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Your name is Amelia Watson, and you were a time traveler.
Life was pretty good when you could redo any mistake as many times as you liked. So good that it could be a bit boring sometimes. And whenever you got bored, you would go back to the Bunker, to spend some time with your favorite toy. This time was supposed to be no different.
You knocked on the door with your hands full of bags of fresh groceries. Not that the food was necessary, since the Bunker could stay self-sufficient for a very long time. They were more of a gift; a gesture that you already knew your girl would appreciate immensely. You always did your best to keep her content, considering how bad of a hand she had been dealt in that timeline.
After hearing your secret knock (You just couldn’t resist making it to the rhythm of Chiku Taku, could you?), your pet eagerly, and slowly, started cranking open the door. You skipped forward a few seconds. One of the benefits of being a time traveler was that you got to skip the boring stuff, especially after you’d already experienced them countless times. She greeted you with a smile, and a big loud, “Amelia!”
You hated it when she called you that, because it reminded you of how different she was from your love. You told her “Call me Ame, stinky!” And you ignored it when the girl winced a little. You proceeded by making small talk. “How are you holding up here? Ready for some breakfast?”
She complained. “Yeah. I just wish I could spend more time with you.”
You sighed. “I’m here now, aren’t I? Come on, let’s get all this stuff to the kitchen!”
As you stepped in, I couldn’t help but admire your own handiwork. I know it took you many, many attempts to design and build a self-sustaining bunker of this size. And a lot of time. Not that you could run out of time, really. The location was also tricky to find: a place with an abundance of natural resources, but that was remote and inaccessible enough that nobody would stumble upon it until you were done using it. The walls were made of a material strong enough to withstand natural disasters, and built at an angle that would make them impossible to climb over from the inside. And contained within this meticulously designed fortress was your pride and joy: a massive, colorful, self-sustaining terrarium with fruits, vegetables, moss (oh how you loved moss), and plants you painstakingly collected from far reaches of that timeline. It was your own corner of paradise, and it was finally ready to be used for your next experiment.
The shark came into view. In that timeline, you had “rescued” her from pretty dire circumstances; she was abandoned at a young age, ostracized by her peers, and was the only survivor of a devastating earthquake that wiped out her entire species. You found her, scared and emaciated, on a boat of ruthless poachers-turned-traffickers, who had picked her up after she drifted unconscious into their fishing net. You rescued her and nursed her back to health and she felt indebted and quickly became enamored with you. Like she always would. This time it would just be you two. The priestess hadn’t been born yet. The phoenix had just begun a rebirth on the other side of the world. And the reaper was too busy guiding an entire civilization of lost souls to notice a single one drifting away belonging to someone who was very much still alive.
You started cooking. “How do you want your eggs, shorty?” You told yourself it was your instinct to banter with her, since you had done it so many times. But this one wasn’t used to it yet.
There was a pause.
“I love them however you make them, Amel-” She caught herself. “Ame!”
You hated that kind of response. I get it, having to make decisions for someone else all the time can get really annoying, but like a true hypocrite, you resented her for acting the way you molded her to act. And so, feeling petty, you made the eggs in what you thought was her least favorite way.
“I’ll fix 'em up scrambled, then!”
The girl smiled. She wasn’t your love, after all. This version of her loved scrambled eggs. It was the only way you made them for her. She had no idea you were being passive aggressive. And somehow, that irked you even more.
Breakfast was uneventful. The shark would occasionally steal some glances your way, probably either hoping for some attention or trying to get a read on your mood, or both. And it was boring. You had infinite time at your disposal, and yet these small awkward moments felt to you like a total waste of time. Those seconds stretched into eternities for you. You felt the itch in the back of your brain. You could have easily jumped forward. Skipped the silence. You didn’t, because you had to show her you were there, in the present, and everything had to go according to your plan.
She scarfed down her food. You used to find it cute when she did that. Now, it only reminded you of her. You took a deep breath, and then praised her and pet her head. You were happy to see the girl was all too eager to get your approval.
It was finally time. You had raised her just right, and you couldn’t be more excited to begin. So you grabbed her shoulders and looked her straight in the eyes.
