Overlap

Chapter 94: Recoil of Time

<11/22/2012 - 13:41 | Cage High School (Outskirts), Austell, GA, USA>

Nothing could stop the tears I shed for our lives hath destroyed. The version of me that I saw exist twelve years from now was dead. The version of Zero who would live a happy loving life was also destroyed. Even if we tried everything to get as close to the same as possible, there will be subtle or severe differences, differences that I won't even know about until that time comes at us again. I tried my best to explain this to Lumina, but only after I forced her to give me some space and time to think.

Class was too distracting, so I soon enough came back outside, to the outskirts of the school yards where I was unlikely to be interrupted or discovered. Regardless of how I felt about my own future, I couldn't suppress the guilt suffocating me, the guilt of having affected Zero's future in all this. If the vision would have instead had a negative ending, then everything would have been okay. Instead, the best possible future I could imagine for both of us has been wiped away by these forbidden eyes somehow peeking through the timeline.

Lumina wasn't her cheery self now either. I managed to convince her that everything I was experiencing was too real for her to ignore, and that I must bear the burden of the destruction I've wrought. I destroyed an entire world of possibility. The worst part, is that I can't even tell Zero anything about it, less I be forced to involve the context of what my entire life has been up to this point. Even if I only stuck to the premise of experiencing premonitions, I doubt she would believe me even on that front. So here I stood, sulking in silence for ten quiet minutes while Lumina hung around in the silence, allowing herself to feel my own emotions for a change.

After long enough, I crouched to my knees in desperation, my hands clasped together for prayer. "Please God! Whatever this power is, whatever these premonitions are, I don't want them anymore. I don't care who put them here or why I keep having them. Please just make them stop. Make the visions stop, I beg of you!"

Lumina held her tongue, leaving me to my repentance. I was never normally one for prayer. I've recently been losing faith that there is a benevolent god, after the contradictions I've found in the Bible, the horrible manner in which homosexuals are treated, and to the reason why anyone would be given the ability to alter the future. Right now, I didn't care. If there really is a god out there, I need this one wish to be granted. I need to stop having these premonitions at all costs, before I destroy more good futures belonging not to my own. I can't go through this again. I can't be responsible for any more destruction.

"The ability to see into the future, I don't want it. Please remove this ability from me. Please..." If God does exist, there's no way it would let me destroy futures unchecked when I don't want this ability. An all-powerful deity would exert no effort in removing my powers.

Lumina waited a good minute of my silence before concluding it was safe to speak to me again. "Reed, I'm sorry for earlier. I didn't realize you felt this bad about what happened. I just don't want you to blame yourself."

"That ship has already sailed."

"Then at least tell me you're going to be okay after this. No matter what happened, the new future still isn't known, which means it's all up to what you do in the current moment. It's not over. That dream you envisioned can still happen; maybe it can be even better, but you have to do something to make that true."

I think Lumina all this time has been trying to get me to take action for my mistake, so that I have a chance to fix everything, to get our futures as close to the original truth as possible. "What can I do Lumina? I was never given a guide book on what I'm supposed to do to reach my goal. I don't know what actions I'm supposed to take in the first place to make my future a reality. Then, there's Zero's future. I don't know what to do in order to keep her on her current path, to persuade her to keep giving life to its fullest without ever giving up."