Life Before This

Year 2024. 2:00AM.

I'm driving, and X is sitting next to me with her head tilting slightly towards the side window. Instead of speaking, we listen to the radio playing Sparklehorse’s Sea of Teeth softly in the background. I glance at her and catch a streetlight pass by, its orange light illuminating the background like the sunset, casting shadows of her contour onto her left cheek; her tiny, pointy nose, her long eyelashes.

The lyrics taste the crush of a sunset’s dying blush fuses perfectly with the scene before me, and I just have this epiphany. If I were a director, I would end every movie this way.

I always feel nervous when I stare at X for too long, so I turn to look straight ahead, secretly calculating how the position of the streetlights shifts the shadow on her cheek, and how the speed of the car accelerates or decelerates this pattern of shifting.

Even with the radio on the silence has filled the whole car, and the road ahead of me seems to look more desolate. Everything suddenly feels like the aftermath of the apocalypse, or some kind of alien invasion or deadly virus, and the two of us are all that’s left in this entire world.

To be honest I wish it were true. I mean, come on, it's X.

My temples pound as this thought pervades my mind like a flood that undermines all reasoning and logic. The radio starts playing another depressing song. Freaking Vermillion Pt. 2 by Slipknot. You know, this radio guy really does know how to make a man want to kill himself. My throat tightens and a thin layer of tear wells up, blurring my vision, but I love it.

“Hey I’m just gonna take a nap here, if you don’t mind,” X said. Her voice is a bit hoarse from having not spoken for a while.

“Yeah sure. Want me to turn off the radio?”

“Nah it’s fine. Leave it on.”

“Ok.”

I remember that in my dreams she’s always running, running in the pouring rain, towards a ticking bomb (that scared the shit out of me), to avoid a crashing meteorite, and, to my despair, running away from me. And now she looks so still and comfortable by my side, like a baby in repose.

I can’t help but notice something in my vision that has been disturbing me for a while. It's a blood stain on the cuff of my shirt no larger than a fingertip, hardening and darkening as time goes by.

Obviously the blood isn’t mine, because X, my assigned partner, and I kill people since the very beginning of our job. We were trained rigorously to be fast and deadly, and taught to mingle with normal human beings according to our assigned personality. After the training, we receive a target or multiple targets from the higher authority once a while, and we eliminate them quietly, making every crime scene look like an accident or suicide.

This time, we forced a man to put a bullet into his mouth. His brain ejected from the back of his head and splashed across the panorama window.

I make a left turn. The condominium we are living in becomes visible. With the irregular stacking of 50 floors and glass walls on four sides, the building is as modern as it can get. Some guy is smoking in the bathroom half-naked and our eyes meet. Another couple is having a takeaway midnight meal. This city just never sleeps.

I park the car in the underground parking lot, wait for five seconds to let myself sink in, and then gently shake X's left shoulder, “Hey, wake up, we're here."

She mumbles "thanks" and gets out of the car. Something is bothering her, but I don't ask, not after that night when she screamed at me, "D how many times do I have to tell you? I'm fine, so just, please, shut up."

I press the button of the elevator, and my finger stays there for a little longer for it to be scanned. While we are waiting, we stare at the elevator's closed silver door, examining our own distorted faces reflected on its uneven surface.

"D," X says without turning to face me, "I'm thinking.”

"About what?"

"About the guy we killed tonight, Doctor P. About what he said."

Our voices are digitally verified. The door opens and we step into the oval, claustrophobic little space.

"Wow wait, so you believe him? You think this is possible?” The elevator rises smoothly, and I look out of its glass body as the entire city expands underneath us. Actually I’m staring at X's reflection through the glass, and she’s looking at me. Her hair has the color of burnt umber, just long enough to sway across her shoulders.

I remember the time when she had hated her new haircut because the side swept kind of covered her right eye so I, who usually cut his own hair, volunteered to help. I only began to regret my decision when I had already gathered my tools and stood in front of her, because the distance between us was more than intimate. I bent down to face her and started trimming her hair bang. She certainly felt the awkwardness in the room just like I did, except that she could simply close her eyes and avoid everything and I couldn’t. I studied her face as much as I could between her quickened breaths and the slicing of the scissors, and I swear to God I could’ve kissed her right then, but I didn’t.

