My name is Stuart Erikson, and I can control time... sort of. I wouldn’t really call it a method of controlling time so much as I would call it a way to return to the past. Much like the video games I found myself wallowing away in my room playing, I could create save states, or save points as most people would call them.
I don’t know how I got this power or what its purpose is. All I know is that only a few months ago I found that simply thinking, ‘I wish I could do things over again’ gave me would gave a strange blue, transparent screen to appear in midair. To say it freaked me out would be a gross understatement, because outside those who find themselves in psych wards, who would really seriously claim such a feat? If you can even call it that.
After I had confirmed that no one else could see it, mostly because everything around me had literally stopped in time, I grew curious. I experimented for several weeks, testing anything I could think of. What would return? Would my wounds heal? What about memories? Would I retain mine and everyone forget theirs? I had hundreds of questions and to be honest I still have yet to test the limits of this power.
Eventually it came to a point where I had realized something. Life was completely determined by the choices we made. I hated the term. I absolutely despised the term. But here we were. What may seem like an irrelevant point now would later become a building block for who I met, how I got along with people, and ultimately how I was viewed by others. Life did not allow for mistakes and as far as anyone could tell, you had no idea you made the wrong choice until it was too late. As far as I am concerned, life is a bullshit gamble of rolling the dice and hoping that the choice you made was the right one. If not well tough luck, buddy.
Things are different for me though. I don’t fit into that category anymore. Now the entire world is in the palm of my hand. Did I want to go to college? Done. Did I want a beautiful wife and children? Easy. Anything was attainable now. Living a life of luxury was as easy as watching how the winning lottery tickets come down and rewinding to buy the right ticket.
That was too easy though, and even if I don’t care too much about my grades, I’m at least smart enough to know what having too much power can do to a person. Winning the lottery would forever stigmatize me as someone who just got lucky. A nobody, a gambler. No I want power, true unattainable power. I want to demonstrate that no matter how I fight I cannot lose.
“Uhh, it’s this one,” says my lab partner and new girlfriend. Her body touching mine, she’s seated in the chair beside me and thumbing through the pages of my notebook, penciling in the correct answers that I had feigned ignorance in knowing.
It took about fifteen resets of changing my seat as I walked in before the teacher found it appropriate to pair us up. A pain in the ass but working together and getting to know her was at the top of my list of priorities.
“Ah, so then we add the phenolphthalein first?” I ask.
“Yes, because it’s an indicator chemical. If we don’t add that first, we’re not going to know what’s happening,” she says proudly.
It’s only been a week since I planted my lips upon hers and yet somehow she’s perfectly calm and accustomed to my presence. I’m impressed frankly. Her intense focus, her willingness to stick close to me and maintain an air of aristocracy is... arousing.
Her rich lifestyle led her to having a fairly high amount of pride in her system, which is why she probably took advantage of teaching me when she could. She admired my tenacity and determination to take what I thought was rightfully mine, that being a strong and dependable future. I suppose she found merit in that. Selfish. Predictable. Probably listens to everything Daddy tells her. Not that I care, she’s gorgeous and rich, that’s frankly all I care about.
“Seems I need to pay better attention in class,” I smirk, pinching her thigh from under the desk.
“Stu!” she whispers in a panicked tone. A deep pink covers her face, her stare darting across the room to see if anyone had noticed. “That’s not appropriate right now.”
“I’m hungry,” I whisper back into her ear.
Clearing her throat, she narrows her brow and gives me a firm look. “We’re going to continue studying like the rest of the class is doing, understand?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
The two of us continued to study and after an excruciatingly long and boring chemistry class, the students began packing their bags, some of them with their lunch cards in hand.
“Shall we get some lunch?” she asks throwing her book bag over her shoulders, “I’m starving.”
“Sure but I’m buying for you today,” I calmly and confidently state as I exit the classroom, Amy straight behind me.
“What? That’s not even—”
“Necessary? No. But it’s what’s happening. Coming?”
She pauses, then smiles in an almost bewitching manner.
“By all means.”
The cafeteria is packed to the brim with students. As prestigious as our school sometimes was, it didn’t stop the rest of the students from acting like a bunch of ravenous, wild animals. Unlike most of the students running around and standing in line waiting for their next meal, Amy and I cut around and go over to the snack bar where food is fresher and more delicious.
“Here you go,” a woman in her fifties hands a heavier looking student standing in front of us a large jug of fruit juice and a meal consisting of five breadsticks, four slices of pizza, two large brownies and a small bowl of salad.
What an idiot. Like a salad was going to stop all of that junk from clogging his arteries. People like him irritated the hell out of me. I’m sure that in their precious little mind that eating a salad each day was going to somehow turn them into Hercules. As if. Dude has no self control and that’s his problem.
The student leaves to a nearby table with his gourmet of a meal. It’s our turn now and we step forward. Unsurprisingly, the asshole has taken all of the good stuff, leaving only broccoli, a few cheese sticks, and a single slice of pepperoni pizza. I wanted two slices of pepperoni, and this moron made sure I wasn’t going to have what I wanted. I click my tongue in anger.
