Time Looped

"You knew this before...?"

"Before we made love? Yes, of course, but I was compelled not tell you, nor could I have stopped it, even if I had wanted to, and I most definitely wanted to make love to you. I am... experiencing periods of limited self-will, apparently to make sure I behave in ways that don't change the future. You might experience some of the same feeling of compulsion, now that you know about our future. I don't know how any of this works, really, just that I have done things without choosing to do them, that brought us to today. And expect to do more in the future."

Gladys looked troubled. "Bill, do you know when I die?" she asked.

"I won't ever tell you that, except to say that it was during my lifetime, so you have a lot of years left. You would have been 108 when I left 2016, otherwise."

"And your own self? Do your lives overlap?"

I paused before answering, "No, he... the older me was gone before I was born, which I guess makes some sense in terms of the timeline. I won't tell you exactly when that will be, though. It's hard enough knowing that myself, I can't put you through that." Literally, I could not tell her. The compulsion was preventing me from telling her that I would disappear somehow 25 years from now, without leaving behind a body. I did not know that this meant my death, but it was hard not to think it did.

~~~~~~~~~~

I closed the book, slamming it onto the counter, thinking "What kind of sick joke is this?" and disappeared, immediately knowing that it wasn't a joke after all. The book did not come with me,

~~~~~~~~~~

Twenty five years later on my personal timeline, I've just left the journal in the care of my son, with explicit instructions to leave it unopened and deliver it to my address 2016. Just as I walk out onto the sidewalk in front of the Foundation's offices, I disappear again.

I'm right back in my kitchen. I quickly check the date and time on my phone, and it's like not a second has passed, yet I've lived 25 years in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. A happy and prosperous marriage with Gladys, raising our four kids to young adulthood, that I am actually glad I did not have full pre-knowledge of from reading the journal, even though I still filled up the journal anyway.

I pick it up again, and flip through the pages. I don't need to read it now, I've lived it all.

I go to the bathroom, and am shocked that I still look 30. I have all the memories of another 25 years of life, but not the wrinkles? Did I imagine the whole thing? I check my wallet, and my ID and cash are still there. I remember that wallet finally wearing out in 1948, but here it is.

My doorbell rings, and I go to answer it. It's my father and grandfather. After I let them in, my dad spots the journal and picks it up, leafing through the pages. "This was supposed to be the day. I'm glad you made it back!"

"You knew?" I asked.

"Of course," Gramps said. "You left the journal in my hands 61 years ago to have it delivered today. I couldn't help myself but to read it. Made it hard to look at my Mom for a while, and I eventually confessed to her that I read it, but I couldn't tell anyone else about it, at least until your Dad needed to know about it, too, when he joined the Foundation. Your compulsion didn't just affect you, my boy."

I said, "I'm not exactly sure it actually happened. I have all the memories of 25 years of living in the past, but I don't seem to have changed at all, Even the money and ID that I tossed into the bay are still in my wallet."

Dad smiled, and said, "There are two pieces of proof, son. The first is the journal itself, or more particularly the instructions you left detailing the very address it should be delivered to. How could your great-grandfather have known where you would live now, when neither of us had been born yet? Unless you were him, and brought that memory back to the past. And the second is DNA tests I had performed after you were born, comparing DNA from hair on a hairbrush you left behind in 1955, and your own DNA in 1986, and they were an exact match. You were definitely the same person. By the way, I also had a comparison done with Gladys' DNA, and you somehow only share about 1% of your DNA, making you almost unrelated. And that 1% includes your eyes. You were right about hers matching your, and right about things not being as random as they ought to have been. You did not commit incest with her, at all."

"Why didn't either of you tell me all this?" I asked.

Gramps shrugged, and said, "We were compelled not to talk about it to anyone but each other. Although now that the loop is complete, I don't suppose that applies any more. So, DARPA, huh? What are you going to do about your research, now that you have experienced time travel first hand?"

"Gramps, I don't know whether I was sent back in time by someone intent on stopping my research, someone intent on encouraging me, or even by me at some point in the future when the technology works. In any case, the loop might not actually be over, if I still have to send myself back at some point. I think my best answer is to continue my work."

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Author's note: This was an idea I came up with a while ago for a different kind of time travel story. I intentionally limited Bill's reading of the journal to the first encounter between him and Gladys, to keep from having to write 26 year's worth of journal entries. I hope you liked the story in this short form. As always, constructive comments greatly appreciated.

Leenysman