Second Chances

“I am considered a genius. Member of MENSA at 10. Graduated college at the age of 15, with a degree in meta-physics. Received my doctorate 3 years later. I started working for NASA on something very top secret. I called it the Wells Project.” Jenn stated flatly.

“As in H.G.Wells?”

She nodded. “I worked on the theory for years, but it wasn’t until a little more than three and a half years from now that I found the breakthrough equation.”

“I got approval from NASA to run with it, but when the time came to actually build the Enterprise, we had to look for outside funding. That’s when I was approached by Merlin.”

“You called it the Enterprise? And come on, Merlin? That can’t be for real.” Brian said sarcastically.

Jenn had to smile at Brian’s expression of disbelief. “Yeah, they’re really called Merlin. It’s a pretty powerful organization. Covert and dangerous as hell. Not even the president knew about this group.”

She took a deep breath. “Anyway, they provided NASA--and me—with the money necessary to build the Enterprise in return for the rights to the device. They told me that time travel could be a deadly weapon, and without regulation, there was always the possibility that terrorists or criminals could get their hands on the Enterprise and change the course of history. I suspected they weren’t being truthful, but I let myself be blind to that. All I cared about was making the Wells Project a reality.”

This was all her fault. She’d let Merlin get involved. She was responsible for what happened as a result of that. She was to blame for all those deaths, for Brian’s death…..

“Turns out that the agents from Merlin were terrorists,” she told him grimly. “They used the Enterprise without my authorization to go back in time and set a bomb….hundreds were killed.”

“How did you know they were responsible?”

“I probably wouldn’t have, if I hadn’t been experimenting with something I called ‘double memories.’” Jenn pushed her plate forward as she explained. “We just ate nachos, right?”

He glanced down at the plate and nodded.

“You have a memory of eating the nachos. If you were paying close attention, you probably have a memory of me burning my tongue, right?”

He nodded again, his gaze never leaving her. She liked having his full attention. It had been a long time. The Brian from her time had been distracted and unhappy for the past few years as he struggled to make his failing marriage work. But this was before all that. This was before he married that bitch.

“Now, suppose I were to travel back in time just an hour or so and we decided to go to McDonald’s instead. Suppose we order a couple of burgers and fries and we eat that. I changed history, right? BUT. Here’s the strange part.”

“I’ve found that when time has been tampered with—and our eating burgers instead of nachos, as small a detail as it seems, is time tampering---people are left with residual memories. These residual memories--- how it actually happened the first time around—provide time travelers and those people affected by the time travel with ‘double memories’.”

“Our most vivid memory would be of the burgers and fries, but we would also remember the nachos. It’d be foggy almost as if it were a dream, but it’d be back there. Double memories.”

He nodded. “That makes sense.”

“If you concentrate, you may be able to find a residual memory of what you did immediately after you heard about the earthquake the first time around.”

Brian closed his eyes for a moment, frowning slightly. When he opened them, they were wide with surprise. “I stayed home and watched the news all night,” he said. “That’s twisted.”

“A double memory can be distant and dreamlike, but I knew something was wrong the morning that I woke up and turned on the TV and heard the news about the bombing. I had a residual memory of that same morning that was very different. I could remember waking up turning on CNN and the biggest story they had was about the birth of sextuplets. I still had that memory, and that’s how I knew that Merlin was responsible for the bombing. They were the only ones besides me who had access to the Wells Project.”

He was still watching her intently. “Ok, you’ve come back in time to change events that are going to happen in my future. But since you’re from the future, the changes have already happened in your past. Shouldn’t you already remember them?”

Jenn shook her head. “I can’t make one little change and know instantly how it’s going to turn out unless I return to my own time. If I did that, I’d have a sudden rush of very vivid double memories. I’d remember all the things that had happened differently in the five years between now and then.”

“So how will you know when you’ve made the changes you need to make?”

She gazed into his eyes. “I’ll know.”

“How? Maybe you have done all you need…”

Jenn shook her head. “Coming back in time isn’t enough. I need to create an event that will affect the life of my present-day self-----of Jennifer. And as Jennifer does things differently, I’ll have new double memories—but only one by one as they happen in real time.”

“You just lost me…”

Jenn leaned across the table, trying to make him understand. “Think of it on a physical level,” she said. “If you were to X-ray me, you’d see I’ve never had a broken bone. But if I convinced you to push Jennifer----not me, but Jennifer---off the sidewalk into oncoming traffic, my own X-rays would suddenly be very different. You’d probably see signs of healed fractures, even though it didn’t happen to me. But think about it. It did happen to me, because she’s me.” She sat back in her seat. “Until I actually change the past---until I convince you to actually push me into traffic, to continue with that rather grim example---I won’t know what’s going to happen.”

His eyes didn’t leave her face, his gaze sharp and probing. “Most people die when pushed into oncoming traffic. You’re not here to ask me to help kill you, are you?”

Jenn considered trying to laugh off his words, but the look in his eyes convinced her to be honest. This was Brian she was talking to. He’d always been able to see right through her. “That’s one solution to this mess,” she told him seriously. “If Jennifer is gone, all the theories about time travel are gone too. It’s a quick and easy fix. But remember what I just told you. What happens to her affects me. If she’s dead, I’m dead too. I’m hoping to find another way.”

Brian took a deep breath, letting it out in a burst of air. “Oh, man.”

“I’m going to find another way,” Jenn told him. “The agents from Merlin tried to kill me. I won’t give them the satisfaction of seeing me dead—even if the only way they’d remember me was in double memories.”

“That day you came,” Brian said. “There was blood on you. Your shoulder….”

Her shoulder had only been scraped. Most of the blood had not been hers. “I went to NASA that morning intending to use the Enterprise to go back and prevent the bombing, but they were waiting for me.”

She reached across the table, needing to touch him to erase the memories. She could still see his eyes, dimming as the life seeped from his body. She couldn’t tell him all of it, but that didn’t matter.

“You were there,” she whispered, “and somehow you knew they were after me. You tried to warn me. You saved my life.”

She laced their fingers together as she took a deep breath. “I need you to help me, Brian.”

He looked down at their hands, and then back up into her eyes. “Ok, I’ll help.”

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