Tevun-Krus #22 - Best of 2015

(Time Travel) Again - @KingBritain

Romance or time-travel, heartbreak or a bullet to the brain, one way or another, all things come to an end.

The swirling darkness of the infinite cosmos doesn't move. No matter how long I stare out through the window, the fine hot white pin-pricks of the stars never shift, never trundle along with me. The scenery is infinite, it is impossible, and it is boring.

My ship doesn't work. Not properly. The metal guts of it were eviscerated when a raiding ship clocked on that we were running cargo from Tarlor, and decided that they wanted whatever it was we were carrying. We fought them off. The bastards are space dust right now, swimming through the empty black caverns of space - still probably moving faster than me, though. Their ghosts will be happy to know that they messed my ship up enough that I'm practically a ghost with them. I'll never see home again. I'll die out here, buried in the black wastes, scorched by the countless stars, my grave and tomb this hunk of metal that should have been put out of commission long ago.

There's a rattle somewhere that I can't find. Deep in the engines. Driving me insane. And her. She's sitting on the bunk right now. Just as I left her. I want to say sorry. But I can't. I just can't.

She wouldn't hear me anyway.

I rub my eyes and pull the blinds across the window. Looking out into infinity can do things to a man's soul. Make him believe in things that aren't there. Make him believe that anything is possible.

I look at the lump of metal, sitting on the table.

Like saying sorry to a dead girl.

The lump of metal looks back.

My hand is shaking. Fuck, both of them. I wander over to the metal sitting on my desk, and run my fingers over the rough edges. You'd never believe it, to look at it. How powerful this thing is. How impossible. How I could go back and see her before...well, before it happened. Before I happened.

But I can't. I can't even speak to her now. How could I ever speak to her when she could speak back? How could I look into those beautiful eyes knowing that I was the one who stopped her pure heart from beating?

I can't. Simple answer. I'm a coward. Always have been, always will be. I'd rather drift through space alone than face the guilt of what I've done. My mother always said that if I kept running, if I kept hiding from everything, I'd die alone. If I had a drink I'd raise it to her. You were right, Mum. How about that?

The lump of metal on the table glares at me. It does. Seriously. I can't explain it, but it's like...it's like the thing is alive. Staring deep into my soul, evaluating it, inspecting the worth, gauging whether I'm-

Whether I'm-

No. That's stupid. I've been alone too long - up too long. What is it? Thirty hours? Got to be, at least. That word swirling in my head, it's nonsense. Nonsense. Means nothing. Just my mind playing tricks on me.

But then I turn to face her, sitting there on the bed, still as the moment I'd put her there. The word is on her lips. She's not speaking, and her mouth isn't moving, but I can hear it. Etched in Time, scratched against the fabric of the Universe, the word worthy going around and around in my head.

The lump of metal, the...the machine, it's gauging whether I'm worthy.

Worthy of what, though? I sit down on the end of the bed, looking down at my shaking hands, unable to even glimpse at her again. She was beautiful, once upon a time. Before the raiders. Before the lump of metal. Before me.

The back of her skull is missing. I can't see it, but I know.

I know.

There's a slither of me that wants to use the lump, that wants to go back to before...to before, and save her from myself. But that part of me is shackled, kept in chains by the cowardice that rules my body. I could do it - the lump, the time machine, whatever it is, it can do that for me. Gina and I fiddled around with it for days, and it took us back, maybe a day or two, each time, but even an hour would have seemed impossible. The thing on the table, which we'd found drifting in the deep black sea of space, floating like us, maybe - no, definitely - for thousands upon thousands of years, can turn back time. I'm not going to call it that. No. It's too far fetched. Too H.G. Wells. I'm just going to call it the lump.