The Chronos Effect
Chapter Five: The Breaking Point
The buzzing in my head got worse over the next two days. It started as a low hum, like the sound of electricity running through power lines, but by Friday morning it felt like wasps had taken up residence in my skull.
Amy noticed me flinching every time I moved my head.
"You okay? You look like you're in pain."
"Just a headache," I lied, pouring coffee with shaking hands.
"Maybe you should see a doctor."
"I'm fine."
But I wasn't fine. The buzzing was getting louder, more insistent, like some kind of temporal alarm clock that wouldn't shut off. And with it came flashes of images I couldn't quite make sense of. A school bus. Children screaming. Fire.
Something bad was coming, and I didn't know how to stop it.
My phone rang while I was trying to eat breakfast. Dr. Vasquez.
"Damian, I need you to come in today. We have a problem."
"What kind of problem?"
"The kind that requires immediate attention. How soon can you be here?"
I looked at Amy, who was watching me with growing concern.
"Give me an hour."
"Make it thirty minutes."
She hung up before I could respond.
"Everything okay?" Amy asked.
"I don't think so."
We drove to the university together, Amy insisting on coming with me even though I told her she didn't need to. The buzzing in my head was so loud now that I could barely concentrate on the road.
Dr. Vasquez's office was in the physics building, a sterile place that smelled like chalk dust and burnt coffee. When we arrived, she was pacing behind her desk, her usually perfect hair disheveled.
"Damian, thank God. We have a situation."
"What's wrong?"
"Sit down. Both of you."
Amy and I took the chairs across from her desk. Dr. Vasquez pulled out a tablet and set it in front of us.
"For the past three days, our quantum field sensors have been detecting massive anomalies in the local spacetime continuum. The readings are unlike anything I've ever seen."
On the tablet screen was a graph showing energy spikes that looked like mountains.
"What kind of anomalies?" I asked, though I was pretty sure I already knew.
"Temporal distortions. Reality fluctuations. It's as if someone is repeatedly tearing holes in the fabric of time and space, then patching them back together."
Amy looked at me, then at Dr. Vasquez. "Is that possible?"
"Theoretically, yes. But it would require enormous amounts of energy, or..." Dr. Vasquez paused, studying me intently. "Or a consciousness that's become quantum entangled with multiple timeline possibilities."
The buzzing in my head reached a crescendo. I gripped the arms of my chair to keep from falling over.
"Damian," Dr. Vasquez said softly. "What have you done?"
I couldn't lie anymore. The truth spilled out of me like water from a broken dam. Everything. The car accident, the loops, the bus crash, Marcus getting shot. All of it.
When I finished, Dr. Vasquez was staring at me like I'd grown a second head.
"My God," she whispered. "You're actually doing it. You're actually traveling through time."
"Is that what's causing the anomalies?" Amy asked.
"Not just causing them. Each time Damian loops back, he's creating fractures in reality. Small ones at first, but they're getting bigger." Dr. Vasquez pulled up another screen showing a map of New Orleans with red zones scattered across it. "These are areas where the laws of physics are becoming... unstable."
"What does that mean?"
"It means people are experiencing things that shouldn't be possible. Memories of events that never happened. Objects appearing and disappearing. Time moving at different speeds in different locations." She looked at me gravely. "Damian, your loops are creating a cascade failure in local spacetime."
The buzzing stopped suddenly, replaced by perfect, terrifying silence.
Then the images in my head became crystal clear.
A school bus on Tchoupitoulas Street. Thirty-seven children on their way to a field trip. The driver, distracted by his phone, running a stop sign. A delivery truck carrying propane tanks, unable to stop in time.
The explosion would kill everyone within a hundred-foot radius.
"I have to go," I said, standing up so fast the chair fell over.
"Damian, wait—"
"There's going to be an accident. A school bus. I have to stop it."
"When?" Amy grabbed my arm.
I looked at my watch. 10:47 AM. The accident would happen at 11:23 AM.
