Time and fate are immutable

Time and fate are immutable.

What is, has to be.

I am writing this record of the events, in the hope that it will survive even if I do not. As with so many things in life, it all began with an accident. I was exploring a wild and desolate place in a remote corner of the Serengeti. I was alone many miles from my base camp and the companions who had stayed there while I roamed far and wide in my ranger rover defender. I had water, food, a spare can of fuel, and a radio in the car so I was not taking great risks. I was walking along a windswept ridge, in the early morning light, before the heat and full glare of the sun started to bake the land. I stood on a loose rock, which rolled away and caused me to fall. I rolled down the slope hitting my head on more loose stones, nothing serious but momentarily disorienting. My fall started a mini landslide of loose earth and rocks and so I ended up near the bottom of the slope coved in dirt but still conscious. I wiped the dirt away from my eyes and found I was looking at a small entrance to a cave that ran under the ridge. Although very few people had explored this area I was still surprised to see a cave, since none had been reported anywhere near this location at any time in the past. I sat up and dusted myself down, before starting to pull the loose rocks from the entrance. I cleared away enough to allow me to crawl in. I could see this was a larger cavity than I was expecting. I returned to my vehicle and found my torch, water, food, and radio; I decided against calling my friends until I knew what it was that I had found. I stuffed all into my rucksack and went back to the cave. Being a cautious person, through past experience, I had also brought the shovel used to dig the rover out of sand traps and so I cleared the entrance and the surroundings, enough to be satisfied that a further land slide would not trap me inside the cave, and I had the shovel to dig may way out of it came to that. Once fully inside the cavity I immediately felt cooler, getting out of the rising sun, dropped the temperature many degrees and now was more suited to physical activity. To my surprise the floor, walls and roof were all solid rock and very little sand had seeped in, just a light dusting covered the floor. I could stand up straight but needed to keep a watch since there was very little clearance for my head. The cave was about 1 meter width and curved away to my right, once round this curve I need the torch, it kept on curving to my right while going down a gentle slope, nothing to cause concern but always going down deeper into the ground. I was going slow and stopping frequently to listen for the sound of rocks moving, just in case. I lost all sense of time, forgetting to check my watch before entering the cave, meant I have no measurement of how long I had been walking downwards. I guessed about half an hour then I found a most extraordinary thing. The cave opened out into a cavern at least five meters wide four meters high and twenty meters long. The floor was clean, no sand, no loose dust, absolutely clean, flat, and smooth. In fact it was clean to the point of being sterile and reminded me of the research laboratories back in my university time. I shone the torch all around and in its bright LED light I could see a clearly man made, rectangular structure. It took me a few moments to take this in, what a find. I tried to radio my friends but there was no reception just a buzz.

Getting closer to the structure I saw that it was constructed from a metallic substance, dull not reflective, the corners appeared to be bent exactly at right angles not welded. I could see three sides and the top, no evidence of a joint anywhere. The fourth face was close against the rock wall. I reached out and touched it, it was cold, not freezing but colder than the rock walls. I could not see any hand holds so tried to push one corner to turn it. To my amazement it turned so easy, almost floated round and I could see it was open at the fourth face, inside was a chair which faced one wall, on the facing wall was a screen like a TV one but much thinner than anything I had seen before. It looked as if painted on the wall. There was nothing else to be seen inside the structure, no knobs, wires, controls of any sort. I examined it as best I could from outside then sat on the chair and looked at the screen. The moment I looked at it the screen lit up, glowed with a faintly blue haze. I turned my head and the screen shut down. I was still seated but the screen only responded to my eyes. I looked at the screen again and this time tried to understand what I was looking at; it was not my reflection but a scene from history. I could see myself as a child, on my grandparents farm. I was ten years old and the tears on my face were because I had just learnt that both my parents had died in a car crash. My grandmother was trying to console me while hiding her own grief.

I Turned away from the screen, turn back, and try to think of the last time I saw my parents when they were getting into the car for that fateful journey, I saw every detail as if it was happening on real time, at this moment. I shouted at the screen to stop them leaving, and they turned in puzzlement, I could see myself as I had been at that time, and I was more interested in the Tv then their shopping trip and I was not shouting, but they could hear something, and this made them search around for the source of the voice they could hear. After a fruitless search they got into the car and realised they were late and so my father set off way faster than he normally drove. This is what caused the crash that killed them. The wave of guilt was overwhelming, did I cause them to die? Did my call from their future cause their deaths? I closed my eyes and turned away from the screen and tried to remember every detail of the time before the day of the crash. When I opened my eyes, I was looking at myself and I was watching TV. I desperately wanted to make my young self take some action that would prevent my parents leaving. My body started to shake violently, I could feel myself disintegrating and then I was my younger self. I had gone back in time and my adult persona was now inside my ten-year-old body. Some strange line of logical reasoning still existed because I knew that as a ten-year-old I had never been subjected to a takeover by my future self. As my past self I left my chair and TV and called to my parents to wait, not set off just yet. As they turned towards me this line of logic faded and I was myself at ten years old without any consciousness of my future self, My father asked if I had changed my mind and would be coming with them, and I said yes. We turned onto the highway just as a huge truck had a burst tyre and slewed across the road, I could see it happening but did not feel the impact or pain. I was back in the cave watching the screen as the truck completely crushed the car. I felt a tingling in my feet and hands and as I looked down, I turned to dust. I did not exist in this time I did not find the cave nor its contents.

I do not know how much time had passed before I became conscious again, but I was desperately thirsty and hungry. I was still in the chair ad glanced up at the screen, I was back at the time my grandmother was holding on to me shielding me and I was sobbing. I watched as the scenes from my life appeared and disappeared, time passed and showed my time at college and university, even to the leaving base camp to walk on the ridge. What did this all mean? I left the box and pushed it back so the opening again faced the rock wall. I realised that so much time had passed, my torch battery was dead. I felt my way out of the cavern and by knowing I was walking upwards and constantly curving to my left I found the cave entrance. As I emerged into the light, my torch came on again! I looked around the sun was still rising, no time had passed since I entered the cave. I slipped and momentarily backed out, I am sure only for a few seconds, but the cave was gone I was on the ground covered in dust.

I returned to the base camp and considered my experiences. What was I to learn from them? Time, fate, consequences are immutable. Or is it that the theory of Multiple universes, co-existing all the time, is accurate so that multiple possibilities exist at each moment of time So time travel takes you back, but may not be to the same possibility that was your own history. I never spoke about any of this to my companions as I wanted to find that cave again. I have spent the last twenty years searching on my own and still have not found it, which is why I am writing this record.