The Chronos Effect
Chapter Two: The Weight of Choices
I've never had to tell someone their mother is dead. I always figured if that moment came in my life, it would be in a hospital waiting room with doctors in white coats delivering the news with practiced sympathy. Not in my own bedroom at 7:30 in the morning while the woman I love smiles up at me like the world is still a safe place.
"Amy," I said again, my voice barely above a whisper. "Your brother just called."
The sleepy contentment faded from her eyes. She sat up, suddenly alert. "Marcus? What did he want?"
I opened my mouth, but no words came out. How do you destroy someone's entire world in a single sentence?
"Damian, you're scaring me. What's wrong?"
"There was an accident last night."
She went very still. "What kind of accident?"
"A bus accident. On Highway 61." I watched her face change as the implications hit her. "Your mom..."
"No." The word came out sharp, defensive. "No, that's not possible. I talked to her yesterday morning. She was fine. She was making dinner for me."
"Amy..."
"She doesn't even take the bus. She drives everywhere. You know that."
I reached for her hand, but she pulled away.
"Amy, listen to me—"
"No!" She scrambled out of bed, pacing to the window. "This is insane. First you have some crazy prophetic dream about me dying, and now you're telling me my mother is dead? What's next, Damian? Are you going to predict the apocalypse?"
I stood up slowly, trying to find the right words. But there were no right words for this.
"Marcus said the bus was hit by a drunk driver. The same drunk driver from my dream."
She spun around to face me. "The same what?"
"In my dream, we were hit by a drunk driver. Last night, that same driver hit the bus your mom was on."
"That's impossible."
"Is it?" I moved toward her, desperate to make her understand. "Think about it, Amy. I dreamed about things you hadn't told me yet. Things that came true. What if it wasn't a dream? What if I somehow saw what was going to happen?"
She stared at me like I'd lost my mind. Maybe I had.
"Even if that were true," she said slowly, "which it's not, why would my mom be on a bus? She drives to work every day."
I felt like I was drowning. Every word I said made things worse.
"Maybe her car broke down. Maybe she decided to try something new. I don't know, Amy. I just know Marcus called and said she was on that bus."
Amy grabbed her phone from the nightstand, her fingers shaking as she dialed. She put it on speaker, and we both listened to it ring once, twice, three times.
"Hi, you've reached Linda Chen. I can't come to the phone right now, but..."
Amy hung up and immediately called again. Same result.
"She's probably still asleep," she said, but her voice was getting higher, more desperate. "Mom always sleeps late on weekends."
She called Marcus next. He answered on the first ring.
"Amy? Jesus, I'm so glad you called back."
"Marcus, tell me what happened. Tell me everything."
I could hear him take a deep breath through the phone. "There was an accident around 6 PM last night. A drunk driver ran a red light and hit the Number 3 bus heading to Metairie. Four people died, six more in critical condition."
"And you think Mom was on this bus why exactly?"
"Because I called her yesterday afternoon to confirm dinner plans, and she told me she was taking the bus. Said her car was making weird noises and she didn't trust it for highway driving."
Amy sat down hard on the edge of the bed. "That doesn't make sense. Mom hates public transportation."
"I know. But she also hates spending money on car repairs. You know how she is."
Amy was crying now, silent tears streaming down her face. "Have you... have you seen her? Are you sure it was her?"
Another pause. "Amy, I'm a cop. I saw the scene. I saw..." His voice cracked. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
The phone slipped from Amy's hands and clattered to the floor. She doubled over like she'd been punched in the stomach, making this awful keening sound that barely sounded human.
I knelt beside her, trying to pull her into my arms, but she pushed me away.
"Don't touch me."
"Amy, please—"
"This is your fault."
The words hit me like a slap. "What?"
She looked up at me, her eyes red and wild. "If I had gone to see her yesterday like I planned, she wouldn't have been on that bus. She would have picked me up at our place. We would have been in her car, not on some bus."
I felt like the floor was falling away beneath me. She was right. If Amy had gone to her parents' house as originally planned, her mother never would have taken the bus. She would have driven to pick up Amy, just like she always did when Amy visited.
"Amy, I didn't know—"
"You convinced me to stay home. You begged me not to go. And now she's dead because of it."
"I was trying to save you."
"From what? A dream?" She stood up, backing away from me. "My mother is dead because you had a bad dream!"
I wanted to explain. I wanted to tell her about the visions, about somehow traveling back in time, about the accident that was supposed to kill her instead. But how could I make any of that sound rational when I barely believed it myself?
"I know how this sounds," I said. "I know it seems crazy. But I saw what was going to happen to you. I couldn't let it happen."
"So you let it happen to her instead?"
"No! It wasn't supposed to happen to anyone. I thought if I just changed one thing..."
"Well, congratulations." Her voice was bitter, cold. "You changed everything."
She grabbed clothes from our dresser and started getting dressed. Her movements were sharp, angry.
"Where are you going?"
"To identify my mother's body. To plan her funeral. To do all the things you're supposed to do when your parent dies because of your boyfriend's psychotic break."
"Amy, don't leave. Not like this."
She stopped at the bedroom door and turned back to me. For a moment, I saw the woman I'd fallen in love with three years ago. Vulnerable, scared, needing comfort. Then her expression hardened again.
