Snapshot

by Brandon Sanderson

This Snapshot had been created overnight, and was an exact replica of a day ten days back: the first of May, 2018.

Chaz and Davis were real though—from “in real life,” so to speak. Their insertion—while necessary—was also problematic. As Chaz and Davis interacted with the Snapshot, they would cause what were called Deviations: differences between the Snapshot and the way the real May first had played out.

you had a small window to get a Snapshot of a specific day made. A few weeks, and that was it. You had to start it up in the morning, insert people right away. If you waited it grew more difficult. Like the doorway in just wouldn’t open. And getting data out . . . well, the cops had to carry it out with them.

Davis felt he could take the measure of a man or woman by the way they handled the news that they weren’t real. It was uncomfortable, intimate, and fascinating to watch. Some got angry, some got morose. Others laughed. You saw something about a person in that moment that they wouldn’t ever know—couldn’t ever know—about themselves.

“I always imagined serving justice, fixing problems. But most of the time we aren’t saviors. We arrive in time to see someone dead, and maybe we catch the person who did it. But that doesn’t matter to the people who were killed. For them we’re really just . . . witnesses.” He looked down. “I tell myself that at least someone was there.”

The Snapshot is the only thing that is rational. Life is chaos the first time, but if you live it again, you see that it’s very orderly. The system is too complex for us to figure out on the fly.