"Why not?" X’s voice pulls me right back from my lingering memory. She looks a bit frustrated.

I’m startled, “W…what?"

“Why not possible? His theory makes sense.”

Oh yes, we’re still talking about that dead guy who claimed to have, what, a time machine.

I go, “Trust me, Doctor P didn’t build it. No one did. Besides, there’s no scientific breakthrough in this kind of invention."

"No one has heard of it because it's supposed to be something classified. It can never be abused by people."

I stare at her, suspicious. “X, Doctor P seemed to recognize you from somewhere... Did you know about this?”

X goes rigid for the quickest instant, and says without meeting my eyes, “No.”

“Anyways, it's gone. He's dead, along with everything about this machine."

X says nothing, but the determined look on her face tells me that something bad is going to happen—

“I’m going to get it.” Bad. God this is bad.

“X,” I sigh, rubbing my temples, “please. Don’t do it." Inside this soundproof space my voice sounds quiet and weak.

The elevator comes to a gentle stop. X enters our penthouse apartment and collapses into the white leather sofa lit by the dim moonlight. “I have to. I can’t live like this.”

I panic, “no, X, no. No no no you can't do this." I can’t lose you.

“Goddammit can't you just have my back for once?" X runs her fingers through her hair and then pushes herself up, "goodnight, D.”

I watch her rush into her room. Her back looks so thin.

2024 (Again.)

Dear Diary,

I have to leave, now. Telling D about this is definitely a mistake, but how can I, how can I erase his memory about everything that has happened within these 10 years without telling him?

The time machine is hidden inside Doctor P’s office, just like the first time when I was there to save this city, and the last time… And this time, after I go back to the beginning and choose not to sign the contract, D will never recognize me again.

I know this might be the most hurtful thing a person can do to another, but D, he is not resisting; he is just… begging me like he has no dignity, looking so powerless and helpless. It’s making me feel even guiltier; I’d rather hear him call me a selfish, unemotional, indifferent bastard than see him this way.

The night is dragging. I’m packing up my stuff but something is awry, like the moon tonight, shrouded by murky clouds.

2020. They said this year should be cherished, because its first and last 2 numbers were the same, and this only happened every 101 years.

X and I stood across the street from a house, which had a lawn with flourishing wild grass. It must have not been mowed for decades. The whole city fell into darkness, and the headlight of those occasionally passing cars swiped across the lawn quietly, making it looked soft and fluffy. A window—probably from the living room—was lit dimly, and I could hear a song from some metal band playing faintly inside the house. I had definitely heard it when I was still in high school. But how could I forget its name now? I loved that song.

“In the House of Flies, is it?” X said.

I turned to X, surprised by her excellent memory. She was wearing a pair of black pants, a plain black leather jacket—she hated rivets; “Too flashy,” she had once said. She had tied her hair into a ponytail, unveiling the silver skeleton earring in her tragus, which took her one full year to heal completely.

I laughed, “Yeah, In the House of Flies by Deftones.”

“I used to hate it because its lyrics was about nothing but pulling off the wings of those poor flies, you know. I was like, why would anyone listen to this,” X was smiling as she sank into reminiscence—it was relaxing; at least for now I didn’t have to worry about her being sad, or aloof. But.

“But now, when I think about it… remember the lyrics, ‘it’s like you never had wings, now you feel so alive?’ Well when I think about it now, I’m just scared; I mean, how many people who have lost their freedom think they’re living the life they want? They’re just used to having no freedom, no choice left for them to choose from,” X paused, and looked up at me, as if searching for some answer. Her eyelashes flapped once, like the wings of butterflies.

I couldn’t speak; I just stared at her. Something adjacent to horror and dread was bursting inside my body, making it difficult for me to breathe. The ringing in my ears were like the alarms of a police car, blasting, warning me that my fear was becoming a reality. I had this urge to clasp X’s wrists and never let go, to shake her shoulders and scream, X, what the hell were you saying?

But X turned away and crushed the yellow wild flowers hard with the tip of her right foot, unaware of the chaos inside my head. She had been acting like this for some months, always falling back into her reverie that god knows what was inside. I wondered which one hurt more, watching her try to escape while desperately wanting her to stay, or knowing that I would never understand her but still craving her letting me in.

