Adrift

Let me tell you about my little brother, Bobby.

Before he was born I used to pray for him.   Literally, when he was a kid, I used to ask God to give me a little brother every night.  And each night, at the end of each prayer, I promised I would be the best big brother there ever was.  I was five at the time.  A year later, God answered my prayers, and Bobby was born.

Of course, like all little kids, I had no idea what it was I'd committed to.   I was used to being the baby of the family, and when Bobby started getting all the attention I began to resent him.   It didn't help matters when Ma and Dad divorced and I was forced to babysit him while Ma worked long hours to keep us afloat.   I was the de facto man of the house and I hated every second of it.  I hated being stuck with Bobby, taking care of him and helping raise him, while everyone else my age was allowed to just... be.  I hated it and sometimes I hated him.  A lot of my aggression at this crappy situation we found ourselves in was taken out on him.   It kept us from being brothers.  Instead I was a strict father figure, and it was like trying to squeeze sand in my palm.   The tighter I squeezed, the more he rebelled.  The more he rebelled, the stricter I became. I treated him like a kid. I never gave him a chance to grow up and be responsible for himself.  I expected him to act like a child and he did; he never really grew up because I never let him.   And so I blame myself for all of it.

In spite of all that, Bobby managed to find a nice life for himself. His wife Maria was everything that a man should want in a woman; beautiful, intelligent, graceful and funny, just the right amount of sass.   My niece and nephew took after their Mom, but you could tell they were Bobby's kids by their eyes and that wild spirit.  They were... they were the most beautiful things I ever saw in my whole life... I couldn't have loved them any more if they had been my own heart.

Things didn’t work out so well for me. Growing up without a childhood, I was never very good around girls… or really people in general. But I liked rules. I was good with rules. I joined the Chronal Anomaly Protectorate.

After college, Bobby decided to follow in my footsteps.  He got a job in the CAP as a Monitor, looking for any chronal anomalies, any sign that someone was making an un-authorized time jump, or worse tampering with the Timeflow.  Of course we didn't technically work together.  I'm a Level 9 Field Agent.  When Monitors found someone playing dice with the Universe, it was my job to find them and stop them from breaking the Timeflow if possible, or eliminate them if it wasn't. You’d think they would try to topple empires and become kings or something. Most of them are just common crooks trying to steal diamonds or whatever.

Bobby was good at his job.  He found more unauthorized Jumpers than anyone in his department. 

He was so good that the higher-ups decided he should be Head Monitor.  I was in tears at his celebration party, realizing finally that he wasn't my little brother anymore.  He was a grown man.   "I'm so damn proud of you." I said.  "I spent so much time waiting for you to screw up again that I never stopped to look at you.  If I had, I would have seen how good a man and a husband and a father you've become.  I'm so sorry I never recognized it."  Yeah, I cried like a baby.  He did too. 

We stayed up most of that night talking.  Too late, in fact.  On the drive home, Bobby fell asleep at the wheel.  Whether it was him or the drunk driver who was more at fault, no one can say.   But it doesn't matter much anyway.   Bobby barely had a scratch on him, and that made it so much worse.  I was the first to get to the hospital.  The first to see him.  And when he told me, he could barely squeak the words out of his mouth, barely bring himself to say it...  God...  my heart was ripped out of my chest.   As I held my baby brother to my chest, he kept asking over and over, "WHY????"   I don't know if he was talking to me or God, but it didn't matter much.  Neither of us had much to say that night.

The CAP tried to get Bobby to take a sabbatical, to get his head together.  He refused.  Sitting in that house just reminded him of what he’d lost. There was no rest for him there with the ghosts of the past. He started staying at Ma's place just so he could sleep.  The CAP reluctantly allowed him to go back to work. Unfortunately it didn't last long.  He started showing up to work drunk.  Not even just a little drunk.  Many times he was so bombed out of his skull he could barely stand.  And then one day, his boss John, an Overseer, told him to go home and sleep it off.  And Bobby just snapped.  His fist hit John in the gut with the impact of a prize fighter.  Three of his coworkers tried to hold him down, but he fought like a mad man.  By the time I got there, there was only one way I could think to subdue him.  His face snapped back as my right cross hit his temple.  He was on the ground and out.  John told me to let him know he was fired when he woke.   I carried him home knowing this would only make him fall apart even more.  And I just wanted to fall apart too.

Bobby spent the next sixth months locked in the bedroom he'd grown up in.  No booze.  Very little food.  Just him and regret.  I guess Bobby got to thinking about time.  I'm not sure why the idea didn't occur to him sooner.

They hadn't thought to deactivate Bobby's codes.  So it was a simple matter for him to get into CAP headquarters. Of course, stealing a Jump Watch... that took skill.  Or maybe just determination.  So he turned the dial back eight months.  As soon as he jumped, I got the call.  I set my own watch and went after him. I found him the next morning. He was watching his family, including himself, eating breakfast at Ma's house.  I kept my distance and tried not to look in the window.

I grabbed him by the jacket and yanked him back before any of them could see us.

"Bobby... what have you done??"

He turned to me with a look of unbridled joy and relief and love.  It was so simple and happy.  I desperately wanted to join him.

