Infinity's Daughter by Jeremy Laszlo Page A

the edge of your seat, waiting for a bomb to go off. And every time it did, and you survived, you cried. You cried for the hardship, you cried for the fear, and you cried for your joy for what could have been, and you cried for your joy that it was not as expected. Thinking back to how often my father was caught between worlds, caught between action and inaction, influence and failure, so close to reaching his desires or accomplishing anything attainable, I cannot even begin to imagine, now, what that paradox must have felt like to him.
    But, after that particular excursion, he explained it to me.
    Whenever he returned, my father always tried to spend time with me. He prioritized what he could, when he could do it. It was as if he was being hunted by a beast he never saw, and he was always on the lookout for it, he was never safe. So the time that he did have was even more valuable.
    My mother had dressed him and fed him. I waited downstairs cautiously, focusing on my algebra, and running my eyes in circles over the same problems, not solving anything in my anxiety. And then he came downstairs. Travel-worn and slicked with malaise, he clung to his optimism, and strapped a heavy smile across his face. I met the smile with my own, and tears began falling silent and salty down my cheeks. He hugged me and we walked to the kitchen.
    My mother had made chocolate chip cookies earlier that evening. My father found them inside of the ceramic cookie jar, and pulled four out, two for each of us. I had smiled again then—my mother only ever let me have one at a time. But this was a celebratory occasion. I hadn’t seen my father in two months, and we were going to make the most of it. He poured two glasses of milk and we headed into the living room, taking up residence on the couch, between my algebra book and scrap paper.
    He asked about school, about friends, and about my goals. How was I feeling, how was I doing. But I wanted to know how he was doing. I wanted to know what it felt like. I wanted to know how he did it.
    My father was wearing a plaid shirt. Red and black. I still remember it very vividly. The cookies were delicate, and little crumbs scattered softly across his shirt. He looked at me, while he dipped the cookie into his glass of milk. Then, as if he got hung up on a thought, he paused, the cookie dripping milk onto the carpet while he held it in mid-air.
    “It feels…” he was speaking very slowly, trying to get the right words. He was also so fatigued, that it was difficult to speak quickly. “It feels like you have been ripped into pieces. Parts of you have been scattered across time. Not physically, but mentally. Normally, time is linear. You, and your mother, and everyone else as far as I know, see time as something where you can only move forwards, in one direction.
    “But when you have the ability to go backwards, and forwards, and any way possible, you begin to think about your actions more readily. And you begin to regret. You wonder if you could have done something differently, if you could have changed something when you were back, to make things different in the future. Because you have the gift…” he stopped again, looking down at the little splashes of milk, “or the curse…you always wonder if things could be different again, if you could redo them. That is the time travel paradox. You regret in a different way than you might in time, as you know it. You regret, because you could change it, but doing so can have severe and unintended consequences.”
    I took a bite of my cookie, tasting the chocolate, but not recognizing it in my mind. I was focused on my father’s words.
    His cookie was still caught between his fingers, dangling over his knee. “That is my paradox. But the hardest part about it is knowing that I can’t change anything. I have to watch as terrible things happen. I have to stand by, knowing I have the ability to make things better. I must simply exist, and hope that my presence