Suddenly, those dreams of X leaving me became agonizingly vivid in my head. She never spoke in my dreams; she just receded further and further away with her thin back turned toward me. Her hair swayed silently in the wind, and I would stretch out my arm, wishing to touch its silkiness and feel it twirling softly around my fingers.

I lied to myself; maybe she didn’t mean she felt she had no freedom. Maybe she didn’t mean this was not the life she wanted.

Sometimes, when self-deception only made you even more anxious and desperate, the only thing that could ease your pain, momentarily, was to avoid everything at all cost.

So I pretended to read my watch and switched the subject, “It’s time. You ready for this, X?” My voice sounded pathetically careful, as if one single word, if not used properly, would trigger her thoughts of quitting.

X paused. I froze with her, waiting. Tiredness streamed through her whole body as she exhaled weakly. “Yeah. Let’s go take care of this Q,” she went, putting her gloves on as she crossed the street towards the house. She didn’t even wait for me to catch up.

Was this another dream?

2020

Dear diary,

We failed, for the first time. This wasn’t just any failure; it was disastrous. We never expected the death of Q would activate the bombs that he had planted all over the city. But it doesn’t matter anymore.

I killed him. I thought I could prove myself that I didn’t care about killing people who have sinned, so I grabbed the poisoned pill from D’s hand and thrust it right down Q’s throat. I did it, didn’t I, time after time, after time? But the reluctance is always there, like a tenebrous shadow hiding in the corner, creeping into my nightmares with faces of those people I killed.

D kept telling me it wasn’t my fault. D… he’s the best partner I could ever have; he’s smart, quick, strong, but he could never be enough to make that dead man’s heart start beating again. I killed that man. I destroyed this place.

The city is in ruins. Someone, please, save me from my sins—

Instruction Manual

2. Concept Behind Time-Travelling

2.1 Understanding of the five-dimensional world

Quantum physics now has substantial evidence to prove that the fifth dimension exists. A five-dimensional world consists of an infinite number of timelines, each is created when different decisions can be made under the same circumstance (e.g. a person is born and has a family; his mother goes for abortion; his family abandons him).

2.2 Time-travel along the same timeline

Science is limited to only bring the user back to the past. Since there are thousands of different versions of the future, the calculation can never be done. The user can only travel back to the past he or she has experienced. If the user could travel to the past of other timelines, he or she will never return to this timeline again. We have vowed only to build devices if safety of the users is guaranteed.

2.3 Process of time-travelling

User will automatically and involuntarily reverse every action he or she has made with extremely fast speed, and return to normal at the time set on the time machine (see chapter 3). People with severe motion sickness are strongly advised to not use this device.

2024

Dear diary,

I broke into Doctor P’s office. I didn’t tell D. I feel that for the first time, I have hope. I see the possibility of redemption, of changing the past that has been haunting me for so long.

I rummaged through the drawers, felt the walls, and finally found a button on the side of the shelf. The whole office was transforming into a silver room with a little round table in the middle. The training had prepared me well; Doctor P’s eyeball, fingerprint, and blood sample were all scanned to confirm his identity.

The round table dropped. Something new rose. My salvation.

I have to go back to 2020, to the day we were supposed to kill Q. I’ll get him out from his house before D goes there so that I would have more time to talk him out of setting off the bombs. I am not killing him; I just need to make sure that he would give up sacrificing his life to commit a mass murder. I have to save this city. And maybe by that I will have my own redemption. Maybe everything, even my pathetic, constrained life, would turn out fine.

I’d rather forget 2020 than cherish it.

When I woke up in fear and emptiness in the middle of the night, X was gone. She left no message on the dinner table like many did in the movies, and her room looked just like her room, with a shirt or two hung on the back of the chair. Her laptop still felt warm, and her favorite pistol rested on her bedside table. The clock was nailed on the wall, awry, ticking ever so slowly. Somehow I could just stand in the middle of the room, unmoving, not even thinking or processing information, and know. X had left, and she would never come back here again.

I didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t like a part of me was torn, leaving me weak and bleeding. It was more like I was walking down my favorite street downtown, and everything, every store and every tree, was lifted up into the air, disappearing. I felt weightless and hollow. I lost all balance.

I could have just floated away.