“I have an important task for you. I am going to leave-”
“NO!”
She interrupted you. You wondered when she became this annoying. You sighed, and then continued. “I am going to leave for a long time.” She grimaced. “I need you to trust that I am coming back for you. And once I’ve returned, I will never, ever leave you again.” She stared at you, as if trying to look right through you. “I love you,” you lied. “I need you to stay here, in the garden, and I need you to wait, no matter how long it takes. If you leave, you will never see me again. Do you understand?”
She looked down, and then nodded.
“Good.”
You stepped outside, and started preparing the watch as the bunker door was closing. The time jump you were going to make was considerable in size, the largest one you’d ever done. And soon, you thought, all of her would be yours. And nobody else’s. You turned back to look at her, scared and lonely, and for the first and last time you acknowledged your toy as a person. A person that was almost your love. A person that definitely was not your love.
“This is goodbye, then.
Gura.”
—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And so, Gura was left behind. You didn’t spare her a second thought, so I’m going to have to be the one to fill you in on the life she led while you were gone. That pitiful creature earnestly believed in you.
She would reminisce to all the times she could feel your presence. The first time she could remember smelling you was at an atlantean orphanage, one of many she would be forced to reside in, after other kids had bullied her for the bite-shaped birth defect on her tail. Gura couldn’t swim as well as the others and would be relentlessly made fun of. They called her a shorty. They called her ‘stinky’. With no friends to confide in, she would get into her bed and hide herself under the covers and sob quietly. One time she smelled someone unfamiliar approaching beside her, and she peeked through a crack in her fortress, but couldn’t see anyone. That’s when she dubbed you her guardian angel.
Throughout her life, many kind families would try to adopt her, and yet they would always fall through. Sometimes both parents lost their jobs and no longer qualified for adoption. Sometimes the house she was about to go live in would suddenly be destroyed by passing debris in a storm. Sometimes it would be the new parents that suddenly became abusive, forcing Gura to run away back to where she started. And every time she was back, she would go back into her routine of wrapping herself in blankets, and crying, and waiting for her weird-smelling guardian angel to arrive, and she would be comforted by this olfactory hallucination enough to not feel so alone anymore.
Decades would keep passing by without Gura ever being able to make a single meaningful connection. She would begin to resent the people around her for being able to find happiness when she couldn’t. She hated her peers who kept ostracizing her. She hated all the prospective adopters who couldn’t commit to helping her. She hated her parents for abandoning her, and she hated the orphanage that had become a symbol of her loneliness. She wished for everything to be swept away, to be able to start over somewhere else, somewhere completely new. And one day, while she was out trying to catch some fish to eat, she got her wish.
A terrible disaster struck Atlantis. The entire city suddenly sank to the ocean floor, buildings collapsed, surging water flooded the streets and the entire population fell victim to the debris. Even Gura was about to be whisked away by the violent currents, when she hit her head and caught the scent of her guardian angel again right before losing consciousness. When she came to, somehow still alive, she was trapped in a net getting raised to the surface of the ocean. A poacher’s ship, with several humans on board, all of whom smiled ominously at the sight of the atlantean shark. She was kept in a lightless room for weeks, fed only leftover chum, and examined thoroughly by the scary men. Moments of solitude, which had plagued her for so long, were now her only reprieve. Wracked with guilt about wishing for Atlantis to disappear and becoming the only survivor, Gura had no more tears to shed. She became an empty husk.
That’s when her guardian angel finally appeared. There was noise of a fight outside her cell. Suddenly, the door opened, light pouring in and forcing Gura to shield her eyes from the sudden flash. When her eyes finally readjusted, she saw you posing heroically in the doorway. “Detective Amelia Watson, time traveler,” was how you introduced yourself. Gura recognized your smell, and for the first time in a long time, she felt a glimmer of hope. That’s when you brought her to the bunker.
Fresh food and water was plentiful there. You treated her wounds, and nurtured her spirit. She thought you were being very patient with her, giving her time to adjust and come out of her shell. In reality, you were just skipping forward discreetly enough for her not to notice. She was grateful for your protection, and your love, though she could never let go of her past whenever you called her names out of habit, wincing and retreating into her shell.
