Prime Mover

Chapter 8 - I am the Walrus

"I know, its a lot to take in all at once." he said.

That was a major understatement. My entire childhood had bee turned upside down in an instant. I found myself looking closely at his face, picking out the details I knew. It was a lot different than seeing yourself in a mirror, but familiar at the same time.

I tried to say something, but my mind was blank. He smiled like he knew exactly what I was going through. I guess he did.

"You need some time to think." he said. "I'm going to get some hot dogs and go watch the game with our younger self. Meet me here in the middle of the sixth inning, we'll talk a bit."

I nodded, gripping the table edge.

"See you soon" He said, before walking back to the food kiosk.

I watched as he bought a pair of hot dogs, then walked briskly back to his seat next to our eleven year old counterpart. 

It was strange watching both my younger and older selves at the same time. At eleven, I was completely lost in the moment, enjoying the greatest birthday ever, while the older me seemed relaxed and controlled.  Meanwhile, my brain was flooded with so many thoughts I couldn't even hope to concentrate on baseball.

Some things from my past were starting to make sense. Like why mom had always called him Robert. That was my middle name. I had always assumed I was just named after him; now I knew he went by that name to avoid confusion with me.

Finally, the sixth inning came.  Halladay got three more batters out, including a nail biting full count that ended in a swinging strikeout.  With the final out, Dad got up, and I followed him. Funny that I still thought of him as "Dad", when I knew it was really an older me, but I guess its easier to keep things straight in my head that way.

People streamed around the concourse, buying food and beer and enjoying their evening. Dad was waiting for me as I arrived at the same tall table. I stood across from him, taking in all the details. This would be me, someday.

"Does Mom know?" I asked. Of all the questions swimming around in my head, this was the one I most wanted answered. She had been there all my life, keeping up this fiction that the man I thought was my father was really someone else.

He nodded, more to indicate that he knew this question was coming than to confirm the answer. "Yes and no. I told her the truth early on, but I don't think she ever fully believed it, at least not until well after you turned 18. At first she thought I was a concerned rich relative of your real father, looking out for you. The money probably helped her accept that too. She's a good person, but you know that."

"Soooo... who is my real father?"

"I'm sorry to tell you like this, but he's gone. Died in a car crash when you were only a year old, drunk driving. He and Mom were both very young when you were born, and they didn't get along well, but he knew about you and visited you a few times when you were a baby."

I gripped the table tighter, my knees getting weak. To find out my real father was someone completely different, then have him taken away the same day was a lot to bear.  I looked down at my hands, not knowing what to do. The first thing that came to mind was how I could use the watch to see him, meet my real father before he died.

"I know what you're thinking," he continued, "that you want to go back and meet him. Don't. You can really mess up our timeline that way. Don't ask how I know. Just don't do it."

Damn. Maybe I shouldn't.

I changed the subject. "Where did you get the watch?  And how old are you?"

He held up his left wrist, showing me his watch.  I couldn't help noticing how alike our hands were. "There's a neat trick for that. Its in the manual, but you haven't read that part yet." He tapped the face a few times slowly, showing me through the menu.  The face blacked out and read 22:042:13:48:12. 

"That" he said, holding it out for me to see, "is my total relative time since I made the first jump with this watch. The first number is years, then days, hours, and so on." I did some quick mental calculations. If his first jump was the day after he turned eighteen, he was 42 now. Or at least, that was how much time he had experienced.

"Try it with yours." he suggested.  I took my watch through the same menu, and the dial read 00:128:02:11:48. One hundred twenty eight days had passed for me since my first jump. Even though the calendar would say late July when I got back home, I had experienced over four months of subjective time. I guess I had been really busy using this thing over the summer.

"As to where we got it..." he trailed off, considering the best way to tell me, "I haven't experienced that personally yet, but I've heard about it from others. Its from the far future, there are very few of them around, and you're not supposed to have one. But now that you do, its become an integral part of some very important timelines, so it can't be changed."

I said, "So... sometime in the future, you... I mean I... get our hands on a time travel device, then go back in time to give it to myself?"

"Something like that. It gets complicated. In my timeline, I haven't given you the watch yet. It's coming sometime soon though. The more you go back and change your own history, the more confusing things get."

"You've changed your history? My hist... Our history?"

"Quite a lot, I'm afraid. We're doing it now. Any time you interact with yourself, you change your timeline. Its not a good idea, either. You should avoid meeting yourself as much as possible, especially when the younger you knows who the older you is. The timelines can get really messed up that way. Sometimes its just unavoidable though, like now."

It all made sense now. Why he, I mean *I*, visited so rarely, and stopped entirely when I was thirteen. I wanted to avoid contaminating my own timeline too much.

"So, like, do you remember this conversation from both sides?" I asked.

"Sort of. I remember my version of it. Yours will be a bit different. It changes slightly every time it passes through our consciousness. You may notice that things you remember happening a certain way are different the next time around. Nothing too drastic, just... different."

"Like what?" I asked. This could be vital.

"Remember what Scott's sister said, about time not being a single set line, but more of a big ball of timey stuff that continually adjusts?" he said, "That's whats going on. Just because you remember your future self doing something a certain way, doesn't mean you have to. When you're my age, talking to your younger self here at this baseball game, you can choose to say something totally different than what you hear me saying now. The timeline will absorb it, adjust, and move on."

My mind was officially blown. "So I could go talk to my eleven year old self right now, even though I don't remember that happening when I was eleven?"

"I don't recommend it, but I can't stop you."

I wasn't planning on it, but the idea did sound intriguing.

At that moment, a bat cracked, and the crowd roared. Something important was going on in the baseball game.

"I've got to get back." he said. "Time for one last question."

"Anything you can tell me about my future?"

"Without royally screwing up our timeline?" he laughed, "Not much. I know how tempting it is right now to just tour history and forget everything else, but don't get lost in it. Go to college, get your degree. You'll be glad you did."

He looked directly into my eyes, and said, "And sometime soon, when someone contacts you saying they're from the Time Patrol, be very, very careful."