This Is How You Survive The Time Paradox [slimeknight]

"When you get Minecraft, don't open the world that you didn't make."

This is the first line of an email that Derek received a day after be bought a copy of the game. A stranger who calls himself Avery and claims to be from the future sent it in an attempt to stop him, but Derek knows that changing the past will cause a grandfather paradox. Sensing his good intentions, he gives Avery a chance to change his mind.

Thus begins an impossible email exchange from 2026 back to 2022, between two people whose growing connection could cause a temporal dilemma. Neither want the other to suffer a terrible end, but their survival is mutually exclusive. Is this fate, or are grander forces at play?

(crossposted from Archive of our Own)