When history records today’s events, it’s important that one fact be established beyond dispute: none of this was my fault.

It was the board who demanded experimental proof of concept of my theories, upon threat of withhold further funding.

A pair of the besuited bastards stand off to the side, observing. Waiting for my anticipated failure so they can have me escorted off the premises, then have my work picked apart for anything useful. Those who originally hired me are long gone, but after sinking so much into the project, management have been reluctant to cut it off, even with their lack of confidence that I can actually build a time machine.

Fortunately, I have enough confidence for all of us, and a determination to shove their faces in it.

I gesture to a tech flunky – I have more important things to do than memorise names, especially when they change so often – and he turns on the machine. I’m not so arrogant as to need to do the honours myself.

The machine – or at least the attention-grabbing ten-foot-tall hoop dominating the middle of the sparse, off-white, room – hums to life.

The flunky calls out the list of functions operating within parameters.

‘Will this take long?’ one suit asks.

I fix a polite smile in place, certain I’ve hidden my disdain. ‘The power flow requires strict regulating when it’s active. Any flux when it’s linked could fry the circuits and be fatal to passengers.’ Since they insisted it be my future version who travelled back here for the demonstration, this is not something I take lightly. I’d sooner have done a proof of concept by shoving a box through with tomorrows racing results. But no, the idiots need something splashy. Safety precautions will ensure it isn’t gorily splashy. And if it doesn’t work, I’ll know not to come back.

The checks passed – all of them, even the ones I’d normally have them simply scan and say if something’s wrong, but which I allow now to further irritate the suits – I turn to Miss Turner. She’s been around long enough that it felt impolite not to learn her name. Her surname, at least. ‘Initiate the second unit.’

She heads off to the other room, drawing an impatient sigh from the audience.

‘Do you really need to power both up?’ asks the suit. ‘You are aware of the power supply they require?’

Better than you. Did none of the idiots read the project precis I prepared? After all the effort I went to getting it under fifty pages. And limiting myself to words of no more than two syllables.

‘One unit cannot link to itself, even separated by time,’ I say in my best patient and benevolent tone. I’ve practiced it specifically for executive interactions. ‘And since the underlying theory holds that time travel is only possible as far back as the machine’s initial activation, we need both on in order to perform the test as you specified.’

The hard stare he gives me says he might see through my diplomatic pleasantness. Either that, or he didn’t think of stopping at the bathroom on the way here.

I politely ignore their tutting and impatience for the few minutes until Miss Turner returns. She nods, confirming the other unit has encountered no problems.

‘Good girl,’ I say.

It gets the expected tightening of the lips as I look away. Goading keeps her motivated, and she has to snap at me at some point. She’s far too mousy and timid to deal with suits, and it’s my duty to train her up properly.

‘Open it up,’ I tell the flunky at the console.

The machine’s hum rises, as it prepares to receive a signal.

Then we wait. And wait.

By the end of the first minute, I’m sure the suits are ready to call it. And I’m ready to lecture them on the difficulties of the technology, even if I know it’d do little good beyond buying me time.

Then the pitch of the hum deepens, and I think of nothing but the hoop. It’s connected to something. The hum is the only indicator, of course. Through the hoop we can see only the far wall. Even when the handsome figure steps out of thin air within the hoop, nothing else changes.

I look hardly any older, so probably from no more than a few days in the future, but I’m facing myself. And no doubt sharing the grin.

Do I really look that smug? I may need to do something about that. Though not for a few days, obviously.

The euphoria of success may be what makes me miss the hum altering. It powered down slightly after he appeared, before whirring up again. As though expecting more visitors, which isn’t the plan. The visits need scheduling to avoid overlap – since I have only vague hypotheses of what could occur in such circumstances, none of them good.

Three figures appear behind the other me. It takes a moment to recognise the middle one as an even older me. What have I let happen to myself? Way too much grey, and a face creased with age.

How far ahead is he from? These machines are only intended as prototypes, and shouldn’t last beyond five years, at the most. He has to be older than that. Please God, let him be older. Do I think of a way to link any machine to another, even one it wasn’t initially synchronised with? That would be interesting.

My curiosity is derailed as slightly older me turns to way older me, and way older me raises a gun I’ve only just noticed and shoots slightly older me in the head. He falls, vanishing before he hits the floor.

I’m sure you’ll forgive me my shock, but it isn’t every day you’re a witness to your own fractured suicide. ‘Secure the machines,’ older me tells his flunkies, who I realise are also armed.

‘What’s going on?’ asks one of the suits. He attempts to inject some command into his voice but fails to cover the panic.

Older me smiles at them, raises the gun, and shoots both of them dead. They’re over twenty feet away, and I haven’t used a gun since I was a kid. Obviously, I have practice.

‘I’ve been waiting a decade to do that,’ he says. ‘And to say this.’

Only a decade? Those must have been hard years.