"Thirty-six minutes."
Dr. Vasquez stood up. "Damian, you can't keep doing this. Each loop is making things worse."
"I can't let thirty-seven children die."
"And what happens when you save them? What new disaster will your intervention cause?"
I stared at her. "I don't care."
"You should care. Because at the rate you're creating temporal fractures, you're going to tear a hole in reality that we can't repair."
"How long do we have?"
"Before what?"
"Before I destroy everything?"
Dr. Vasquez hesitated. "Based on current readings? Maybe one more loop. Two at the most."
Amy stepped between us. "Are you saying he has to choose between saving those children and saving reality?"
"I'm saying he has to choose between saving those children and saving everyone."
The weight of that choice settled on my shoulders like a concrete blanket. Thirty-seven kids versus the entire universe. How do you make that kind of decision?
"There has to be another way," Amy said.
"Maybe there is," Dr. Vasquez said slowly. "Damian, when you loop back, do you go to the exact same moment?"
"7:23 AM on September 15th. Every time."
"That's your anchor point. The moment of maximum emotional trauma. But what if you could create a different anchor? A moment earlier in time, before the cascade of events begins?"
"How?"
"By experiencing trauma at a different point. By forcing your consciousness to entangle with a different temporal coordinate."
Amy looked between us. "What does that mean exactly?"
Dr. Vasquez pulled out a pen and started drawing on a whiteboard. "Think of time like a river. Damian keeps jumping back to the same spot, right before the waterfall. But if he could jump further upstream, to before the river starts flowing in the wrong direction..."
"He could prevent all of it from happening in the first place," Amy finished.
"Theoretically, yes. But the trauma required to create a new anchor point would have to be even more severe than watching Amy die."
"What could be worse than that?" Amy asked.
Dr. Vasquez and I looked at each other, both understanding at the same time.
"Losing everyone," I said quietly. "Not just Amy. Everyone I care about."
"Damian, no," Amy said. "There has to be another way."
"Is there?" I asked Dr. Vasquez.
She shook her head. "Not that I can see. The temporal fractures are accelerating. We're running out of time."
I checked my watch again. 11:02 AM. Twenty-one minutes until the school bus accident.
"I have to go," I said.
"Where?" Amy demanded.
"To save those kids."
"And then what?"
I looked at her, memorizing her face. The way her eyes crinkled when she was worried. The small scar on her chin from when she fell off her bike as a kid. The way she always tucked her hair behind her left ear when she was thinking.
"Then I figure out how to fix everything."
"Damian—"
I kissed her, hard and desperate, pouring everything I felt into that moment. Love and fear and regret and hope all mixed together.
"I love you," I said when we broke apart. "No matter what happens, remember that I love you."
Before she could respond, I ran.
The school bus was easy to find. I just followed the temporal distortions, the places where reality flickered around the edges. The closer I got to Tchoupitoulas Street, the weirder things became. Street lights blinking in patterns that didn't make sense. Pigeons flying backwards. A hot dog vendor who looked exactly like my grandfather, who'd been dead for ten years.
I found the intersection where it would happen. The school bus was already approaching from the east, moving at exactly 35 miles per hour. The delivery truck was coming from the south, the driver texting someone about his lunch plans.
Eleven minutes until impact.
I could stop the bus driver. Run into the street, force him to hit the brakes. But that would just delay the inevitable. Unless I removed the bus from the equation entirely.
I pulled the fire alarm at the nearest building.
The sound was deafening, echoing off the buildings and causing people to pour out onto the sidewalks. Traffic started backing up as drivers slowed to rubberneck. The school bus got caught in the jam, stuck three blocks away from the intersection.
The delivery truck passed through harmlessly.
Crisis averted.
But as I watched the confused children on the bus, safe but scared by all the commotion, I felt the familiar buzzing starting in my head again. Not the temporal warning this time. Something else.
The fractures in reality were spreading.
