This is your fault!
You did this to us!
This is your fault!
Your fault!
Your fault!
Matt took his compass and with trembling icy fingers turned the time dial back. He knew it wasn’t logical, and at the same time it was the only thing he could think of to do. He had to do something. He needed to save his family. Somehow he knew he could. There had to be a way. He turned the dial back two minutes. That was all he needed. Two minutes to rescue them.
It felt like someone picked him up and threw him twenty feet. He landed on the edge of that chasm where Corey and Ruby were now sliding down. His past self dived for Corey. “I got you!” Matt reached for Ruby and grabbed her by the upper arm.
“You!” Corey shouted. “What are you doing?!”
“I’m rescuing you!” Matt said at the same time as his past self. His past voice echoed in his head.
“No you’re not! You’re killing us!”
They were fading again. Matt couldn’t hold on.
“This is your fault! You did this to us!”
“I’ll fix it!” the other Matt pleaded.
“I promise I’ll fix it!” Matt pleaded again, and then another Matt appeared.
“Matt, don’t let go!” Ruby cried. “Please!”
“I won’t! I promise!” all three Matts said, even as Ruby’s arm dissolved in his grasp and Corey slipped through past-Matt’s fingers.
Both Corey and Ruby screamed as they unraveled and faded away.
No.
No, no, no, no, no!
Matt turned the dial back again, three minutes this time. He knew it was madness. He knew the rules and the consequences of time travel, that his actions were only causing chaos and solving nothing, but he also couldn’t accept what was happening. He would break the rules, bend them to his will. He had to.
He was thrown back again, like time was spitting him across the universe. He landed just behind the past-Matt, right as the earth split apart and he was about to fall into the chasm. Without a thought, Matt reached forward, grabbed himself by the collar, and yanked himself back.
The sky boomed and crackled with lightning.
Matt sprinted toward Corey and Ruby, but the cowboys appeared right in his path, and then the cavemen, and the giraffes. By the time he got around them he could see he was already too late. Corey and Ruby were unraveling, fading. Why did he stop to rescue himself? It was a stupid thing to do and at the same time the only thing to do. Just like what he was doing right now. All three of his selves.
“I promise I’ll fix it!” pleaded the first Matt.
Matt knelt down next to the second Matt and reached for Corey and Ruby, trying to grasp on to those unraveling threads.
“Matt, don’t let go!” Ruby cried. “Please!”
“I won’t! I promise!” he said with his two past selves.
He reached and grasped for those unraveling threads with more desperation than he’d ever felt in his life. He started to shake. Stars were popping in the corners of his eyes and a great rushing sounded in his ears, like the crashing of waves. He knew he was having a seizure and that he was about to black out, but he held on to those threads.
Some invisible force pulled at him, sucked him in. Into where, he didn’t know. It was like the threads he’d been so desperately trying to hold on to were a current and he got caught in it.
He was weightless now, adrift. He tumbled along the current, twisting and spinning. He saw flashes of people and places, Corey, and Ruby, and himself. He saw the remnants of their lives together. The current split off into other currents that connected to other currents. He was swimming in a web of some kind. A web of memories spun over lifetimes and generations. He saw people and places both familiar and foreign. He saw his mom, his dad, Corey, and Ruby. He saw himself. One thread led to another—flashes of baseball games, school, when they’d first boarded the Vermillion. He even saw the moment their parents met, just before it unraveled and disintegrated. He tried to reach for these things, hold on to them, but he was powerless to move or act. He could only be carried away on this current.
Matt started to lose the sense of things, the sense of space or time, and of himself. Where was he, exactly? How long had he been here? Seconds? Years? Somehow he had the feeling that he had been here both seconds and years, if that were possible. Forever and no time at all. Was there a difference?
He saw a light ahead. He thought maybe that was death and he was heading right toward it. A hand reached down to him. He saw a blurred image of someone, like the person was underwater, only Matt was fairly certain it was he who was underwater. Or whatever he was under or inside. He was inside a time tapestry, he thought. But not just any time tapestry. It was Corey’s and Ruby’s. He didn’t want to leave it. He didn’t want to let go, but he had the feeling that if he stayed here much longer, he would unravel too, and that would be the end. His consciousness was already fading.
He grasped on to that hand.
It was like a plug had been pulled from a bathtub. Matt spun as he was sucked in a downward spiral. The images he’d seen before reversed themselves, flickering so fast he could barely discern them. Corey and Ruby flashed before him. He made one final reach, wrapped his fingers around those shimmering threads and willed them to stay with him.
With a gurgling, slurping sound he came spewing out of the current and back into the world. He landed on the hard, broken earth. He rolled a few times, then crashed into a wagon wheel. He