One of his flunkies heads for the machine controls – vacated by my flunky, who’s cringing off to the side – while the other heads to the other room. And older me advances towards me.

A security guard appears at the door, presumably responding to the noise, but by the time he registers what’s happening the flunky going for the door shoots him. His barely-drawn gun goes skating across the floor.

‘You’re coming with me,’ says older me, ignoring the interruption.

Shock still exercising some control over me, I nevertheless manage to ask a relevant question. ‘Why did you kill us? And why did he vanish?’

The look he gives says it should be obvious, and he won’t make allowances for shock. ‘Once I shot him, his potential future vanished. Because we’re not so stupid as to travel back after seeing ourselves killed. Well, I’m not, and you’ll learn.’

‘Potential future?’ I say. ‘You mean the divergent realities model is true?’

‘In some manner.’

‘Do you know the reality vanishes, or are you assuming?’ asks Turner. She cowers near the console, but scientific curiosity seems to commendably overcome her panic. Until older me glares at her.

‘I’m not sure they do,’ he says. ‘But travellers from them do once they’re no longer possible, and I’m not anxious to test it on myself to see whether their world survives them once bereft of its parent reality. Now come on.’

He grabs my collar and drags me towards the hoop. Older me has been working out.

I’m still in enough shock that I don’t resist. He is me, after all, so must have my best interests in mind.

We don’t reach the hoop, as he flinches back from some kind of distortion of the air ahead of us, like a beam of compressed air. That he grabs me to use as a shield isn’t helpful – or particularly wise.

Three more armed idiots stand at the doorway, with guns of designs I’ve never seen. One of them has an entire robotic left arm, and what looks like it might be a cybernetic right eye.

Their presence may be what distracts me from recognising steampunk chic for a second as an even older version of me – who arrived by the other machine before the flunky could disable it. And I thought grey hairs and a creased face were bad. At least using me as a human shield no longer seems as stupid, and most of their shots are aimed at old but intact me’s flunky.

Shooting at them, old me drags me to cover behind a console. ‘Careful of the tech,’ he shouts. Presumably to everyone.

‘Our guns won’t damage it,’ says who I assume to be cyber-me. I sound old, my voice strained and crackly.

‘This is insane,’ I say. ‘You’re both me. Why are you trying to kill each other?’

‘I’m you,’ says wrinkly-faced me. Between taking careful shots at the others. ‘But I’m not him. And we’re not trying to kill each other. We’re trying to get you. Right now, we’re both from potential futures, and you haven’t reached the spilt point where which one you reach is determined. If I get you to my future, the act of you observing it and coming back will fix it as your future. It would have to be for your past to retain its integrity.’

I stare at him as I let the implications settle on me.

‘Did you test this?’ asks Turner, crouching nearby. ‘Or are you taking your crazy older self’s word for it?’

‘Silence, girl,’ says older me.

‘Don’t you order my assistant about,’ I say. Certain things can’t be allowed. ‘Keep your head down, Turner. Why’re you here at all then? Why not send people rather than risk ourselves in this madness?’

‘Would you entrust your future to others?’ wrinkly-faced me asks. That is a fair point. ‘And I remember multiple mes appearing, so can’t risk my future being lost by not being one of them.’

‘What happened to them?’ asks Turner.

‘Killed each other,’ he says. ‘But neither of us resembles them, and I don’t intend dying.’

I doubt they would’ve either, but don’t get the chance to comment as a burst of gunfire from my captor’s remaining flunky causes something to explode near the door. Not a big explosion, and the hoop’s still operational, but it’s distracting nonetheless. Especially when said flunky comes flying back past us, ragged and probably done for.

Both of us are distracted, and before wrinkly-faced me can rise to fire again, one of the enemy gunmen darts around the far end of the console and aims his weapon at wrinkly-face’s head.

‘Not my brain,’ I scream in ill-judged desperation. But I can’t help thinking of the loss to humanity.

It causes the gunman to pause a second too long, and wrinkly-faced me spins and shoots him. Then he grabs my collar again, shoves his gun close to my head and stands us up.

‘Stay where you are or I shoot him,’ says wrinkly-faced me.

Cyber-me rises slowly, gun pointed off to the side. He looks casual, but ready to react. ‘You won’t shoot him. That’d be suicidal.’

‘If it looks like I won’t get away with him, I’m dead anyway.’

‘Not necessarily,’ says cyber-me. He saunters towards us. ‘Go home. Maybe it will survive somewhere.’

I hear Turner muttering to herself, no doubt something derogatory aimed at the shoddy logic.

‘Would you?’ asks wrinkly-faced me.

Cyber-me grins, and things get worse. There’s maybe one natural tooth in sight, the others all metal. Who does that? You can get decent false teeth, so it’s a choice to get metal ones. He’s taking the whole cyborg thing a bit too far, and I think I’d rather go home with wrinkly-faced me if it’s all the same to everyone.

‘I’m not the one who’s outgunned,’ says cyber-me. ‘And if it comes down to it, don’t you think I’d sooner he dies than you win.’