And now, alone in the bunker, she reflected on the trials and tribulations of her long life, culminating in this cruel final test of solitude. You were her guardian angel. She finally got to meet you, but you weren’t what she imagined you would be. Your love felt detached and cold. And yet, she could still recognize it as love. And so she waited, patiently tending to your garden, taking only what she needed day after day. She would occasionally spot you out of the corner of her eye, just as she had for as long as she could remember, but this time you really weren’t there. She would go to your room occasionally, just to wrap herself in your sheets hoping to catch a whiff of your scent. Anything to make her feel like you might still be somewhere, nearby, looking over her, as you had been all her life. She always got the impression you knew everything about her, inside and out, while at the same time reminding her of someone completely different. She was determined to wait for you, maybe as a way to repay you, hoping she could eventually heal the pain she saw behind your eyes.
You wouldn’t be here right now if she had succeeded.
—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Enough about the other girl; I want to focus on you now. I’m sure you must still be confused as to how you ended up here, despite all your careful planning. To think you used to be such a sweet girl, a million lifetimes ago. Number 1 Detective Amelia Watson, using her time traveling powers for the greater good: solving cases, helping people… if there’s one thing you and that shark you’re so obsessed with have in common, it has to be loneliness. You could travel anywhere and anywhen – and your human friends, your family… started to seem so insignificant. You could see them at any and every stage of their life, but their life was finite. Eventually, you spent every possible moment you could with them, several times over. “What would this person say if I gave them this? What would they do if I said this to them?” Once you know the answer, that’s it. That’s all they are.
Eventually, you moved on. You met more people, in different times. You tried to get close to some, but they were still too small in the face of your unlimited time. Until you noticed some irregularities: four creatures, all humanoid, with lifespans so long the average person couldn’t dream of comprehending them. But you could empathize with them. You brought them together, spent an eternity with them in a single one of their lifespans. You let your guard down, and a shark swam into your heart. It was different with them, you thought. Their lives were so long, you could have exponentially more experience with them!
Their time was still finite. You started over, spent another eternity together with them. And then another. You became greedy, clinging onto your love over and over again trying to eke out new experiences together. But you weren’t experiencing them together. Every time you went back to the start, she was still stuck there, the same way she was when you last saw her there. Trapped in that moment of time. Your love was so deep, you wanted her to know and own every part of you, and yet she couldn’t. Her time was limited, and yours wasn’t, it’s as simple as that. So you thought you would try and own her instead. You would show your love in a way only you could, by knowing absolutely everything about her, the good and the ugly, and using that knowledge to craft the perfect chunk of time to revisit any time you were lonely. A timeline where you were the center of her entire being, and she wouldn’t even know it was you who made her that way.
You planned it thoroughly and extensively, through endless trial and error. It became your obsession. You couldn’t see that you were losing sight of her, of your love. Every change to the timeline made her different, but you just didn’t want to see it. This timeline was supposed to be your magnum opus. And yet you failed. You made a simple yet egregious error.
You didn’t account for me.
—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Had everything gone according to plan, you would have returned to the bunker to find a desperate, emaciated, lonely girl. You would have praised her, and then she would have become hooked, hanging on your every word for the rest of her life. You would have owned her completely.
That’s not what happened, unfortunately for you.
Upon your return 6000 years later, you eagerly, and slowly, started cranking open the door. That’s when you first noticed something was amiss. The door was dented, and it shrieked painfully as it swung in your direction. The bunker was supposed to be able to self-sustain just long enough to keep the girl alive for the duration of your jump, so when you stepped in, expecting to see a barren and orderly garden, you were instead met with destruction. There was dirt strewn about everywhere. Where there should have been overgrown and desiccated plants, there were stumps, and deep gashes in the walls. You predicted you would find Gura in her room hibernating, in such a way that you would wake her up and be the first thing she sees, becoming her savior once again. Instead, she was standing right in the middle of the garden, in the dark. Your mind was racing. What could have gone wrong? Did you make some sort of miscalculation? People were complicated, but with your experience, you should have been able to predict her better. You tentatively took a step towards her, and she suddenly looked at you.
