Chapter 5

The rushing sound of the train and the clacking of the wheels mingled with the dark of the tunnels, oddly comforting. Patches of light darting against the dark walls outside the window drew my attention away from staring half-lidded at the back of the seat before me. Faster the patches of light came - until one swooped past and ripped my consciousness away.

I was standing in the middle of my apartment, in my underwear, holding my big wool coat. It was the night of ten days ago - the cold realization that I had somehow traveled in time rooted me to the floor. It did not occur to me to wonder how I had managed time travel. My hands clung to the wool coat. Five hours from now, this coat would be covered in my own blood.

Or did it have to be this way? To think that I could toss the wool coat aside and avoid the anguish and expense of explaining to the Korean lady at the dry cleaner about removing the blood. My leather jacket was hanging close by. Blood would be much easier to wipe from it.

Wait, did I really have to bleed, though? Alone in all the universe perhaps I was possessed with the knowledge of what would happen this night. I could easily choose another nightclub rather than that particular one. I could simply ask for an escort up the concrete steps to the sidewalk. I could spy his face in the crowd and merely avoid him throughout the night.

The possibilities were endless . . . just as endless as they had been the first time this night took place in history.

Slowly, the thought formed, the cold certainty that possibilities are always the same in number. I could not prove this mathematically, not in this lifetime. But the epiphany would not be denied. The only difference this night, it seemed, was that I was aware of the endlessness; I could slowly name the choices like pearls pulled out of the rushing waters of the future.

But what effect would my actions on this night of the past have on my future? Could I be certain that only my future would be affected? What if I went to the other club and someone bought me a drink and I took it and this act sets off a chain of events that would result in the assassination of the President of the United States? How many Emperor moths would die in Tokyo?

I was not prepared to be the Destroyer of Human Civilization - not, at least, to save on a dry cleaning bill. Here then was the great irony of time travel. The increased awareness of the future availed me not. I was paralyzed, unable to choose from among the visible futures, as if I were wholly unaware of them - as if I was, in fact, living in the present moment . . .

Ascending towards the surface world and the cold, cloudy night air, two women passed me by on the moving escalator. They were speaking French; I thought one of them stared at the beret on my head as she climbed past but I could not be sure. My head was bent downward, staring at the metal steps, listening to the clack of the machines beneath.