‘Can we look for options that don’t involve my death?’ I ask. ‘I think we can all agree it’d be better for everyone.’

‘I’m certainly open to discussion,’ says cyber-me. He doesn’t even convince me, and I’m prone to self-delusion. He reaches the other side of the console and lays down his oddly smooth, portly gun.

Wrinkly-faced me glances at the remaining gunman, staying behind cover. ‘I don’t see how this can end peaceably.’

He shoves me up against the console, and I grab it to steady myself as he points the gun at cyber-me.

‘This is how it’ll go,’ says wrinkly-faced me. ‘Your man throws out his weapon. Then I escort the pair of you back to the other machine, where you’ll go home. Then maybe you’ll survive.’

‘Maybe,’ says cyber-me, still wearing that unsettling grin.

The gunman darts up, firing wide of us. Wrinkly-faced me aims at him, but the man ducks away before he can fire.

Taking advantage of the distraction, cyber-me lunges at us. A blade emerges from his left wrist before I can think, and I have no chance to move before it slices off my small left finger.

Any claim that I scream in a girlish manner is slanderous, but so would you if you’d just had your finger cut off, so shut up.

I’m released as wrinkly-faced me vanishes, his reality unwritten by my losing the finger. It’s only the start of things by the look of cyber-me. He only retains the top quarter of his arm. Did he cut the rest of it off himself too?

‘Stop whimpering,’ he says. ‘It’s only a finger.’ To be fair, my bedside manner probably hasn’t changed much.

I glance around, still in a daze. But it’s not as though there’s anyone here to help me. The guard’s gun is on the floor near the console, too far away for me to dive for it. Even if he should be reluctant to shoot me. Fatally, at least. He may see shooting bits off of me as an option.

The pain seems to subside, as shock slaps it into submission, and I realise the blade must have been hot as it’s seared the wound.

The suits are still dead, despite their attacker no longer existing. Because the point at which his future became invalidated occurred after he’d killed them, so he was still a potentially real person at the time.

Cyber-me puts his artificial arm around my shoulder to guide me towards the door, and the second hoop in the other room.

‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘A quick flit to my future, then I’ll have you back here to get the finger looked at.’

‘You don’t have miracle healing tech in this future, do you?’ I ask.

He glances at his mechanical arm, then back at me. ‘What do you think?’

Of course he doesn’t. And if he allowed me to use it the other me’s reality would still be a potential future.

The hum of the machine goes suddenly high-pitched, then there’s a bang as circuits in the hoop blow, and I go stumbling as the hand guiding me vanishes.

I spin, but they’re gone. I’m alone. Apart from Miss Turner, standing by the console looking understandably shaken. My mind whizzes through what just happened. ‘You overwhelmed the regulators? Blew the circuits?’

She nods, seeming too shaken to speak.

They’d have to be rebuilt from scratch rather than repaired, so these machines will never work again. And can therefore never be used in the future, negating cyber-me’s reality. Unfortunately, not before he took my finger.

‘Good girl,’ I say.

It gets me a glare, that I ignore.

My nameless flunky runs out the door, screaming in a panic for help. General help, rather than medical help for me, I notice.

‘Well, this has certainly been a learning experience,’ I say. ‘I need to start moisturising. Today.’

‘That’s the lesson you take from this?’ asks Miss Turner, finally showing some spine.

‘Not the only one. But getting up close to both of them, it’s obvious I need to take better care of myself.’ I glance at where my absent digit used to be. ‘What’s left of me, at least.’  I must be in shock, and the pain will be back soon. I need to get stuff done before it hits. ‘Get in the system and erase all records of my work. This is too dangerous to leave in the hands of these idiots.’ Who’ll no doubt unjustly lay the blame for this on me, so I’ll need take steps to get out in front of it.

Miss Turner nods and gets to work. ‘Time travel seems far too dangerous to use.’

‘Indeed.’ I yank the control circuit board out of the panel and grab a hammer. This will be the hardest part to replicate. ‘Travel back in time, and you could undo your own existence. Travel forward and you fix that future into being.’

‘Should we warn people?’ asks Miss Turner. ‘So that no one else tries to build such a device. So that no one ever time travels again.’

I turn to her with a patient look. ‘I never said there’d be no time travel. I simply don’t trust these idiots with it. No, I’ll build a smaller machine, that only allows messages to be passed through. I can send myself future technology, and patent it, bring about a golden age of wonders. Those guns looked far too advanced for my lifetime, so it’s likely I’d already done something of the kind. Maybe once we’ve thought through all the possibilities, we can use the machine carefully. Responsibly.’ I certainly wouldn’t trust anyone else with it. I’m the only one responsible enough to use it properly.

Only as I feel the barrel of the guard’s gun on the back of my head do I realise Miss Turner’s seen another option to avoid time travel technology being misused. Right now, it exists only in my head.

Clever little b…

THE END