A Heart's Thoughts

Day ??? - Distorted

As the light faded, Clover's vision returned and revealed a breathtaking scene that resembled a dark sky, lit with a million little stars. She heard a gasp beside her and turned her head to smile at Matthew, who she had convinced to come with her.

"What is this place?" he asked, turning to face Clover. His eyes were big, sparkling with excitement.

"This, my dear friend, is the place that overlooks what I believe to be all possible timelines. All those shining dots are different timelines," she stretched out her arm and motioned for the sparkling dots, stopping to point at the only red one, "and that red dot over there, that's our timeline."

Matthew stared intensely at the red dot, looking a bit sad, "you think our friends are alright?"

Clover shrugged, "I'm sure they are, for now. But I fear they won't be if we don't do our jobs right."

"And what exactly is our job? I know you said something about irregularities in timelines, but I'm honestly not sure what to make of that."

Clover let out a small sigh and her expression turned grave, "these timelines, most of them are very related. It's the slight differences that have a big impact, which caused all these different timelines to be made and develop more changes from their original timeline. Sometimes, irregularities occur. A change that wasn't supposed to happen in that timeline. As far as I know, there are only two ways to make that happen; put something or someone that doesn't belong in that timeline, in there, or," and she hesitated, "or two timelines collide."

Matthew gave her a puzzled look, "how can two timelines collide? Do these dots move?"

She shook her head, "no, they don't. In fact, they aren't even dots. They are actual lines, we just see them at dots because we're looking at the current events. It's like we're looking 'through' the timelines from the bottom, which is the present. It's to prevent the past from being altered."

Matthew frowned, "okay, so, if they're all lines and don't move, how do they collide?"

Clover also frowned, trying to think of a way to explain everything, before her face lit up, "ah! You know how I can see the future?"

"Yeah?"

"The future I see is the one that follows the main course of the timeline, which will inevitably happen if nothing out of the ordinary happens to interrupt it. I, however, sometimes change the future, by making slight changes, warning people, changing plans. When I do that, we enter a new branch of our timeline. It's still the same base timeline, but with a slight change. Not big enough to give us an entirely new timeline, just an alternative version of what was supposed to happen."

Matthew nodded hesitantly, "o...kay...?"

Clover excitedly continued talking, "these branches grow parallel to the base timeline, which means that, if many changes are made, our timeline will grow in width as more and more timelines are branched."

She pointed at the dots in front of them, "now, if you look closely, all dots appear to be at a set distance from each other. If each timeline grows more in its width, they'll eventually collide. Normally, that wouldn't happen, unless something is out of the ordinary. If two timelines collide, they basically burn holes in each other, causing countless paradoxes until something like a black hole forms and all affected timelines just cease to exist."

Matthew swallowed hard, "but, if these timelines only branch if something out of the ordinary happens, how can they even get to the point of... That."

"I'm not the only one who can travel between timelines. There are so many timelines, so there's also a whole lot of people who have a similar power to mine. Sadly, not everyone is set on using it leisurely, and when that happens, things go wrong. People like me aren't seen as 'alien' to any timeline, so we can just blend in and wreak havoc if we want, causing the timeline to branch more than it usually would."