Her eyes were glowing a deep crimson. Her irises looked like vertical slits in her pupils. And they were staring right into your soul, sending a shiver down your spine. There was a terrifying beauty about them. Had you not known better, you would have been lost in those eyes, completely frozen. You did know better. You reached for your pocket watch, and the eyes were gone. Your arm was gone too. It was so quick, you didn’t even feel any pain. You were baffled. Surely you were better than this. Why were you still there? And then the pain hit. You clutched your shoulder and dropped to your knees. You saw the eyes again. Those beautiful eyes. They reminded you of the first time you met her. Not the one in front of you, but your love. And you had a sudden moment of clarity. What were you doing? In front of you was a real, living, breathing person. Why had you been so blinded? Was making her yours important? Was it even necessary? You braced for impact. This would be the end, you thought. Maybe that was a good thing. You were even more dangerous than she was. You braced for impact, and then the eyes were an inch away from you. And everything was frozen.
—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now that you’re here, I’m sure you must be wondering what went wrong. It’s about time I came clean. I’m the one who interfered. You see, she wasn’t actually alone for long. I went and paid a visit to her. As soon as she saw me, she knew. I gave her memories. Memories of different timelines. All the timelines she had spent together with you. She was confused. Why was this time so different, she asked? So I obliged, and I showed her around.
I brought her back to her birth, as an outside observer. I showed her her parents putting her down to sleep for the night. And I showed her a blonde detective suddenly appearing, picking the baby up, cutting a familiar pattern into her tail fin, and vanishing. And then I showed her an orphanage, the detective from earlier speaking to some orphanage kids, miming as if she just smelled something horrible. I showed her the kids nodding and running back to a young girl, pointing and laughing. And I showed her the blonde detective listening to the young girl cry under her bedsheets, and nodding, and taking notes.
Then I showed her the first people who tried to adopt her. I showed her their home, and how large debris suddenly appeared right above their roof, crashing down and destroying it. And I showed her a blonde detective appearing to observe the damage, nodding to herself, and taking notes.
I showed her all the people who tried to take care of her, but let her down in her life. And I showed her how the blonde detective interfered. I showed her how the blonde detective lured her away from the city by carefully placing fish along her way. I told her that at least you weren’t the cause of the natural disaster, that it was bound to happen, and that you simply neglected to tell anyone about their future. That fact did not seem to console her one bit.
I showed her the girl swimming back towards the city, bonking her head on some debris that appeared out of nowhere. And I showed her the blonde detective dragging the girl’s unconscious body to a fishing net.
She had trouble processing what I showed her. And yet, she believed everything. She thought you were her only hope, her only ray of sunshine in a dark and cruel world, and now she knew it was you who was her dark and cruel world. Despite it all, she still pleaded with me. Begged me to save you. She truly believed there must still be some good in you. I know that’s not the case. I told her it was in her hands. If she could send you to me, I’d take care of the rest.
And so she prepared. She destroyed everything. She took particular care to mince your precious moss into powder so thin it would never recover. And then she waited, just as you had told her to do, this time much more determined. I’ll admit I gave her a hand. Even being like her can’t live for that long without nourishment, so I just froze her in place for a while, to keep her in tip top shape for her eventual encounter with you.
And then I stopped your watch from working. And then she took your arm.
And now we’re here.
—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It’s pointless to look around. Your reaper friend can’t reach us here. And you might be surprised to know you’ve met me countless times already.
I am the Warden of Time. I’m the one who let you find that watch in the first place. It was quite amusing to see you run around, playing god, blissfully unaware that even your endless, timeless existence was just a drop in the ocean compared to mine. Oh, how I enjoyed watching your descent into madness. I always love stopping you right at the height of your hubris.
Other times I gave you a watch that wasn’t as powerful. I let you live a mortal life. This time I wanted to see how you would act given seemingly unlimited power, and you certainly didn’t fail to amuse me.
Oh, I can’t wait to send you back again. I’m sure you can empathize with how boring life gets when you’ve lived for a long time. I’m already teeming with ideas. Maybe this time I’ll turn you into a bee, or a boy who loves ska. I’m sure you’ll keep me entertained many more times over.
See you next time,
Detective.