Sprinting faster than he ever had before, Jonathan knew that his plan was about to come to fruition. He was going to do it. He never thought he’d pull it off, but it was really going to happen. Tears filled his eyes at the joy of it all. He was actually about to save his wife’s life, 30 years after her death. Theories of time travel had only been a hobby of his, a playful footnote in his glorious career. Yet, when Marilynn had died, he’d jumped headlong into the field and worked tirelessly to construct a time machine for nearly three decades. Now, after all that work and misery, he was about to stop his wife from ever getting into the car that awful Tuesday morning. Two more blocks and he will have done it, travelled through time and altered history. There were risks, to be sure, but he’d suppressed any doubts long ago. All that mattered was saving Marilynn’s life.
He reached their old apartment building and ran into the lobby. Any minute, the elevator door would open, his wife would step out, and he would start the awkward process of trying to explain to her what was going on. At the very least, all he needed to do was delay her long enough that she would avoid the accident. It probably would have been better to devise a plan that didn’t include her knowing he’d travelled in time, but the prospect of seeing her again after all this time proved too strong.
He watched as the numbers above the elevator counted down. Finally, they elevator reached the lobby and the doors began to open. He saw her for the briefest instant through the door, when suddenly bright white light shattered him. It came in through his eyes, even after he’d closed them, and stabbed away at his brain like a million tiny needles. It felt like his body was running away from his mind, like everything was getting farther from him, everything but that hot white light.
As suddenly as it had begun, it stopped. The light vanished, the bizarre physical sensations stopped and were replaced by terrible nausea. He tried to get his bearings. He was in his office again, in the present instead of the past.
His voice was a hoarse whisper as he spoke to himself. “No… what… I’d made it. Why am I back here?”
“Welcome back, Mr. Ashworth.”
Jonathan Ashworth started, when he’d made the jump back in time he was alone in his office, with the door securely locked.
“What… who are you. What’s happening here. My wife, I have to save her. It was going to work.”
“It certainly was going to work, Mr. Ashworth, just as it has all the other times.”
“Other times? What are you going on about?”
“This would have been the 34th time you saved your wife’s life. And while it pains me to say this, we have to cut you off at 33. If we let you keep saving her over and over again, your dimension will never get out of the frightful jam you have it stuck in, and you’ll destroy the universe.”
Jonathan suddenly had a million responses he wanted to make and questions he wanted to ask all at once. What he did instead was lean over the arm of his chair and vomit.