I received a succinct message from the higher authority: “X has gone rogue. Target Q has been relocated. Eliminate both.” I knew X would never betray anyone like this; she was probably doing something she believed to be the right thing to do. But just the thought of her being with Q, someone unknown and dangerous, gave me a rash of goose bumps. I had to find her. I turned on my computer, gathered all recent images taken by the hidden cameras our division had planted, and pinpointed X’s face and current location. She was driving a black Dodge, and Q was sitting next to her, unbounded. I grabbed my backpack and rushed out of the apartment.

“X… pick up the goddamn phone,” I stepped on the gas even more as I dialed her phone. Her black Dodge was a few cars away from me, speeding through a red light.

She picked up, “Hey D, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t just say you’re sorry… stop the car and tell me what the hell is going on.”

“D I have to do this. Killing him doesn’t solve the problem,” she paused for a second, “he thought he is sacrificing for something sacred and good but—let me talk to him—”

I was completely lost, “No. No. You’re in danger, driving with him. Just stop the car and we’ll talk, face to face, alright?”

I heard X sigh over the phone. “You’re not listening. I think he just needs reasoning. He can be saved.”

Saved? Saved from what? “X—”

“D… If I can’t save myself I’m saving others. Bye.”

And I was left alone, listening to the busy tone playing over and over and again on the other side, with the anxious rhythm of my heartbeat. The realization of me being excluded from X’s thoughts and plans was eating me up from inside, but all I could do was to keep accelerating, until the swish and honking of other cars permeated through my eardrums and swelled.

I was catching up to X’s car. Q turned to look at me, and gave me a smile.

He was going to kill X.

I shuddered and slammed down the car horn immediately, trying to warn X. But I watched him snatch the gun from X and shot his own temple. What…?

Within a second, everything in front of me was on fire. The raging, devouring fire was spilling from broken windows and lighting up the night sky; phantom-like smoke was spreading, veiling my vision; shattered glasses were all over the place like fallen stars, and people kept screaming and bleeding and burning. But nothing really mattered anymore, because fire leaped into X’s car.

The car braked with a jerk. I saw X’s hair getting burned as she tried to open the door. I got off my car within a second and ran towards her. Adrenaline kicked in and my breathing quickened. Please, please please, don’t let the car explode before I got X out. But then a heavy, giant piece of the building fell right onto X’s car. The sound of clashing metals was deafening; the debris then rolled down from the top of the car heavily, crashed the ground, and went deadly still.

X’s car became almost flat. A complete, horrifying disaster, with fire still dancing around it.

Instruction Manual

3. How To Use

3.1 Setting time

The maximum time allowed is 10 years, which we believe is the most reasonable and practical, since the more the past is changed, the more ripple effect there is, and it would be very unlikely to turn everything back to normal. The time can be accurate to the seconds. Every digit on the time machine can be adjusted like those commonly used safety locks. If the time set is invalid (e.g. month-13, second-61) or exceeds year-10, month-00, day-00, hour-00, min-00, sec-00, activation will not begin.

3.2 Adjusting the position of the machine

The size is not adjustable, so we recommend the users to be over the age of 18. Place the machine on the head with the red button pointing to the back and the timer on the right.

3.3 Activation

Press the red button.

3.4 Warning

(1) The time machine will not go back with the user.

(2) The time machine erases every possible future that has branched out from the time set, and brings the user back in time while deleting the “presence” continuously until there is nothing after the time set. This requires tremendous amount of power from the battery and we cannot guarantee the most ideal functionality.

2024. I wonder whether this is luck or fate, for me to find a time machine after four years of grief.

I was expecting something much larger, like the first computer in human history or some kind of portal; it turns out that the time machine is just a black, mechanic headband. I hold it up for a closer examination. It is quite heavy because of the liquid battery that is encased in a transparent container. I set the time to 4 years. I hesitated for a few seconds, and changed the time to 4 years and 1 day. Maybe I could stop X from leaving. Maybe that would be subtler, and I wouldn’t always appear to be a step ahead of her.

I put the machine on. Pieces of memory flash by before me and I think I just saw X’s car, on fire, with a piece of building smashed into it. In my dreams her hair was floating in the wind. Streetlamps lit up the background and she looked like an angel. Now her voice is scraping through my head like a sad song that doesn’t fade away. Feeling weak, I wrap my hands around my head and crouch down, squeezing my eyes shut trying to push all these painful thoughts away. God I miss her.

