worddevourer:

writing-prompt-s:

You’re a time traveler who enjoys visiting and watching important moments in history, sometimes you’ll see a few of yourself who came back to watch the event again. You show up to a seemingly unimportant event, and find hundreds of yourself watching intently.

Scenic Florence.  You’ve been here several times in your time-travelling career, visiting an old friend, maybe, or exploring a new alley, or just enjoying the climate.

Today, though, you decide to take a chair at an outdoor table.  You’ve arrived in a time of some political unrest, but you wouldn’t know it to sit there, eating some fresh bread from a bakery just down the street, absorbed in your own food.  Someone sits down next to you.  You look over.

It’s you, with a faintly confused expression on your face.  You return the expression.

“’s’important,” you say, and shrug.  You look back at the street, and see…

It’s just a murder.  Well, ‘just’ a murder; a man dies, but you’ve seen civilizations come and go, and at this point, not much surprises you.  A man knifes another man in the back, and runs away.  That’s nothing you haven’t seen before.

What does surprise you is that as you look around the street, you see yourself, over and over, some staring at the running man, some at the fallen man, some deadly still, some beginning to follow.  In fact, as you look around, you are the only person on the street.  The bakery still has the same shopkeeper, and one or two people sit in other buildings, but this assassination seems to have cleared the streets.

Well, that or hundreds of copies of the same person was strange enough to clear them.

And then, it’s all over.  You leave, one by one, and then more and more, until it’s just you.

‘But why?’  You ask yourself.  “It’s important.”  That’s what you told yourself just a second ago.  But nothing stood out to you.  Who was the man?  Who were either of the men?

No.  This needs another look.  “It’s important”.

–

You come back immediately, just a few minutes.  You take a few spots nearby, one across the street, one down the way.  Nothing feels crowded, of course; you’ve gotten very good at spreading yourself out, on the rare occasions when you meet yourself.  Each time, you stare, eyes straining to find out what matters so much about the scene.  Each time, you find nothing.

After an hour of solid watching, you finally give in, and decide that you can’t keep going right now.

–

You study the assassination, later.  A few notebooks in the area record the details.  Unfortunately, most of them were too busy looking at all of you to notice the assassination until it was already over.  What little you do find tells you that the men were minor nobles, of no great breeding.  They seem to hold little historical significance; no history books of the future even mention them.  

–

You come back.  Again, and again, and again.

You’re somewhere in the teens when you finally pick a spot next to the one you begin to think of as ‘Epiphany You’.  This is the one that seems to have it finally click.  Midway through the assassination, you gasp, and mouth something, that, on later viewings, you realize is ‘Oh my god’.  (You can’t believe you had to learn lip-reading just to tell what you were saying).  Then, you walk away, purposefully.  You say that you ‘Can’t believe that-!’ and then you’re gone.  You haven’t the foggiest idea when.  You can’t remember seeing a version of yourself like that, so it’s probably not somewhere you’ve already been.  You almost want to interrupt, and ask yourself what you’ve realized, but you already know that you can’t do that.

You spend a few rounds watching Epiphany You, seeing if anything slips.  In vain, of course, you can’t find out what Epiphany You knows until you are Epiphany You.

It’s on your 20-somethingth round, probably about 70 repetitions in, that you finally become the you that says ‘’s’important,’ to your first self.

You watch the scene again, more closely.  You become the followers, the watchers.  You fill out your own ranks, taking up every position, waiting for something to click, waiting to become Epiphany You.  You make almost a hobby of it, checking back every so often.  Every few weeks, every few days.  At least once a year (And it does take years, personally speaking).

–

Finally, after a particularly harrowing experience in the distant future, you need somewhere familiar.  Someone familiar.  Where better than this, the place you’ve been hundreds of times over.  You walk in, and see the eyes of yourself upon you.  Past yous stare at you.  This is it, you realize.  This is the time.  You need to watch the assassination, this one last time, and whatever clicks, clicks.  But, just at the moment, you aren’t feeling like that.  You just want to enjoy the warm presence and security of your position, away from deadly futures.  You’re alright, for now.  Epiphany You is untouchable, just as the rest of you are, protected by causality. You have a moment to stand here, and think.  It’s the most observed you’ve ever been, and the most secure.  You wouldn’t have felt safe to come here right now if not for your own presence.

You wouldn’t have felt safe to come here right now if not for your own presence.

You wouldn’t have come here right now if not for your own presence.

You wouldn’t have come here if not for your own presence.

‘Oh my god,’ you mouth, and see a few mouths mouth it back, one even smiling from the viewing when you confirmed your suspicions of what you’d said.

The stab.  The escape.

You walk out of the back door of the small room you’re in.  You can feel the fire in your face, and the familiar words rising in your throat.  “I can’t believe that-!

You’re gone.  Anywhere else.  Anywhere quiet.  Anywhere.  Now, though, the sentence finishes itself.  “-that’s why I was there!”

If time had a face…  If time could die, you’d kill it right now.  “That was it!?” You shout at the sky, now in an empty forest, “That was IT!?” 

You fucking hate the bootstraps paradox right now.