Unbalanced

I had the feeling that was balancing on something, and it hurt to do so. I opened my eyes, and decided that my viewpoint was slightly different. Plus, my legs still ached. I looked down at what I was standing on.

Nothing. The ground.
Hmm…

I shrugged it off as a kind of jet lag. That didn’t make my legs feel any better. Glancing up, I examined my surroundings. I was standing on rough cobblestones that were lined in rows rather unprofessionally. Between their jagged edges was muddied dirt holding them in place. Marvellously ornate buildings – in both design and construction – lined the paving. Welcome to Main Street, 19th century.

Women were bustling along with basket in hand and shawl in their hair. They didn’t spare a glance for me, even though I’d just materialised (I think) in the middle of the road in 21st century garb. From this I decided that only one person was able to see me; after all, the 17th century man didn’t seem to have any trouble. I set off along the street, and then turned back and picked up the microscope. No one seemed to have noticed it either.

Passing beneath a rustic archway, I stepped from the cool shadows of the alleyway into a brightly lit town square. A large church took pride of place on the north-western corner, and people were milling around the stalls of a market. The belltower rang out with a deep, melancholy chime. Time seemed to slow and the square seemed to pause, but then talk and chatter picked up again a second after the final echoing tones faded away.

‘I guess I go in there then,’ I muttered.

Ghosts in the machine

I think it was a few hours later. It was near dusk; the mosquitoes were out and the birds were settling into their nests. There was no sound pollution to deter them from the trees, and no air pollution to kill them off if they nested. Wind gently rustled the leaves of the magnificent old gums that lined the streets with military precision. I got up from my crude seat of light-bricks, and stared at the rubble. The bricks seemed to be decomposing.

After a period of depressed self-analysis, I’d realised that there was nothing I could do. First I’d told myself that you can’t change the past, and then grasped that, apparently, you could, and it was just that I didn’t know how to. Plus, more birds and cleaner streets was a good thing, right? I’d just go where the arrow told me, and hope for the best.

The Shifter hummed in my pocket, reassuringly. I pulled it out, and stared at the screen.

‘You’d better be on the good side,’ I muttered, and pulled the lever. Turbid, grey light.

Revelation

I decided to walk home. Well, back to the demolished house that may or may not have been mine. As I walked down along a better footpath than usual, I tried to work what my situation was. This was 2006, but it wasn’t the 2006 from before. The Shifter took me somewhere, and then I handed over antiseptic to someone who had been waiting impatiently for my arrival in…wherever. My legs were sore. There were two dead people in the backyard of my, the – whatever – house. I didn’t know if my mother was alive. The holder had destroyed my home. The science lab at school had been secured electrically, and a fire extinguisher had exploded. I’d picked up a microscope on the instruction of an arrow that was now leading me down the street that was cleaner than I remember-

That was it. I stopped in the middle of the street.
Cleaner. Better.
I suddenly understood what I was doing, and sank to my knees.

I shook with brutal, terrifying panic.

I’d travelled back in time to the 1700s, and I’d interfered. I'd given the man something from MY TIME. I'd returned back to 2006, but it wasn’t the same 2006 as before. I’d changed history by bringing antiseptic back before it was invented. That’s why everything was cleaner. By taking a new technology back in time, I’d accelerated the progression of the human race.

‘Shit,’ I stammered. ‘Shit, shit, shit. Oh God.’