I place my palm on the button. I take a deep breath; For X, I whisper, and press the button, my hand stiff but trembling. Everything around me goes blurry and a severe motion sickness surged through me.

It felt weird to be back to 2020. In this starless night sky covered by layers of clouds, the moon was only faintly visible.

I grabbed X’s arm before she jumped off from her bedroom window. She looked back at me in dismay, “D what the hell? Have you not heard from the authority that I have to get something done before the mission?”

I knew she’s lying, but all I could do was examining every detail of her. Four years, and X looked exactly like the X in my dreams. Her eyes were distant and cold, and her lips curved in a way that told me she was blaming me, again. But I didn’t care, because after four years of living under the shadow of her death, I could finally feel her presence again.

I suppressed the urge to yank her into my arms. I just said, “Come back. Let’s figure out a way to do this together.”

X paused, apparently unsure of how to react. “What are you talking about?”

“Let’s disable the trigger… somewhere inside Q’s body, or at least block the signal from being sent,” I went, “don’t be surprised; they told me something too.”

The crowded house of Q went into a swirl as I pushed X aside and shot Q when he was aiming at her.

In the House of Flies was playing as if eulogizing death, “I took you home, set you on the glass, I pulled off your wings, then I laughed…”

The gunshot sounded like eternity as it echoed in my head over and over and over again. The whole world went still and I was staring at Q, who froze before me. A spot of his shirt on his left chest was dyed to bright red, and it slowly spread out and the color of blood deepened, almost appearing black. I felt his pain. His wide-opened eyes never left me when he collapsed on his back. They lost focus, and life drained away.

Everything fell back to a silent stillness again, almost tranquil.

I wanted to tell X I was sorry that I had to kill him, but the pain I felt was becoming much more intense and excruciating. I threw the gun away and put my hands on my abdomen instinctively. I looked down. My hands were wet with blood and stinking of the pungent smell of iron.

X was calling my name but her voice was fading into a caress upon my heavy eyelids.

It was funny, back then when X and I were just high school students, I was already addicted to Nine Inch Nails’ Something I Can Never Have, a song that could kill me now if I listened to it. It was the reminder of X. And everything about her.

2017 (Before: 2022)

Dear diary,

I was in 2022. And 2 years ago, on this day, D died.

I got my ammo refilled today, and it was raining, hard. The air tasted mouldy and humid, and the droning of a machine from the distance added another layer of boredom and melancholy to this city.

I entered Doctor P’s office. He was about forty years old, an age that no one would believe to be capable of being the head of a company that has been designing soft screen for smartphone, brain chip for recording dreams and emotions, and many other inventions that the society cannot live without. Doctor P was alone, sitting behind a large mahogany table covered by piles of notebooks, calculations, numbers, and sketches. He was wearing a pair of black-framed glasses, a shirt beneath a sweater, and was jogging down things in a frantic way, mouthing numbers and symbols that I couldn’t quite catch.

To me he was just a kind, good-natured genius who should never be assassinated. But he would be—or…was?—by D and me, 2 years later.

I talked to him, explaining that I was just someone who had lost the most important person in her life because she had done something really wrong. He looked me in the eye to see whether I was lying. I wasn’t.

He showed me that time machine.

Now I’m back in 2017, when D and I were classmates in a local high school. D looks younger, and definitely happier. I’m sitting in my seat, writing, and I look up, catching him laughing with his buddies. Everyone loves D; he is chill, funny, and cool. We both know that we have assigned characteristics, and we just respond according to them, but I just know, that he is being the person he wants to be. He is… him. But I don’t even know who I am or what I want anymore.

Q has just started building bombs, so it will be totally safe for me to kill him tonight, for D, and for this city. And this will be my last kill, even though I’ll still be D’s partner, until some time around 2024 when D will finally learn about this time machine, and I will tell him that I’m leaving this life, leaving him, for good.

Now D puts on his headphones, with In the House of Flies blasting through them and diffusing into the air, and starts playing some kind of video game with his friends.

