She kissed him goodbye, knowing that tomorrow he wouldn’t remember her. She felt the grief surge back into her heart — all those old pains and wounds she thought had healed during their whirlwind journey toward the happily-ever-after she’d never dared to believe in but had discovered. Now, she was forced to give it up.

She could see him dying inside too. He’d survive, she knew that much. James had lived an adventure before her, and nothing would stop him from finding another one. But knowing that didn’t make it easier. Their futures now existed one hundred and fifty years apart, and this — this moment — was the only one left where they still belonged to each other.

The decision had been made the day before, as they watched the last avenue of preventing this alternate timeline they’d just fixed slip away. For the moment, it was their 2057, but that could change without warning. The thing they’d learned about time travel was that there would come a point where something simply couldn’t be undone without risking the universe. Celeste bore a scar on her thigh from such an event, when she was attacked in ancient Cahokia.

The only way to keep this 2057 alive was to undo everything — to force it all back to the original path and stop Grady’s dream from coming true. They would have to return to three specific events, in order, and prevent them from happening. By doing so, they’d cut the “bootstraps” and prevent a bootstrap paradox from destroying their work.

The bootstrap paradox, they’d come to understand, was what stopped someone from saying, I’ll invent time travel to make myself rich in the past. The contradiction was simple: if you made yourself rich in the past, the events that led to you inventing time travel would never happen. You’d never deliver the money, which meant you’d never have the means to invent time travel in the first place. The cycle repeats — and Grady feared that if it ever gained momentum, it would be like spinning a disc too fast. Eventually, the loop would tear itself apart, taking time with it.

Grady had thrown up several times already and was just emerging from the bathroom after another round. Celeste looked at his broken, defeated demeanor and prayed he’d find some kind of happy ending, though she feared his solution to stopping himself would take a dark turn once he reached 2055.

And so, now staring at James’s face twisted in anguish, she ran through her part of the mission. She would follow him from the hotel they stayed at in San Francisco, on their second attempt to recover a business ledger for Edwin Hollister — an act meant to stop his most selfish decision, though one born of love and the desire to avoid loss.

After she’d learned his secret — that he’d used Grady’s device to time travel — and after a day spent helping earthquake victims, she’d begun to think their accidental partnership might mean something. But later that night, he had slipped away to ensure history would always play out the same way. The event that led to their paths crossing was simple: he’d been struck in the head by a falling brick and knocked unconscious. She had found him, helped him, and followed him as he tried to avoid being noticed. When she stopped him to ask his story, he saved her from falling debris that would have killed her.

What had really happened was that he’d thrown the brick himself — timed and aimed so that she’d be close enough to find him afterward. Her job now was to stop that brick.

The story swirled in her head. After nearly a year of time travel, she still felt motion sick trying to keep her past, present, and future selves straight. But one thing was clear: she had to get to San Francisco, reach Lotta’s Fountain, travel back to before the quake, and stop her husband from ever meeting her. When she did, he would forget she ever existed.

And in a way, she would almost cease to exist too. As hard as ending her own life was, she knew what awaited her. An orphan with no family in the city, her grave — if she had one — would likely be unmarked, another forgotten burial beneath Golden Gate Park. And by doing this, she would make sure no one could ever mourn her. It wouldn’t just be a sacrifice of life, but of memory.

A single tear ran down her cheek. She shakily flashed her infamous smile, the one that won over James all those months ago. The one that was the true opening to her heart, that she only gave to him.

“Guess this will be a little longer than ten seconds.” She said after quickly clearing her throat of any sadness.

He just silently nodded and stared down at his device. This was the original, the one that needed to be destroyed once their missions were complete. Celeste had the device that Gabriel Franklin had cloned. Once she arrived in 1906 San Francisco, she was to place it on the ground and leave it. Once her mission was successful, it would disappear as this version of her did.

Grady had his own special device, freshly built from left over parts. It was the most basic of the devices, capable of only going to one place in time. It would take him to the day after his first time travel, as he lay sick in bed with some sort of mosquito borne illness. It would be then that he’d destroy his life’s work and reset the thread.

Maybe his original self would be able to recreate everything again, he had, but nothing would be the same. This alternate timeline would never happen.

“Are we ready?” He asked, looking at his friends. James and Celeste looked at each other sadly before back at him and nodding.

“Maybe I succeed in rebuilding the machine.” He said with a hopeful smile. “Maybe we still meet. That Pompeii idea was great back then, so I’m sure I’d do it again.”

“Yeah buddy.” James said smiling. He knew that it wouldn’t matter. He was leaving Naples that afternoon he met Grady. By the time Grady would rebuild the time machine, he would already be on to his next location. Losing a single day could mean they never meet, which means that James and Celeste never meet. It would have to just be so perfect that James wasn’t hopeful.

“Well my friends, here’s to us.” Grady said after an exhausted sigh. They all looked at their devices and began to initiate their travel sequence. James was the first to disappear which gave Grady the opportunity he’d hoped for.

“Wait!” He said before Celeste could travel.

“What?” She said, suddenly terrified. “What’s wrong?”

Grady went over and took the device from her hand. He pressed in a long series of dates and sequences on the device until a debug menu popped up. Halfway down was the option he was looking for.

Forward Travel: Disabled

He tapped the screen to change it to ‘Enabled’ and handed it back.

“Look, I know I can link back up with James under the right circumstances,” He said holding her hand as she took the device back. “But I don’t know if he’ll meet you. So, since you have the gift of time travel, go see your future. Live it. I turned off the restriction. I never let on that I could because it’s kind of dangerous. But you can go forward in time now.”

Celeste started sobbing. She turned away and, entering the date into the device, she didn’t even look back before hitting the travel button.

Grady was left alone in the room. His was the most important part. Without his action, everything would just play out like it had. They’d broken those bootstraps and causality loops, but his was the last one. He could wait for a moment.

And so he did.

He watched the travel log as it updated with James arriving in Pompeii at just the right time. He would wait for the word from Celeste, her’s being first in the chain to break.

As Celeste’s log populated a smile came over his face. It had gone to the future, just 10 years. And then a new jump 10 years after that. Then 30 years.

And then to 1906.

Grady took a deep breath and keyed in the date it all started. August 13, 2055.

“May we all find each other again.” He whispered to himself, half a prayer, half to hear his voice for the last time.

And then a thought.

I am actually glad I never changed the button from Engage. He tapped it smiling.

Though he wasn’t watching it anymore, the logs showed that shortly after arriving in 1906, that Anti-Chronometer’s log disappeared. A moment later, James’s disappeared.

And as Grady smashed his life’s work, he slowly began to disappear. And with him, the device he built to just get him here that one time.

Reinhardt Zeigler screamed in anger as he watched his device disappear and saw his hands turn ethereal. He knew what this mean. He knew that he’d lost, that he was ceasing to exist. Everything had been a waste. Had he been too consumed with it all to miss out that he could have just made things better instead of perfect?

A sad smile as the world began to fade away.

Maybe I did.