“Oh, there isn’t much left,” says a disappointed Amy. “Do you wanna just jump back in line?”
“And lose out on all the good food? Hell no,” I say to her.
“Huh?” she asks, confused by my statement. “What’s gotten into you all of a sudden?”
“Just be quiet.”
Approaching the table the moron sat at, I tap him on the shoulder. As soon as he’s turned around, I hit him square in the face with all the strength I can muster. The attack causes a whiplash and a gush of blood pours out of his mouth and nose.
“Oh my god!” he screams out. “Help! He hit me, oh my god!”
“Yeah, keep screaming you animal.”
“What are you doing?” screams out Amy.
Her voice is grating on my ears. “Shut the hell up right now, understand?”
Her mouth hung agape, her eyes widen with surprise before she narrows them in anger.
“We’re over, Erikson.” Amy takes out a small coin I gave to her from some other hick country and throws at my feet. “Now leave him alone or I’m calling the cops.”
I roll my eyes at the idea. “I’ll see you in a bit.”
The screen appears beside me again. I had my fun but now it’s time to rectify what’s happened here. I scroll up to when we had left the chemistry class and hit ‘LOAD STATE.’ Like an old video tape, everyone rewinds back to where they were and like an army of puppets and dolls they await for the clock to move again. This is one of the problems with the power. I have to do a lot of my own work too so I go back to where I was and press a small right arrow on my screen.
“So what do you wanna eat?” asks a trailing Amy.
“I’m treating, I’ll meet you in the cafeteria!”
“Okay?” she says befuddled.
As soon as I’m done, I rush down the hall. I still have time if I run. I have to make sure I reach the snack bar before the chub master beats me to the punch. Just as I enter the cafeteria I push my way through the crowd of students and jog over to the cart huddled away at the end of the room. No one’s in line. Perfect.
I approach the old lunch woman with a smile. “Hi! I’d like five pieces of pizza, five breadsticks, and all of your brownies.”
The lady laughs. “You got quite an appetite, kid. This all for you?”
I shake my head enthusiastically. “No, my girlfriend does though, and I’m looking to make sure we both have a nice meal today. Oh, and could you add two small bowls of salad with that? No ham chunks in one of them if you would.”
A few minutes later, Amy appears in the room and I catch her attention with a large wave of my arm. I’ve secured us a table which I knew we could share by ourselves since the amount of food I ordered covered the entirety of the table.
“Holy moly... are you really going to eat all this?” Amy asks in an incredulous tone. “This would feed me for a week.”
“Never underestimate the hunger of a man,” I say with a wave of my fork. “Here, one for you.” I hand her a small paper plate with a brownie and a fork.
“Thanks, Stu.”
I give a firm nod, enjoying the smooth, chocolate texture of the dessert in my mouth and glance over my shoulder to see the fat-ass waiting behind a student. To my surprise the lady points over in my direction when he finally comes up to order his food. What a bitch, pinning it on me and not saying a damn thing about this kid. Fury on his face the dumbass marches over to us.
“You! Are you the one that took all the food?” he practically bellows into my ear.
Calmly, I meet his gaze. “Yes, yes I am. I’m hungry and I have a right to that food as much as you do. I’m sorry, but I haven’t had breakfast so I need to make up for the vitamins and calories I’ve lost throughout the day.”
“You don’t need all that! I need food too! Why don’t you share and give some of that up?”
“Excuse me, but he paid out of his own pocket for that food. You could show some proper conduct and either take what’s there, or stand in line like the rest of us usually do,” argues Amy. Perfect. Oh how the tables had turned.
“I don’t need some scrawny little girl like you telling me how I should talk.”
“If you don’t leave I’ll be forced to report you. We have limited time in eating, and I’d rather not have it disturbed by someone who was going to eat too much anyways.”
“Stu, that’s a little much,” says Amy.
“You’re right.” I pull up the load screen and roll back about ten seconds.
“Excuse me, but he paid out of his own pocket for that food. You could show some proper conduct and either take what’s there, or stand in line like the rest of us usually do,” repeats Amy.
“I don’t need some scrawny little girl like you telling me how I should conduct myself.”
Let’s do it right this time.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have taken as much as I did. But it is as Amy says, I paid for this. And as you know this food ain’t cheap. I have no intention of forking any of it over. If you’re going to turn this into a bigger problem than it needs to be then I’m afraid I’m going to have to get the faculty involved.”
A rumble of frustration can be heard from the deep caverns of his throat, and after a few seconds he turns around and storms off to stand in line with the rest of the students.
Amy sighs with concern. “That could’ve gotten ugly. Stu, did you really need all this food? I mean, I know you’re hungry, but still.”
“You doubt me?”
She giggles and a wry smile crosses her face. “A little. But what’s done is done. We can’t go back now so we’ll just need to roll with the consequences.”
Just as I said, life is simply a series of choices.
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