I could see them now, like cracks in a windshield that kept growing longer. The hot dog vendor flickered between my grandfather's face and that of a complete stranger. A woman walking her dog aged thirty years in three seconds, then snapped back to normal. A car drove through a solid brick wall like it wasn't there.
My phone rang. Dr. Vasquez.
"Damian, where are you?"
"Tchoupitoulas Street. I stopped the bus accident."
"I know. I can see the readings from here. The temporal fractures just tripled in size."
I looked around at the chaos I'd created. Reality breaking down in real time.
"How long do we have?"
"Hours. Maybe less."
"And the only way to fix it is to create a new anchor point?"
"As far as I can tell, yes."
I closed my eyes, feeling the weight of the decision. Save the children now, doom everyone later. Let the children die, maybe save everyone else.
Except there was a third option.
"Dr. Vasquez, what if I went back to before I ever discovered I could time travel? Before any of this started?"
"You mean anchor yourself to a point before September 15th?"
"Exactly. Prevent myself from ever experiencing the original trauma."
There was a long pause. "That would require you to experience something worse than watching Amy die. Something so terrible that it overwrites your original anchor point."
"Like watching everyone I care about die because I broke reality?"
"Damian, if you do that, you'll lose all memory of the loops. You won't know what's coming. Amy will still die in the original timeline."
"But everyone else will live."
"Yes, but—"
"Then that's what I have to do."
"Damian, wait. Let me run some calculations. There might be another way."
But I wasn't listening anymore. Around me, reality was coming apart at the seams. Cars phasing through buildings. People existing in multiple ages simultaneously. The sky flickering between day and night like a broken movie projector.
I had caused this. And I was the only one who could fix it.
I just had to be willing to sacrifice everything I'd fought so hard to save.
Amy called while I was walking back to my car.
"Damian, where are you? Dr. Vasquez says the readings are going crazy."
"I know. I can see it happening."
"See what happening?"
I watched a tree grow from sapling to full size to dead stump in the span of ten seconds.
"Reality breaking down."
"Come back to the lab. We can figure this out together."
"Amy," I said, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk. "I need you to know something."
"You're scaring me."
"In every timeline I've experienced, you're the best person I know. You're kind and smart and brave and you make everyone around you better just by existing."
"Damian—"
"I'm going to fix this. But I need you to know that loving you has been the best thing that ever happened to me. In any timeline."
"What are you talking about? What are you going to do?"
I hung up and turned off my phone.
The buzzing in my head was back, louder than ever. But this time, I wasn't going to use it to save someone I loved.
This time, I was going to use it to lose everything.
I closed my eyes and focused on the fractures around me. On the reality I'd broken. On the billions of people who would suffer if I didn't fix this.
I thought about Amy dying alone in a car accident while I was safe at home, never knowing what I'd given up to save everyone else.
I thought about a world where I never discovered I could time travel, never experienced the loops, never had the chance to save anyone.
I thought about sacrifice.
The buzzing reached a crescendo, and the world went white.
When I opened my eyes, I was in my apartment.
But something was different. The clock on the wall read 6:15 AM.
September 14th, 2023.
One day before everything went wrong.
I had created a new anchor point. The question now was whether I had the strength to let tragedy happen, knowing I could prevent it.
My phone buzzed with a text from Amy: "Looking forward to dinner tonight. I have something important to tell you."
I stared at the message, knowing exactly what she wanted to tell me. About the pregnancy she'd lost. About the conversation that would distract me while driving. About the drunk driver who would kill her in less than eighteen hours.
This time, I was going to let it happen.
This time, I was going to save everyone by sacrificing the one person who mattered most.
But first, I was going to call Dr. Vasquez and make sure she understood what was coming. Because if I was going to let Amy die to prevent a temporal apocalypse, someone needed to know why.
Someone needed to remember that once upon a time, a man loved a woman so much that he broke reality trying to save her.
And then loved her so much that he let her go.