The Chronos Effect
Chapter Four: Ripples
I thought I'd won. For three blissful days, I actually believed I'd beaten the universe at its own game. No accidents on Highway 61. No dead mothers or girlfriends. Amy and I were closer than we'd been in months, bonded by our shared secret and the impossible thing we'd accomplished together.
Then Marcus called.
"Damian? We need to talk."
Something in his voice made my blood run cold. I was sitting at my desk, trying to work on my thesis, but the equations on my laptop screen might as well have been hieroglyphics.
"What's wrong?"
"Can you meet me at Café Du Monde? Like, right now?"
"Marcus, just tell me—"
"Not over the phone. This is... this is about Amy."
He hung up before I could ask any more questions.
I found him twenty minutes later, sitting at a corner table with two untouched cups of coffee growing cold in front of him. Marcus Webb looked like he hadn't slept in days. His police uniform was wrinkled, his usually perfect hair disheveled. When he saw me approaching, he gestured for me to sit down.
"You look terrible," I said.
"Yeah, well, weird things have been happening."
"What kind of weird things?"
Marcus stared at his coffee cup like it held answers to questions he didn't know how to ask. "You know how sometimes you have a dream that feels so real you wake up confused about what actually happened?"
"Sure."
"I've been having those. Except they're not dreams. They're memories of things that never happened."
My stomach dropped. "What do you mean?"
"I mean I remember my mother dying in a bus accident three days ago. I remember going to identify her body. I remember Amy crying in my guest bedroom for a week straight." He looked up at me. "But my mother is fine. She's at home right now, probably watching her soap operas and yelling at the TV."
I tried to keep my expression neutral. "That sounds like a nightmare, not a memory."
"Does it? Because I also remember you asking me weird hypothetical questions about time travel. I remember Amy telling me about your prophetic dreams." Marcus leaned forward. "And I remember thinking you were crazy. Right up until the things you predicted started coming true."
"Marcus—"
"I'm a cop, Damian. I notice things. Patterns. Inconsistencies." He pulled out a small notebook and flipped it open. "For the past three days, I've been documenting everything I remember that doesn't match reality. You want to hear the list?"
I didn't want to hear anything. I wanted to run. But Marcus was already reading.
"Robert Hendricks. Called in sick to work on the fifteenth, says he had food poisoning. But I remember him getting fired that same day for showing up drunk." Marcus flipped a page. "Maria Santos. College student at UNO. Should have died in a bus accident, but instead she got into a car wreck on the sixteenth. Minor injuries, but she keeps talking about having dreams of being on a bus that gets hit by a truck."
"Coincidence."
"Maybe. But here's where it gets really interesting." Marcus fixed me with the kind of stare he probably used on suspects in interrogation rooms. "The drunk driver from that bus accident that never happened? Robert Hendricks? He checked himself into rehab yesterday."
"Good for him."
"He told the intake counselor that an angel appeared to him in a bar parking lot and saved him from committing vehicular manslaughter."
I felt like the walls were closing in. "People say all kinds of things when they're trying to get sober."
"This angel had a name. Damian Torres."
We stared at each other across the small table. Around us, tourists chatted and laughed, eating beignets and taking selfies. Normal people living normal lives, blissfully unaware that reality was apparently more flexible than they imagined.
"You want to explain that to me?" Marcus asked.
"I helped a guy make a good decision. That's not exactly miraculous."
"Cut the bullshit, Damian. I've been a cop for eight years. I know when someone's lying to me." Marcus closed his notebook and leaned back in his chair. "The question is whether you're lying because you're delusional, or because you know something I don't."
Before I could answer, my phone started ringing. Amy's picture flashed on the screen.
"Answer it," Marcus said.
I hesitated, then swiped to accept. "Hey, babe."
"Damian, where are you?" Amy's voice was tight with panic.
"Café Du Monde. What's wrong?"
"I need you to come home. Right now."
"Amy, calm down. Tell me what happened."
"Just come home. Please. And bring Marcus if he's with you."
She hung up. Marcus was already standing, tossing money on the table for the untouched coffee.
"Let's go."
We drove to my apartment in Marcus's patrol car, neither of us talking. I kept trying to imagine what could have Amy so scared, but every scenario I came up with involved things I'd supposedly prevented from happening.
Amy met us at the door, her face pale and her hands shaking. "Thank God you're both here."
"What's going on?" I asked.
"Come inside. You need to see this."
She led us into the living room, where the TV was tuned to the local news. A reporter was standing in front of what looked like a construction site, emergency vehicles flashing behind her.
"...the building collapse occurred at approximately 2 PM, trapping an estimated twelve construction workers beneath tons of concrete and steel. Rescue efforts are ongoing, but officials say the chances of finding survivors are slim..."
"I don't understand," I said. "What does this have to do with—"
"Wait," Amy said, turning up the volume.
"...preliminary investigation suggests the collapse may have been caused by a gas leak in the adjacent building, which exploded around 1:45 PM. The blast weakened the foundation of the construction site, leading to the catastrophic failure we see behind me..."
The reporter continued, but I wasn't listening anymore. Because I recognized the building behind her. It was the restaurant where Amy and I had our first date. The place where we were supposed to have gone to dinner on September 15th, if I hadn't convinced her to stay home instead.
"That's our place," Amy whispered.
"The place where we would have been," I said numbly, "if I hadn't changed things."
Marcus looked back and forth between us. "Would someone please explain what the hell is going on?"
