Kitty Wittgenstein and the Sinister Society of Southpaws (5.3)

5.3 The Timelines, They Are A-Changin'

(note: to go to the beginning of the story, go here, to see all Chapter Five posts, go here and to see all Sinister Society of Southpaws posts, go here)


One thing was for sure. I didn’t have to worry about the future being locked in. Bonnie’s death made that clear. I had memories of her in my future. A future in which she would now no longer appear.

And the Good Stuff building? It was now replaced by a park. I suppose, if they started, like, immediately, they might be able to construct the building in time for the future I remembered.

I paid the cab driver and Orlando and I stepped out to look at the park.

There was no development notice. No indication that the park was about to be replaced by some kind of industrial genetic experiment factory. Nothing.

“What now?” said Orlando.

“Good question,” I said. I sat down on the grass and began to think.

Poor Bonnie. How could she have died? And I meant that not just in the usual ‘what a tragic waste of young life’ sense. But moreso in the ‘this doesn’t make any chronological sense’ sense.

Bonnie was alive in the future I remembered.

The only thing that had changed from that future was my memories of it being sent back in time to the present. Now that I had this muddle-headed precognition, I could – and, indeed, would – try and change the future.

Not to eliminate Bonnie, of course. I didn’t see her as the villain of the piece, despite her passing on of my massage timetable. I could forgive that. The girl was clearly a pawn in something larger.

But how had she died? Yes, my actions had changed since the future memories had shown up. But only in a trivial fashion so far. I’d abandoned the rodeo, got on a plane and caught a cab to this location. Conceivably, these actions, by themselves, could have some kind of flow-on effect which led to large changes in the future. Possibly even the death of Bonnie.

It didn’t seem likely, but it was possible. Who, after all, can predict the ultimate outcomes of one’s choice of actions?

But I could not believe that my limited actions so far had caused such a major change in the path of the future so quickly.

Heck, for all I knew, Bonnie had been killed even before I left the rodeo. How could I possibly have caused that?

Answer: I clearly couldn’t.

Which left two possibilities.

Firstly, maybe the Bonnie from my Bomb Blast Future was some kind of clone. There was cloning technology in that future. Maybe she’d just been replaced. That seemed to require an awful lot of assumptions about the prevalence of haphazard cloning in the future, however. And as I only had evidence of me being cloned, I didn’t think it particularly likely.

Which led to the second possibility. My actions hadn’t changed the future.

Somebody else’s had.

(to be continued)