I Never Heard Back From the Future

This is a true story. Kind of.

I’ve been working on a time machine for the last thirty years.

I’m about to give up on it, because I haven’t come back from the future to help me finish it. I figure that means I never succeeded.

That’s usually how time loops are supposed to work.

I have just finished thinking this when there’s a flash of light behind me.

I turn around and see… me.

Same face. Fewer lines. Better posture. Nicer clothes. They fit better. He looks about fifteen years younger.

“You look younger,” I say. “So you… or I… obviously managed to build a time machine about fifteen years ago.”

He shifts his weight.

“Well,” he says, “that’s hard to explain.”

That is not what you want to hear from yourself.

“Did it work or not?” I ask.

“It works,” he says. “Just not the way you think.”

He looks around the room. The half-finished machine. The notes. The parts that have been moved from shelf to shelf for years without getting any closer to being done. He gives me a look I recognize — the look disappointed people have been giving me my whole life.

“The problem,” he says, “is that it doesn’t send people backward.”

“Then what does it do?”

“It sends unfinished versions of you forward.”

He explains that the machine only activates at certain moments. Not big, dramatic ones. Small ones. Quiet ones.

Moments when you almost do something.

Almost quit. Almost leave. Almost say the thing. Almost take the risk. Almost change direction.

“That’s when it turns on,” he says. “Hesitation is the trigger.”

“So why you?” I ask. “And why are you younger?”

“Because this is where you stopped.”

That one lands harder than I expect.

He tells me I’ve seen him before. Not like this. Not face to face. But I’ve heard him.

Late at night, replaying conversations that already ended. While staring at an email I never sent. When I convinced myself that next year would be better timing.

He’s every version of me that almost moved — and didn’t.

I ask the obvious question.

“So where’s the older me? The one who figured this out?”

He doesn’t answer right away.

Then he says, “Nobody ever comes back with instructions.”

That’s the part nobody likes. There is no future version of you who arrives with a map. There’s just a line of almosts behind you, waiting to see if this time you’ll actually go through with it.

The machine hums.

He looks at it like he knows what’s coming.

“Do we ever finish it?” I ask.

He smiles. Not sadly. Just honestly.

“You stop waiting for it.”

There’s another flash of light.

He’s gone.

The room is quiet again.

The time machine sits there, unfinished. Exactly where I left it.

Maybe the future never shows up because it doesn’t have notes for us. Maybe it’s waiting for us to stop asking permission.

So I make coffee.

And start work on a teleportation machine.