Amy and I exchanged glances. I could see the same realization dawning in her eyes that was hitting me. Every time I tried to save someone, the universe found another way to balance the equation. Amy's mother didn't die in the bus accident, but twelve construction workers died instead. The drunk driver didn't kill anyone on the road, but his choice not to drive somehow caused a gas explosion that killed different people.
"Sit down, Marcus," I said.
"I'd rather stand."
"Trust me, you're going to want to sit down for this."
For the second time in three days, I found myself explaining the impossible to someone I cared about. But this time, I had Marcus's fragmented memories and Robert Hendricks's testimony to back me up. This time, I had proof.
Marcus listened without interrupting, his expression cycling through disbelief, confusion, and finally, a kind of grim acceptance that only a cop could manage.
"So you're telling me," he said when I finished, "that you can travel backward through time by experiencing extreme trauma."
"That's the theory."
"And every time you change something, the universe... what, finds a way to even the score?"
"It looks that way."
"Jesus Christ." Marcus rubbed his face with both hands. "This is either the biggest load of crap I've ever heard, or the most important discovery in human history."
"Both, probably," Amy said.
Marcus stood up and started pacing around our small living room. "Okay, let's say I believe you. Let's say you really can manipulate time. The question is, what are we going to do about it?"
"We?" I asked.
"You think I'm going to let my sister's boyfriend play god with the fabric of reality without supervision? I'm a cop, Damian. It's my job to protect people."
"From what?"
"From you, apparently."
The words stung, but I couldn't argue with them. Every time I tried to save someone, other people ended up dead. How was that different from being a killer myself?
"He's trying to help," Amy said, but she didn't sound entirely convinced.
"The road to hell," Marcus muttered.
"So what do you suggest?" I asked. "That I just let people die when I know I could save them?"
"I suggest you figure out the rules first. If this power of yours really works, then there have to be consistent principles behind it. Cause and effect. Action and reaction."
He was right. I'd been approaching this like each loop was independent, but clearly they weren't. The universe seemed to have some kind of cosmic bookkeeping system, maintaining a balance I didn't understand.
"I need to talk to Dr. Vasquez," I said.
"Your thesis advisor?"
"She's the only person I know who might be able to help me understand the physics of what's happening."
Amy grabbed my hand. "Damian, what if she doesn't believe you?"
"Then I'll make her believe me."
"How?"
I thought about that. How do you prove to someone that you can travel through time without actually demonstrating the power? And how do you demonstrate the power without experiencing the kind of trauma that triggers it?
"I'll show her Marcus's memories. And Robert Hendricks's story. And the pattern of events that shouldn't be possible."
"That's not proof," Marcus said. "That's just correlation."
"Then what would convince you? If you didn't already have the memories, what would it take to make you believe?"
Marcus considered this. "Prediction. If you can really see alternate timelines, then you should be able to predict things that haven't happened yet."
"But that's just it—I can't predict the future. I can only remember alternate versions of the past."
"Same difference. If you remember something happening in a different timeline, and then it happens in this one, that's prediction."
He had a point. But it also meant I'd have to let something terrible happen in order to prove I could have prevented it. The ethical implications made my head spin.
"There might be another way," Amy said quietly.
"What do you mean?"
"What if you tried to go back on purpose? Not because of trauma, but because you want to?"
"I don't think it works that way."
"How do you know? You've only done it twice, and both times you were in extreme emotional distress. Maybe with practice, with understanding, you could learn to control it."
Marcus shook his head. "That sounds incredibly dangerous."
"More dangerous than letting Damian accidentally trigger it every time someone dies?"
She had a point. If I was going to keep experiencing these loops—and it seemed likely that I would—then learning to control them was probably safer than letting them happen randomly.
"How would I even try?" I asked.
"I don't know. Meditation? Focused concentration? Maybe Dr. Vasquez would have ideas."
The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. If quantum consciousness was a real phenomenon, then maybe it could be studied, understood, controlled like any other natural force.
"Okay," I said. "Let's go see Dr. Vasquez."
"All of us?"
"All of us. If I'm going to convince her that time travel is possible, I'm going to need witnesses."
Amy squeezed my hand. "What if she thinks we're all crazy?"
"Then we'll deal with that when it happens."
Marcus checked his watch. "It's almost 4 PM. Think she'll still be in her office?"
"Only one way to find out."
As we headed for the door, Amy caught my arm.
"Damian, before we do this... I need to ask you something."
"What?"
"In the original timeline, when I died... what was the last thing I said to you?"
The question hit me like a punch to the gut. I'd been trying not to think about that moment, about the weight of Amy's body in my arms and the way her eyes had lost focus.
"You apologized," I said quietly. "For not telling me about the baby."
Tears welled up in Amy's eyes. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner."
"Amy—"
"No, let me say this. I was scared you'd leave me. I was scared you'd think I did it on purpose, or that I wasn't ready to be a mother, or that I was somehow defective." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "But mostly I was scared that losing the baby meant we weren't meant to be together."
"That's not true."
"I know that now. But at the time..."
I pulled her close, holding her tight. "I would never leave you. Not for that, not for anything."
"Even if I destroy the timeline?"
I laughed despite everything. "Even then."
Marcus cleared his throat. "Hate to interrupt this moment, but if we're going to see your professor before she leaves for the day..."
"Right." I kissed Amy's forehead. "Ready to change the world?"
"I thought we already did that."
"I think," Marcus said, opening the door, "we're just getting started."
The three of us walked out into the late afternoon sunlight, heading toward a conversation that would either validate everything I thought I knew about reality, or prove that I was completely insane.
Either way, there was no going back now.
Dr. Vasquez was going to learn about time travel whether she wanted to or not. And somehow, I had the feeling that was going to change everything—again.