Journal - A Short Story Part 4

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Part 3 can be found here -
https://steemit.com/short-story/@phoenix32/journal-a-short-story-part-3

"A Hero Named Hiro" — Monday February 8, 2010
I always found it funny that one of the heroes in the show “Heroes” is named Hiro. “Hee-ro.” A hero named Hiro. A guy who can control time — does that make him temporal kinetic? — and he has a sword.

A katana.

The guy with the scar never let me see his sword. I tried to get a good look at it, but he really never let me get my hands on it. Even when he pulled it out of the closet in my dorm room — man, that was a decade ago — he moved so fast and he did not let me touch it. What is it with that sword in particular?

The scarred man smirked, as he realized that the young man writing the journal had started to figure out some of the nuances of his time travel.

The katana was the real key to everything. The fact was that the only reason why the katana mattered so much is because it was the only thing that he knew for certain was always present, an object that was linked throughout time and space. There were any number of things that he could have linked — toys from his childhood that remained in storage, such as the lightsaber, which had been fortunate enough to have survived through the years — but he knew that the katana had history.

It had been in his family for centuries. His great-great-grandfather had come from Japan and married an American woman, raised their family, and passed down the katana throughout the generations. It ended up in the possession of his father’s uncle, whose children had little or no interest in keeping the heirloom. The scarred man’s father, upon being handed the blade, worked tirelessly to make certain that it was in proper condition. Much to the chagrin of the scarred man’s mother, the katana wound up on the mantle, although she had grown accustomed to it over time.

Time.

It was the one thing that he wanted most in all the world. He did not have enough of it, and he found himself desperately craving more.

Especially when it came to her.

He and Tracy had met long before the scar became his identifying mark. After she was gone, his nights were spent in a wash of tears, each one an unfulfilled wish to have her back in his arms, even if for a moment. One particular night, he found himself clutching the katana as he passed out, more from emotional exhaustion than from anything else. He opened his eyes, expecting it to be morning. Instead, there was a sensation of soft, clean sheets and the feeling that he was not laying in the bed alone.

“Mmm… Babe, I thought you got up for work.” The tone of her voice, muted by sleepiness, snapped his eyes open wide. The bedroom was their bedroom, exactly as she had decorated it. He had never possessed an eye for the aesthetic, and as a result he had given her free reign over the decor of the house. She had turned it into a home, a place of serenity and love.

Clearing his throat, he managed to find the only words that, to him, seemed to fit. “I just wanted a few more minutes with you.”

And that was what he received. The world dissolved into black, and finally coming back into focus for him to find himself back in his rundown room, laying down on the pathetic mat that served as his bed, still clutching the sword.

This repeated night after night for a week. He slept without tears for the first time since he first found himself alone, knowing that he would find her again. Although each time was a bit different — a different place, a different time — he realized that there were some constants, primarily the presence of the katana.

The morning after the seventh night, he realized that he had fallen into a routine that, up to then, had been a remnant of another man’s life; he made certain that he was groomed and ready to face the day. There were others who he missed dearly, and he wanted to see them again. Standing in the warmth of the morning sunlight, he held the katana against his chest, focusing his thoughts on the sound of his parents’ voices. The world turned to black about him, eclipsing the early daylight. It coalesced again, this time in the living room of his family home, the familiar sight of the katana resting over the mantle.

He could smell his mother’s cooking emanating from the kitchen and he inched his way towards the source of the aroma. He heard the harmony of his father and mother as they sang to each other, and he was overcome by countless memories from years of family meals: his dad setting the table, his mother cooking, the two of them singing together, he and his siblings helping and running around and enjoying the sound of their parents’ voices in song. He stopped and listened for as long as he could before closing his eyes to return home.

He stopped and realized that since he could interact with the world around him when he traveled back, there was the potential for him to make alterations to the timeline.

“I could have my Tracy back.” That was his immediate thought. “I could have her back, and I could fix everything in the world that went wrong, and I can keep going back and making my life perfect —”

And he stopped himself. No, that was all wrong. How utterly selfish of him. And what would that change? Death was an inevitability. Losing Tracy the first time damn near destroyed him; having to lose her a second time would obliterate him on the whole.

And why should the whole of the universe and all of existence have to bend to his will?

He dropped down onto his sleeping mat, finding himself very much alone and lonely.

“What I wouldn’t give to talk to someone who understands what I’m going through right now…”

He sat upright, shocked with the bolt of inspiration.

“I can be there for me.”

Leaping to his feet, he rummaged through some cardboard boxes until he found a series of notebooks. His journals. He set the box down next to his sleeping mat and set about to assemble a desk for himself.

And so his base of operations was put together, his old journals ordered and resting for his convenience. He stopped to admire his handiwork before deciding that it was time to get to work. He knew that he would need a plan, and that he would need to pick his destinations with more care than random selection. He grabbed a journal from the middle of the shelf and began reading, jogging his memory as to what had occurred during the time of his writing.

The one thing he had to make certain that he could do was go back and see himself without causing any damage to the timeline.

That first meeting was probably going to be a right awful mess. He recalled the type of person that he was at various stages of youth and as a young adult, and he knew that no matter what kind of evidence that he presented to his younger self that the degree of doubt would be astronomical. No, he had to play it smart and make sure that he did things right.

Opening the most recent of the journals, he found a pen and began writing in it, picking up on the next open page after the last entry — from the day Tracy had died. The pen danced along the page, a scratchy and gnarled version of cursive handwriting that he had not used in untold years, scribed onto the page with hands that were far older than the ones that had last chronicled in the book.

“Step one: make sure that I meet myself as a small child. Young me will need to get used to seeing me, talking with me.

“Step two: do not disrupt the timeline any more than I would already be doing by visiting. I absolutely cannot, under any circumstances, reveal anything to young me that could change how things turn out. Otherwise, I could screw it all up and never have met Tracy.

“Step three: check my journals and figure out when to go back and see myself. I might be going back out of sequence, but that’s OK. I just need to make certain not to jump to a time between certain visits — I’ll have to be mindful of the journals and study them and any changes that might happen.

“Step four: if I really screw this up, I’m gonna have to go back in time to just before I start to visit myself and put a stop to this.

“So when do I start? No time like the present to delve into the past.”

Sword in hand, he began to ponder the night times when he was an infant…

—————————————————————————————————————————

The baby’s breathing was regular. He could hear it easily, as it was the only sound in the room. He had seen pictures of himself form throughout his childhood, but nothing quite prepared him for seeing himself laying in the crib, wearing a onesie, a pacifier not far from him.

He knew that the peace he witnessed in himself as a baby would not last. That he would live a life that would lead to scars and hurts, but also to happiness and joy.

He — the baby — stirred slightly, and with a gentleness that was belied by the gruffness of his appearance, he — the adult — touched his younger self’s cheek. The baby settled. The man felt certain that his new mission was the correct one.

—————————————————————————————————————————

He made a point of visiting himself at preschool age, making many trips to visit several nights in succession, waiting for the opportunity when the boy would be awake in the middle of the night. He dared not wake himself up, as he did not want to startle his younger self and cause a trauma, or deprive him of the much-needed sleep that a child of his age so very much needed.

He made certain that he could see himself as often as possible, so that when things began to get rough for him, the boy would be comfortable talking to someone…

Little would he know that it was himself.

End of Part 4