"I need space, Damian. I need time to process this. I need..."
"What? What do you need?"
"I need my mother back. But since that's impossible, I need you to stay away from me until I figure out how to forgive you for this."
She left without another word. I heard the front door slam, then the sound of her car starting in the driveway. I stood at the bedroom window and watched her drive away, wondering if this was how it felt to have your heart ripped out of your chest while it was still beating.
For the next three hours, I sat on our couch staring at the wall. I kept expecting her to come back, to realize she was being unfair, to understand that I'd been trying to protect her. But deep down, I knew she was right. Her mother was dead because of choices I'd made.
Around noon, my phone rang. Dr. Vasquez, my thesis advisor.
"Damian? I just heard about Amy's mother. How are you holding up?"
"Not great," I said.
"These things are always difficult. Losing a parent is never easy, even when it's not your own."
If only she knew how much more complicated it was than that.
"Dr. Vasquez, can I ask you something? Hypothetically?"
"Of course."
"Is time travel theoretically possible?"
There was a pause. "That's quite a change of subject."
"I know. Just humor me."
"Well, there are several theories. Einstein's equations don't prohibit backward time travel, though they make it extremely difficult. You'd need exotic matter with negative energy density, or access to cosmic strings, or—"
"But is it possible for consciousness to travel backward? Without a machine or exotic matter?"
Another pause, longer this time. "Damian, are you working on something new for your dissertation?"
"Sort of. I'm just exploring some ideas."
"Consciousness-based time travel is more in the realm of science fiction than science. Though there are some fringe theories about quantum consciousness, the idea that our awareness might exist partially outside normal spacetime..."
"What would trigger something like that?"
"Hypothetically? Extreme trauma, perhaps. The kind of emotional shock that might create some sort of quantum entanglement between different moments in time. But Damian, this is highly speculative. Why are you asking?"
I closed my eyes. "Just curious."
"Are you sure you're all right? You sound... strained."
"I'm fine. Just trying to understand how the universe works."
"Aren't we all. Listen, take some time off if you need it. Your dissertation defense isn't for another month. Focus on supporting Amy through this difficult time."
After I hung up, I sat in the growing darkness of our living room and tried to make sense of what was happening to me. If Dr. Vasquez was right about extreme trauma triggering some kind of consciousness displacement, then maybe that's what happened when I watched Amy die. Maybe my desperate desire to save her had somehow broken the rules of physics.
But if that was true, then maybe I could do it again. Maybe I could go back further this time, prevent the drunk driver from getting behind the wheel in the first place. Save both Amy and her mother.
The idea was terrifying and hopeful at the same time.
Amy didn't come home that night. Or the next night. When I finally called Marcus to check on her, he told me she was staying with him and that she wasn't ready to talk to me yet.
"She blames me," I told him.
"Yeah, I know. She told me about your conversation."
"Do you blame me too?"
Marcus was quiet for a long time. "I think my sister is going through the worst thing that's ever happened to her, and she needs someone to be angry at. You're convenient."
"But do you think it's my fault?"
"I think," he said carefully, "that my mother chose to take the bus. Nobody forced her. And I think that drunk driver chose to get behind the wheel. You didn't make those choices, Damian."
"But if Amy had gone to visit like she planned—"
"Then maybe they'd both be dead instead of just Mom. You ever think of that?"
I hadn't. But now that he said it, the possibility made me sick.
"Marcus, what if I told you something that sounded completely insane?"
"Try me."
"What if I said I somehow knew this was going to happen? That I'd seen it before?"
"I'd say grief makes people think strange things. And guilt makes them even stranger."
"But what if it were true?"
"Then I'd say you should talk to a professional. And maybe stay away from my sister until you do."
After that conversation, I started having the dreams again. Not about Amy dying this time, but about her mother. I kept seeing the bus accident from different angles, like a movie playing on repeat in my head. Sometimes I was on the bus when it happened. Sometimes I was the drunk driver. Sometimes I was standing on the sidewalk watching it all unfold, powerless to stop it.
But the worst dreams were the ones where I had to choose. Where some cosmic force offered me a deal: save Amy and let her mother die, or save her mother and let Amy die. In those dreams, I always chose Amy. And I always woke up hating myself for it.
A week passed. Amy still wouldn't see me or take my calls. Marcus said she was making funeral arrangements and dealing with lawyers about her mother's estate. Normal things that people do when someone dies. Except nothing about this felt normal.
Then, on a rainy Thursday morning, I woke up with that familiar buzzing in my head. The same static I'd felt the morning of Amy's accident. I sat up in bed, heart pounding, and looked at the clock.
7:23 AM.
September 15th, 2023.
Again.
I grabbed my phone with shaking hands and called Amy. It went straight to voicemail—her phone was turned off because she was asleep in bed next to me.
No, that was wrong. Amy wasn't speaking to me. She was staying with Marcus. Her mother was dead.
But when I turned around, there she was. Sleeping peacefully in our bed, one arm thrown across my pillow like she'd been reaching for me. Her face was soft and unguarded, unmarked by grief.
I was back at the beginning again. Somehow, I'd looped back to the morning before the accidents. Before I'd had to choose between saving Amy or her mother.
This time, I was going to save them both.
This time, I was going to get it right.