No Way Home ✓

6. The Curse of Knowledge

I walk towards the center of the hall. There are other halls I can find, but since there are an infinite number of them, any one would do.

I run my fingers down the spines of the books, hoping for some ancient eldritch magic to awaken at my touch.

Another shadow looms over me. I look up, and there across the ceiling, one of Medusa's limbs move against the glass, leaving behind moist tracks that ooze against the surface.

I want to see what life could have been, before the inevitable end. I want to see how my parents get by. I want to see my hometown, the park, the little wooden bridge over the lake, old friends who have drifted away, never to return. Even when presented with a universe's worth of knowledge, I only want to know my own fate. Yet what else can I do? I'm not some scientist upon a mission to save humanity, nor a great leader guiding nations toward everlasting glory.

No, I'm just a small and insignificant creature concerned with her own survival only.

I look down and realise I've been walking in circles.

No, not in circles.

A spiral.

The floor at my feet has been slowly rising, step after careful step, carrying me in a staircase that twists upward. A heavenly column of light spills from the dome above, specks of dust hovering weightlessly.

The Archive of Time answers my prayer at last.

Glowing letters appear on the spines of all the books, though I cannot recognise the language. Out of the light above, a book slowly descends into my open arms. The pages flutter. My mind goes blank.

Visions play before my eyes, scenes from my own life, where I am but an omniscient observer.

Decades flash by in seconds.

Mother falls ill next year and never recovers. My father watches his life wither away from the rocking chair on the patio. No one bothers to feed the fishes in the tank anymore. Our garden withers away. My childhood friend hangs herself. I watch her family grieve as her body lay cold and pale in the morgue. The old bridge is destroyed in a storm that hits my hometown. They demolish the park and raise a skyscraper. My brother holds my father's frail hand as the monitor flatlines. The ringing sound continues as the vision fades, and the last I see of my brother is the image of him, old and bent, walking into an empty house.

The glass walls of the archive comes into focus before me. But I still don't understand.

Why don't I appear in any of these scenes?

Can I never really go back home?

Is this the end?

✧✧✧✧

It is not.

When Blain wakes up, Medusa is long gone.

"Time to go," I say, pushing her hair back. She gives me the warmest smile I have ever seen.

"Yeah," she says, sitting up. "Let's get you back home."

We set out once more. Blain drops me off on the bridge on that fateful night.

Only an hour has passed since my past self has fallen into the water below. The night is quiet and still, the stars bright and blinking.

She parks Adam 1.0 by the sidewalk, and I step out.

It's time to go home.

But how do I go home, knowing what's to come, yet having no power to change it?

How do I walk back home and not go insane under the crushing weight of it all?

I wish I hadn't been so foolish that night, so eager to end my life. I wish I could stop my own self from coming to this bridge at all, so none of this ever happened.