This is a series I've been composing for a little while now. I wanted to get pretty deep into it before I started posting any parts.
I'll periodically post further episodes.
There will be a link to the whole in the sidebar that will eventually contain all the parts in their entirety.
This is part one. The beginning.
Female Time Traveler
We went to the future and everything was gone.
We traveled to the past and there was nothing left.
We've come back to the present and we're all there is.
She pets cat as it rubs against her and purrs.
I don't remember anymore if time stopped and then we started traveling or if my machine is what stopped it.
I do remember there being people. I think I remember that. I remember choices and want. The way they stretched us out taut and then left us to snap back hard.
I don't know if I should try to remember. We're alone now. I'm not sure if anything else matters.
The thing about time that's always fascinated me is that it's so much like us.
Powerful, yet easily manipulated. Vast, but readily made small. Impatient most of all. It's all our best traits and our worst ones. It's the foul of hope and the sickness of faith. An infinite beauty spoiled by an arrogance equally as flawed.
It's base and callous and ceaseless. It's delicate and fickle and relentless.
Just like we are.
I built this machine because I wanted to control it. The same as it had always controlled us. It was a villain to be caught. A monster to be slain.
A perpetual reflection of humanity's treacherous abyss.
It was always accumulating. A powerful corrosive devouring us from within. We were always its victim.
Until we weren't.
Cat rolls over. She rubs its belly.