My Darling Emily

My Darling Emily,

I know this letter will not find you, because this letter will not find anyone. I have made a mistake.

‘Made a mistake.’ To put such a catastrophe so mildly. Truly, there should be another way to put it. To use the same phrase when referring to both putting sugar in the salt shaker and effectively destroying the universe. Ridiculous. This language we use is ineffective and cheap.

The language I use. The language you used. Interesting. It is good at conveying when things are gone.

I did it for us. It’s all I really want to say: I did it for us. When I lost you, I didn’t know how to exist anymore. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t think. I either couldn’t sleep, or could do nothing but. I’m not sure which I hated more. Sleep. Such an oddity. We (by ‘we’ I mean ‘scientists’ and by ‘scientists’ I mean ‘me’ because I’m the only one left) still don’t fully understand why creatures need it. And that each creature needs a specific amount. Too little and the body’s systems go haywire. Too much and you get a slightly different but equally disastrous result.

Ah, yes, that is it. Not ‘I have made a mistake.”

I have made a disaster.

I am sorry, my love. I have very little focus. I find myself rambling at all hours. Most times I don’t even know what about.

When I lost you, I lost myself. I know I always loved you more than you loved me, but still. Our love was written in the stars. In the very atoms of the hydrogen molecules that build those stars. We are essential. Our universe cannot exist without it.

I didn’t set out to prove that, but I suppose I did.

I just wanted to get back to one of those perfect moments. We had so many. I thought of one, over and over and over. Our first anniversary. That day in the park. You said you hated roses but I knew if they were from me you would love them, and I was right. You cried at the sight of them. We had our picnic. That moment doesn’t just live in my mind, it is my mind.

That was the moment I had to get back to. And I believed I could do it. I believed, out of every single human being on existence, I was the only one who could pull such a feat off.

It was not easy. It was not easy to figure out, nor was it easy to continue the research. I learned early to hide what I was trying to do. I either worked on something else during the day and continued my own research at night, or I lied about what my goals were, usually until I got caught. I bounced from university to university. Once they discovered what I was about they would not have me, but would not speak ill of me, either. My intellect – no, my reputation. That is what saved me. That is what saved my project.

In my weaker moments, I blame all those people who would not stop me. They should have stopped me. Then everything would be fine. Then I would not be here, the only human conscious, surrounded by the tortured, shredded remains of a universe in free fall.

I’m getting off topic again. I only wanted to tell you, Emily, of how my love for you endures. Even now. Even here. Wherever ‘here’ is. Whenever ‘now’ is. I will love you until the minute I die, which is hopefully soon.

I only wanted to go back, Emily. To those days when everything was perfect. Before I lost you. Before you packed up your bags and went back to your mother’s. Before the ridiculous restraining orders. Before all of our conversations had to go through a lawyer. You escalated so quickly, you always did! We could have talked this out, Emily. You could have given me a chance.

You never gave me a fucking chance.

I knew you were with him, the day I started my machine. I put a tracker on your car. A friend of mine hacked your phone. That’s why I called those restraining orders ‘ridiculous.’ I was able to step right through them and no one even knew. Not you. Not your lawyer. Not those worthless pigs who put me in that cell after you exaggerated what I had done.

You were with him, and stared at that little dot, your dot, on the map, hovering right over his apartment. Your apartment, I supposed. You moved in with him. You shouldn’t have done that.

If I hadn’t been so distracted I might have seen what had gone wrong. But I was staring at that dot when I entered the code, knowing I was seconds away from having you back.

And then everything went to SHIT.

I was supposed to move through time. Me. Just me. Not the whole stupid universe. I stayed in place and the universe started moving backwards around me, against the natural direction of time’s arrow. It isn’t supposed to go that way, but my machine is forcing it. Tearing it a part.

Why not just turn the machine off, you ask? Well, by the time I figured out what was going on I couldn’t. The universe is reversing. I am not. And not only that, it’s reversing fast, fast, too fast. Like rewinding a VCR. Remember those? Too fast to keep up. By the time I realized what was happening the machine had been unmade in front of me.

The moments I wanted are long gone, Emily. Reversed and shredded. You and I have never been born. It’s been, I think, two hours, and already no human has been born. I am before all that. Whatever is happening is speeding up. There are dinosaurs now. But it won’t be long before there is nothing on this planet but soup. Scientists disproved the Big Crunch theory years ago, but here I am showing them they’re wrong.

Emily, I am writing this because I must. You must know how much I love you. I still love you. I will never stop loving you, even as I and the rest of the basic pieces of the universe are shoved back into a infinitesimally small pocket and – I hope – out the other side.

Even though this is all your fault.

If you had just stayed with me, you would not have been unmade. The universe would not have been unmade.

You made me do it.

Love, Forever and Ever Yours,

The Only Man to Ever Love You Enough to Destroy Everything

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