"I saved them, Mike.  I cut the battery wires on the car so we'd have to stay the night at Mom's house.  They're alive, Mike.  They're alive!"   I wanted so badly to believe it. I wanted to run in that house and take them in my arms and tell them that I love them.  But I knew it wasn't true.  "You shouldn't have done it, Bobby.  You don't understand..  you can't.."   I could see the confusion on his face.  The hurt at my words.

"I shouldn't have?  What?  I shouldn't have righted a wrong?  I shouldn't have my family back??"

"Bobby, there are rules..."

"To hell with your rules!!!  Those are my damn kids in there!  That is my wife!  Your niece and nephew!  MY GODDAMN CHILDREN! My babies! You're telling me they shouldn't get the chance to grow up??! To get married and have babies of their own?"

"The rules are in place for a reason!"

"Screw your rules! You and your damn rules!  Ever since we were kids, that's all you've ever loved are rules!  You don't love my kids!  You just love your job.  You want me to give up my family for a bunch of stupid rules?  You are the most selfish son of a bitch I've ever met!!"

"You arrogant little punk.  DO YOU THINK THIS ISN'T KILLING ME?  I loved the three of them almost as much as you did.  I would give anything.  I would give my life if it would set it right!  If they could...  if they could just..."

"You don't have to, Mike!  You can let this one go!  We can have it all back! Just this one time! Don’t do it for me. Do it for them! Don’t you love them? Can’t you just once, forget about your duty?!”

He was pleading with me. Tears in his eyes. I could see the little boy I helped raise. And it was killing me.

"You don't get it, do you?  You have no idea what you've done.  You haven't set anything right, Bobby. It isn't nearly as simple as you want to believe.  Maria, Nikki, Alex... they're still dead."

"Wh.. what? No!  What are you talking about?  They're right there!"

"Look again. Look in the window, Bobby.  You see that guy?"

"Yeah.  It's me.  The me from the past. Happy!"

"No, it's not.  Not exactly, anyway.  Time isn't like a movie.  You can't just put in an alternate ending.  Time is part of one cohesive Universal structure. It's sentient.  It doesn't tolerate inconsistencies and paradoxes.  We're in an alternate Universe.  They're still dead."

"NO!  No, take it back!  You take it back!!!!"  His hands pounded against my chest like when he was eight.

"There's rules, but I didn't make them.   When you made a change to the Timeline, you did more than save your family.  The ripple changed the course of history.  People died because you changed the game.  Babies won't be born.  Empires will rise and fall over the course of human history, all because you cut some wires."

"But... I just..."

"I know.  I'm sorry."

That was the final straw for him.  Even after everything that he'd been through, that was all he could take.  I could see it in his eyes.  That was what finally broke him.  "So... when we go back... they won't be?"

And he still hadn't gotten it.  It was the worst moment of my life.

"There is no going back, Bobby.  For either of us.  Our Timeline is gone. Like I said, the Universe knows what it's doing.  When someone makes a change to the Timeflow, the Universe sort of spackles over that person.  You were replaced the second you clipped the battery.  Your life will be lived out by that version of you. You're unstuck in time.  A pebble adrift in the ocean."

"So... then what?"

"Did you know I've never eliminated a Jumper before?  Killed, I mean."

"I don't think I..."

"There's a reason for it.  I've always caught the Jumpers before they changed the ‘flow.  Because once I eliminate a Jumper, I've made a change... and I become unstuck too."

"Mike?  I'm your brother.  Please?  Please don't..."

"I don't have a choice.   You don't know what happens to someone who makes a change.   Jumpers who mess with the ‘flow are purged.  They're slowly disintegrated.  Disappearing into nothingness.  The pain is indescribable.  If I do it... at least it won't be painful."

He didn't even respond.  He just knelt in front of me.  I sat down and held him in my arms, trying to burn that image in my mind. "I love you Mike." Then I took the syringe out of my pocket, and set him free.  "I love you too little brother."

Crying like a gahdamn baby, I dragged my brother’s lifeless body into the woods where he wouldn’t be found. Eventually, the Universe would spackle over him.

And now I’m here. The park.  Nikki and Alex can't see me watching them.  It's a risk.  But as I feel my body being torn apart, I don't care much.   If I'm going to die, this is where I want to be. And I take a little solace in the fact that some part of them will live on.  And my niece and nephew will grow up, get married and have babies of their own.

It hurts so much.  I'm glad Bobby didn't have to feel it.  I hope I get to see them on the other side.  I wonder i..*

This story was originally written in April of 2012. I would like to dedicate it to my baby brother. With exception to the name being changed (for what I assume is obvious reasons), the opening paragraphs were about him. In the time since the story was written, he has gotten married and had a son. And I am very proud of the man he has become.

I imagine some people will notice a similarity between the CAP and the Time Variance Authority that most people will know from Loki. While I don’t remember any of the circumstances from when I wrote this, I can say that it isn’t a coincidence. The CAP was originally called the Chronal Variance Authority. I changed it here, because it was too hacky to leave it otherwise. Honestly, I wish I could have taken out the whole idea, but the CAP was a plot device that makes the whole story happen.

I know the TVA from my favorite Fantastic Four story, written and drawn by Walt Simonson, one of the greatest comic book artists of all time. He’s most famous for his work on The Mighty Thor. Please check him out. He’ doesn’t get enough credit.