Juncture 5.1

“-did the best we could given the time constraints, and hey, at least you managed to convince Julius to get out. You saved him and his entire family. That’s good, you’ve got to let yourself off the hook sometimes.”

I chewed listlessly on the piece of food that was in my mouth as I listened to Jake try to explain just how he could rationalize leaving an entire city to die.

I considered that a bad record. There was an empty, black, pulling feeling in the bottom of my stomach that refused to lessen. In school, ages ago, lifetimes ago, I had seen pictures of Pompeii. The people who had stayed were almost flash-frozen, trapped in whatever positions they had been in as the volcano erupted.

A thought popped into my head. What if Julius had died before I had intervened? Would my actions have changed anything? I would ask somebody about that as soon as I could.

As I was thinking to myself, Jake kept talking. I appreciated that he was trying to cheer me up, but his efforts weren’t bearing fruit. I swallowed the food in my mouth and stood up.

“I have to go.” I said. Jake nodded after a several-second pause, then went back to eating. I left the room, feeling slightly worse for having left him there to stew with his own thoughts.

I walked down the oppressively sterile halls, toward Major General Siegfried’s office. I didn’t know who else to talk to, and I felt most comfortable talking to him. Several turns away from the comfortable office, I ran into Hans. He took a look at me and moved forward as if to say something, then thought better of it and backed off. I didn’t acknowledge him as I walked past.

The door was unlocked, and I swung it open. The Major General wasn’t inside. I swore to myself. I was brimming over with anxiety and worry, I needed answers now. I stalked out of the room and the door slammed shut behind me.

“Hans!” I called. He turned around and looked at me, arms crossed.

“Oh, now I get acknowledged? How nice of you,” he said. I groaned. This exchange wasn’t going to be any easier than any exchange I’ve had with Hans, apparently.

“I have an important question. I was going to ask the Major General. Where is he?” I asked.

“He’s not here,” Hans replied.

“Yeah, I got that. I didn’t ask where he isn’t, I asked where he is.” I was getting annoyed. In no way was I in the mood for this. I wanted to get answers and then… I didn’t know what then, probably go to sleep. I was tired all the way down to my bones.

“He’s out. On a mission,” Hans said in a clipped, unadorned voice. “He’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

“Damn it. Okay, then I guess you’ll probably know.”

He rolled his eyes underneath his large glasses. “Wow, thank you for this incredible honor, Mister Antony. I get to answer your questions? Whatever did I do to deserve this?”

“Look, I don’t want to deal with this right now, okay? I just need to know whether or not changing something in the past will have repercussions. Like, drastically changing something?”

Hans’ eyes got thin. “What changes?” He asked me, lips tight.

“Let’s say I saved a family from some sort of huge natural disaster? A mother, a father, and three or four children. What effect would that have on time?”

Hans gripped his hands together in a worried fashion. “Well, first of all, have you heard of the butterfly effect?” I shook my head. “So the saying goes ‘a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the world can cause a hurricane on the other side.’ In essence, it means that one small change can cause larger changes.”

“Taking this concept and applying it to time travel is worrying at best, and terrifying at worst. A small change in the past can lead to enormous differences in the future. Just think of how many people a single person interacts with over the course of their lifetime. By killing someone, or saving them, you’re potentially impacting hundreds, or even thousands of people.”

“And then those people will interact with other people in their life, and then on, ad infinitum.” Hans stopped and swallowed, then took a breath as if to continue. I stopped him before he could keep talking.

“So you’re saying that I may have just fucked up everything for everyone, everywhere. Forever. Why was I not warned about this?” I asked. I saw a smirk break out on Hans’ face.

“No, I was just explaining the butterfly effect. Do you really think that we would have sent you back if that were possible? More so, do you think that if that were true we wouldn’t have told you?”

My breath was hitched in my throat. Hans kept talking, occasionally giggling as he paused. “We send you back, and because of that, you had always been there. You always saved that man and his family. I was just pulling your leg.”

Never before then had I experienced every muscle in my body relaxing at once, but it was a wonderful feeling. The euphoria brought a shaky grin to my face.

“Thanks, Hans,” I said, “I was really worried there for a second.”

He looked at me as though he couldn’t take me seriously. “Sure, sure,” he said, “That’s understandable, if you actually didn’t know.”

“No really,” I said, “thanks.”

“O-of course,” he answered. I rushed to get back to the cafeteria to tell Jake, but when I got there he had left already. I made a promise to myself that I would explain it to him.

I still wasn’t hungry after that, so I decided to go back to my quarters. As I opened the door, I realized that I forgot to tell anyone about my TA discovery, but I rationalized it away, thinking that I would try to avoid using it if at all possible anyway, so nobody else really needed to know.



I walked into my room and saw a manila folder laid out on my bed.