The Forever Watch

Chapter 6

Janus stared around him... was he dead? Was he in Paradise? Or was it Hell? Wherever he was... it seemed incredibly familiar. He ran out and stumbled into a square, staring at the familiar clock tower, the street vendor selling newspapers. He saw somebody buy one, shaking his head at the headlines.

Janus's mouth was wide open, he stared at the clock, seeing that it was two minutes to three. It made sense... he had just met himself from the future, and he didn't even realise it. Now he had to make sure that his past-self went through with the mission to destroy ArmsTech.

Janus approached his past self, going through the natural motions, trying very hard to remember what he was supposed to say, struggling to make sure it was exactly as he had been told.

He went through the devices that were shown to him, snatching his phone off of his past-self so that he couldn't alert the authorities. He showed him the girl buying the newspaper, the slapping of the man who barked at her, the car crash, and the announcement on the radio.

Then before he knew it, the clock chimed. He stared at the watch, showing two minutes to go. He reset it and handed it to his past-self.

Sending him on his way to go through the adventure he had just experienced. Janus sighed with relief, he was sure that ArmsTech was destroyed-well... he was sure that it will be destroyed.

For a moment when the adrenaline subsided from Janus's bloodstream he took a look around, everybody staring at him.

"Hey!" called out the newsvendor. "You two are twins?" he asked.

"Sort of..." said Janus, fingering his wrist, void of the watch. The secret weapon that ArmsTech were developing was, in fact, a time-machine. He smiled proudly at himself, with that kind of power, anything could have been possible with ArmsTech's influence.

By time-travelling, had he essentially changed his fate? Was his death supposed to be in the previous timeline? In fact, did everybody think him dead when the whole facility had exploded?

Janus then considered how it would have been possible to stay alive if he wasn't destined to die. The possibilities messed with his head, but he realised that by time-travelling, he was no longer constricted to fate... perhaps the whole idea of him dying was in fact just a lie, something to make sure that his past-self would feel invulnerable and urgent to fulfil his destiny in destroying the ArmsTech facility.

He chuckled to himself, reminiscing about the huge gauntlet his past-self was about to trudge through. He strolled on his way home, content that he had effectively saved the world from an evil menace.

However, it was not the end of his tale.

At two minutes past three, a leather-coated man popped out from nowhere in the alley, yanked out his silenced pistol, and shot Janus twice in the chest. Janus collapsed to the floor, shocked at his mere mortality, feeling the anti-climax hit hard; fate was no longer his guardian angel.

The assassin, pulled out a cell phone with his leathered gloves, autodialed a number.

"Is it safe?" asked the assassin, in a low basso voice.

"Encryption is activated," affirmed the voice on the other end. "It's the CEO of ArmsTech."

"Your former employee has finally had his contract terminated... permanently," said the assassin.

"Good... ensure the job is done correctly, we cannot risk a leak of intellectual property. Janus knows too much about our projects to simply go quiet," said the CEO.

As Janus crawled along the floor, he grabbed his wrist, the watch absent, his bare skin feeling naked, unprotected. As he considered the watch, he realised that he handed his past-self the same watch he was handed, and that same watch shall be handed to the next past-self, and so on, and so on... forever stuck in a temporal-loop.

Just as Janus died he wondered...

What would happen when the watch ran out of battery?And more puzzling than that, when was the watch's battery ever full? In fact,if he was warned about his death from the future, how did he know that hisdeath would occur exactly the secondthe watch ran out of time? Was it simply a coincidence?