I don’t know how to explain to D how much I want to start over. I don’t know how to make him understand that this is not the life I want, and I’m just dragging him down because I’m such a downer full of depressing thoughts. How I wish he could just let me go.

3:00AM.

I lie on my bed, staring at the ceiling covered by posters of rock bands and horror movies I used to love when I was a high school student. I refuse to sleep, because I am very aware of the fact that those dreams about X will choke me to tears again.

So I keep replaying the conversation between Doctor P and us inside my head, and something is bothering me.

After I forced him to stay in his seat, Doctor P started explaining this time machine. “I’m not sure why this company becomes your target, but I can assure you that the time machine will be something your… your boss would love to have,” he went, “because this way they could basically redo anything that has gone wrong within the past ten years.”

And he turned to X, “So that person…?” He then glanced at me and then back to X. X nodded.

“What person?” I asked, wary of this odd conversation.

“I don’t know, okay? Let’s just get it over with,” X said, avoiding eye contact.

Even hearing his death sentence Doctor P appeared surprisingly calm, and he asked X, “Did you get what you wanted?”

And X looked back at him with that pair of expressionless eyes and went, “No. No I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Doctor P paused; he seemed disappointed by X’s answer. Then he tried to light up his final conversation by saying, “So why don’t you fake my death, and take this time machine—”

Fear began creeping up from some dark place in me and I took out my gun, smashed it into Doctor P’s hand, twisted his arm so that the gun was inserted into his mouth, and pulled the trigger.

I didn’t want X to get this time machine. She would go back and choose not to join our training school. And I would never see her again. I wouldn’t remember a thing about her even though she could remember everything. And what was life without X?

Doctor P’s brain and blood were drooping from the panorama window like an abstract painting. Shocked, X covered her mouth with both hands. Then she adjusted back to her usual manner immediately and went, “That was quick. Good job.”

My eyes refocus on the ceiling. All of a sudden everything becomes so clear; obviously X knows about this time machine, and if I can just get it before she does…

I jump out from my bed. As I gather my things and attempt to sneak out of the apartment, I bump into X, who is also fully equipped and ready to go. For the first time, I see dread spreading across her face and converging in her eyes; we both know that she can’t win this fight.

Our accidental encounter doesn’t give me enough time to tell her, “X, listen to me,” “I want you to know that everything I have done and am going to do, is for us,” “Please, stay with me,” “Don’t go,” “Think about all these years we have spent with each other.” But all these words are condensed into three syllables, “I’m sorry.”

X is shaking her head like crazy, “D, listen to me, please don’t—”

I knock her out.

As she goes limp in my arms, I lower my head and kiss the spot between her eyes.

I break into Doctor P’s office. His body still sits in his chair, cold and lifeless, and his blood is drying on the window. I collect his eyeball, blood sample, as well as fingerprint, knowing that usually these are all needed for identity confirmation. I check his shelf, and find the button. I watch his body sink beneath the floor along with the mahogany table, and say it to myself, “see you… let’s see… 8 years ago.”

After going through some serious motion sickness, I check the calendar, which is flipped to June 2016. I’m now lying in my bed with my MP3 playing My Chemical Romance’s Demolition Lovers. “All we are, all we are, is bullets I mean this.” The lyrics just never fail to make me feel the urge to prove myself, to sacrifice, and, to love no matter what. I feel young; even my heart feels much lighter.

I’m waiting for the morning to come so that I can finally see X after all these years, to feel her peaceful, casual air again.

X comes out of her room in her clean white school uniform and a neat ponytail. She looks elegant in her own way; she walks in a straight, confident style, the corner of her mouth curves upward as if she is smiling all the time, and her eyes shine like the brightest stars. I’m stunned.

“Morning. You’re up early today,” X chuckles, opening the refrigerator and taking out a sandwich and her favorite Greek yogurt, mango flavor.

“Yup. I’m not going to school though. Gonna hang out with some friends,” I try to act cool, like I used to when I was younger.

“Alright then, I’ll get the homework sheets for you.”

“Okay, I’ll get some dinner for us.”

Instruction Manual

5. Reset

If the time machine has brought more harm than benefit, please go back to as early as October 14th, 2020, the day the time machine was first assembled, and stop this from happening.

Everything that is supposed to happen will all happen.

