The Change in the Timeline

The Change in the Timeline

That night, I found myself unable to sleep. Like every new session, I was supposed to wake up around 6AM to wake the new students up and get them over to breakfast. The next morning certainly was going to be very difficult for me.

I stayed up watching the clock, every moment that I began to drift off interrupted with delusion, startling me awake again. Every moment until 5AM, I began experiencing the half-sleep half-reality that I had grown to hate so much.

Do you ever have moments where you’re not yet asleep, but you begin to dream regardless? You are just asleep enough that your dreams start mixing with your reality, fusing them together in an undistinguishable trance state which is neither real nor imaginary?

My dream world kept insisting that I needed to wake up for job-related appointments, that every moment spent in bed would make me ever more late for a tour, an escort, an advising appointment…an assassination.

I was startled out of my half-sleep around 4AM, wondering why it was that a cold-blooded murder had crept into my half-conscious. I had semi-consciously depicted myself behind the barrel of a smoking firearm, with no emotion leaving its mark on my face, my inner self. It was enough to keep me awake until I was supposed to be up for work.

Later that day, I received a message from Brad. He had been doing some research himself, and told me that he had some news from Geneva. He proceeded to tell me that due to unforeseen problems, the Hadron Collider activation and subsequent test run would be delayed until August. This enormously important scientific landmark was being delayed a month.

No documented explanation for this could be found in the recesses of the internet. I passed the message on to Sherman, curious to see what he would think. Could I, by merely knowing about the collider, by some supernatural means have possibly affected or changed the present timeline? Was this even at all significant?

I didn’t know at all what to think regarding the matter. I was interrupted later that day in my deep thoughts, approached by one of my co-workers.

“What was up with the weird message you sent me last night?” asked Quyen. She was one of the smallest full-grown people I had ever seen, but never without a smile—clearly her height didn’t bother her. Our interactions had been awkward for a time when we had first met, but I was really enjoying getting to know her since then. I hoped that the ultimate answer to this question wouldn’t fuck it all up.

“What message?” I asked. I honestly had no idea what she was talking about.

Quyen gave me a strange look. Her crooked smile and head cocked slightly to the side was a reactionary pose that seemed to say ‘I’m not sure I follow.’

“Check your text log for yesterday,” she said.

I assumed that she was playing it like this because she already felt defensive about being regarded as the most gullible counselor. On staff, some of the other counselors had her convinced of a few outlandish ideas. She believed for a time that there was a “B-Team,” a reserve of 30 or so backup counselors to fill in for us if we all got fired, that “World War Z” was going to be the next required reading book for the Commonwealth College students, and that our boss was college roommates with her arch-nemesis queen of undergraduate advising, Sheila.

I presumed Quyen thought the message was another attempt to get her to believe something ridiculous, and that she was playing it like so.

Then I read what the message said, and it frightened me cold.

Next Chapter -- Government Involvement