with me now. I burnt his lab down with my blundering attempt at a rescue mission. And Mym . . . how would she feel if she knew I was the one who cost her father everything?
Ah so everything that went wrong was YOUR fault? Trippy time travel.
“How was that?” I say. “Fine, except I about nodded off while I waited. I think my beard got a little longer, too.” “Oh.” “I want you to try it at a run.” “What?” “Running. You know, that thing that you do that’s faster than walking.”
Lol aww he keeps picking on him
I turn to look at Benji. He’s appraising me with his arms crossed. “Like that?” I ask. “Yeah. Though I’m pretty sure Cheeto could have done it faster.” “Who’s Cheeto?” “Cheeto’s the tortoise.” “You named your tortoise after a cheese snack?” I ask, slightly out of breath. “What would you name your tortoise?” “I don’t really—” “Yeah. Thought so. Get back over there.” He points again.
Lol he's snarky as an old man
Surviving isn’t all there is to winning, Ben. A lot of good men have died in the act of doing something great. That doesn’t mean they lost.”
Deep. I like it.
Guard your minutes and seconds closer than your dollars and cents. You can predict when you’ll be out of money, but not when you’ll be out of time.”
Truth.
“People say, ‘Time heals all wounds.’ That may be true, but relocating to an alternate reality can sure help, too.”
If only...
“Hey, don’t even think about it, Lillith. We can find you yesterday if we need to.”
lol that's funny
“I don’t know, but we need to find Dr. Quickly. I have a lot of questions that need answering.”
Me too.
“So what’s the scoop?” Francesca says. “It’s a long story, but we’ll try to explain,” Quickly says.
Oh please do
I watch her face. She looks pained by what she’s saying. “I know it was selfish of me, but I had to try. I’ve tried for so long to do it on my own, and I couldn’t anymore.” “Do what?” I say. “Save my dad.” I sit back in my chair. “Oh.” Her eyes are welling up with tears. “But wait, when did we save your dad?” “Tonight,” Quickly says. “Tonight would have been the night I died.” “Wow,” Francesca says. “How?”
Ohhhh! That younger version, probably?
“So, the other versions of us, the ones who are still at the hospital waiting on Mr. Cameron, what happens to them now?” “They keep on with the story,” Quickly replies. “They exist in a bit of a paradox at the moment, but if left uninterrupted, they will continue down the same path you have, eventually looping around and becoming you as you sit right now.” “But Stenger is dead now,” I say. “In this timestream, Stenger was dead the day you three left for Boston. You just didn’t know it, because you hadn’t come back to cause it to happen yet. But had you paid attention to the news that night, it
...more
Good grief this is so much lol. I'm not getting how things happened that didn't happen yet. It's too trippy.
I look at Carson. “You moved to L.A. to become famous, but you died.” “Famous for what?” Carson says. “You missed the important part of that sentence,” Francesca says. “The ‘you died’ part.” “Well, okay,” Carson says. “But what was I famous for?”
Lol
