A Return to the Longest Day

The door clicked and hissed as the lock released, only slightly sturdier than the curtain it had replaced. The warm interior gave way to the grey night outside. Sid stepped out into the overcast night, still surprised, even in his third repetition of this evening, that the world existed in color. His history of this place had been so shaded by the black-and-white movies, he often forgot that history

The flood of adrenaline should not continue to be a surprise, but each time it hit in a new way. Sid’s view of time sped up and he was grateful for the alarms he’d set on his watch.

Years of receding, decades of disappearing into the guilt he carried from this day, he was left only curious how the changes would manifest. He feared no pain or obscurity.

Two sinking steps out into the quiet sand and he stumbled, having forgotten his cane on the seat of the vehicle behind him, caught up in memories and the rush of the rapidly approaching finale of this long life. For an existence that had been stretched out for every second from this upcoming moment, the scant hours remaining were sped up and bounding like jackals.

His personal past was quickly stretching to meet his personal current-day, even as he reached his current self back to this shared history.

Sid double-checked the personal shields, designed three anniversaries ago, a synergy that had bolstered his belief that he was on the correct path. Protecting the wearer from even the light bouncing everywhere, he spent days wandering empty halls and busy streets, unseen by all, a true ghost in a world moving on without him.

He stands to watch the sea unsure of his place in time, while concurrently across the waves, his younger self moves to the landers. He is in two places at once, present tense sliding into his past.

Sid pushed himself to snap back to the present—the current present, the personal present. The hours left to carry out his decision dwindled slowly, each meaningless to a man who had allowed a single moment to define his existence.

Sid, a genius by all rights, had stood up when his country called. In enlisting he had expected to be used for his brains, and he was surprised to be bunked and deployed with those who bore a strong resemblance to the classmates who’d dismissed him over and over.

But he wasn’t dismissed. Instead, they became brothers, forming connections Sid had missed in his then-short years. Connections he would never seek to form again.

There had been Aaron, red-haired and full of all the energy of that promise, sharing a birthday with Sid they had promised to celebrate together. Of all his new-found brothers, Aaron held a place in Sid’s heart he couldn’t declare was fully memory.

Charlie, Martin, Frank the Tank, and Pickle, whose name the others had givien up trying to pronounce, were active in the memories of Sid. They were only background characters in a story of a young man finally finding a use for other people. Sid would have laid down to die for his new brother Aaron, possibly for all, but certainly and provably for Aaron.

Back in his personal present, Sid scanned this site, a horror revisited in his mind continuously over the decades, with a silence that belied the disaster that would come. It held a mystery Sid had finally solved.

He had not left his technological plans for others, knowing they would cease to exist—though how was a question he wished he would have an answer to, his curiosity always overcoming the pain. If he could have left them he still wouldn’t, he had seen what the imaginings of the brilliant could become in the hands of the determined.

Sid’s own determination to change this nightmare of a day had driven him away from the promise of his intelligence. Some days the selfishness of devoting himself to changing one moment when he could help ease the suffering of many would break through his haze of pain and guilt. It didn’t matter. He knew Aaron could fulfill that promise more than he ever could—if not with brains than with his charisma and care.

The moon shown through the clouds; he knew these would dissipate in a matter of hours so the beach could be visible. The guns on either side of him would glint for those masters of the air to quell.

With a last look at the sea, Sid stood and ambled to the path that haunted his dreams. Not yet trampled to the state he would see it in mere hours, a lifetime ago, it still retained the basic shape. He found the submerged stone, a slight ledge that would catch his foot. Turned his head, quickly, still expecting to see Aaron at his heels, Aaron who would scrabble on over him. Three steps were all it would take.

The device was far simpler than the one he wore—a personal cloaking device—though the timer included redundancies upon redundancies. He wouldn’t get this wrong. The two previous visits to this evening to gather and recheck the calculations had succeeded—the timing had to be perfect. Sid double- and triple-checked the timing, referring to the notes on his watch. He placed the device on the rock, knowing that—even were it to survive the paradox—it would be destroyed by what would historically take place at this location.

Sid had not taken into account where he would go after placing the device. He had worked out only to this point, making the decision and carrying it out.

He had to remain on the beach for hours. Distracted and unsure, he felt more than saw the sun rising, tilting his head exactly as his younger self, miles out at sea, turned to do the same, that version surrounded by a chaos of retching as the landers were placed too far out in choppy water. A moment of sunshine no less appreciated.

Current, older Sid wound his way back to the tiny mall photo kiosk he had tinkered into a time machine, remembered the coffee he had left by the seat. He sat, wrapped his gnarled and stiff fingers around the warm mug. He wondered if he could keep himself from watching.

In the end, there was nothing to see, a cacophony of movement, noise, and death blocking the view. It did not matter, when the device worked and the rock was removed from his own foot, it was clear he had changed this history.

For a brief moment his memory twisted, he could feel Aaron fall behind him, a victim of a stone that seemed to have come out of nowhere. His unlined hand, slowly in his memory, reached out to pull him up. In the present, Sid stared at his wrinkled, arthritic hand, amazed that this had worked, reveling in the new memory of his lost friend. His friend who would now survive this day. A percussive blast came next, a flashed memory of pain…

and nothing.