X’s smell still lingers after she left. After seeing this high school version X again in this laid-back, fearless time of our life, my brain is steaming, too excited to even function properly. But quickly my thoughts go back to those recent years, when X and I no longer looked into each other’s eyes and spoke the truth, when we couldn’t even end one conversation without getting pissed. An overwhelming sense of desolation crushed onto me. A huge lump begins building up behind my throat and my whole body starts to tremble. I try to smother a cry and fail like a pathetic loser; feeling ashamed of myself, I cover my eyes with my palms, which soon become wet with warm tears.

The whole world spins in a lopsided circle.

I inhale a huge amount of air to calm myself down, and enter X’s room, which is tidy and cozy. A corner of her diary appears under her pillowcase. A little cactus is placed on her windowsill idly bathing the morning sun.

I wipe my eyes dry and pack up a sniper rifle, ready to destroy this time machine, in other words, to stop it from being created. I can’t let X go back and make me a different person, an empty shell void of all the memories of her.

I climb up to the top of an abandoned old building, position myself so that I can see Doctor P through the lens and his panorama window. Without Doctor P’s genius brain, maybe there won’t be any time machine for several decades, and X will be with me, my partner and shackles.

The second that I pull the trigger, all I can do is thinking about how much the X from 2024 will hate me for ruining her only chance of starting over. She will hate me to death that I’m so self-centered to decide her fate for her.

She will kill me.

Instead, in 2020, a bombing incident happened because of us, and X is on the verge of collapsing. She has screamed until her voice becomes hoarse that she hates herself for killing so many people. She has woken up in the middle of the night crying, saying that she doesn’t want to do this anymore. She has slit her wrists. She has attempted to leave.

I wish this were just another dream.

2014

Dear diary,

Today is my fourteenth birthday. The kids in our orphanage sang a birthday song to me, and we shared a huge chocolate cake together. At about 8PM, while I was sketching the outline of a building in the distance, a black car arrived at the gate, and a man about thirty years old in granite-colored suit, faintly handsome and with short golden hair, came out and walked towards me. He neither smiled nor looked intimidating, but simply asked, “Can you come with us?”

I didn’t know what I was thinking, but I was curious about the uncertainty of what would be ahead of me, so I nodded and followed him to the black car. It turned out that the man was just a driver, and in the back sat another man, who was much older and had an heavy, somber air. He sat under the shadow and spoke, “I’m Mr. M, the head of a secret division. What we are going to show you soon, will be a new path of life, a new way to sacrifice for this society.”

I waited for him to continue.

“You will be involved in intensive training. There will be times when you want to quit, when your body can’t handle anything anymore, when you’d rather die,” he said. His eye sockets were shaded so heavily that I couldn’t tell whether he was looking at me. “But after the training you will be able to do almost anything.”

“Why me?” I asked.

“Because you seem to be needing a purpose, and I see potential in you. I’m sure you don’t want to just be an orphan without hope, without possibility, without future.”

Mr. M’s words stung, but I had to admit that he couldn’t be any more right.

After half an hour, the car entered a dark space and stopped. Rays of green light scan our faces to confirm our identities, and we descended into the deep underground of uncertainty and mystery.

Later on, Mr. M took me personally to the training area. There were girls and boys aged from five to eighteen learning close combat skills, archery, knife skills, etc. All of them were sweating like hell, but they were all full of energy and determination. I was fascinated.

I asked Mr. M, “Will I be like them?”

“Yes, as long as you sign the contract and take on this path.”

I was then led to the cafeteria, classrooms, computer labs, hospital, and science labs. Everything was hygienic. Cold. Silent. I asked, “Mr. M, what are we going to do exactly, after we finish our training?” I asked, raising my head to look up to him.

“Mostly your targets are people who have escaped from the punishment of their sins. And you will kill them, one by one, for the rest of your life.”

I froze. I didn’t know what I was supposed to feel about this, as a fourteen years old girl. I didn’t know why all those young boys and girls in the training area agreed to do this. I didn’t know what to choose; to sacrifice my dream of becoming a painter, my life, to sin in order to promote this society, or to give up probably the last and only chance of running away from my hopeless—is it really hopeless?—life.

Mr. M took me to an empty dorm. H passed me a contract, “You sign here, and we are honored to have you. Take your time and think about it.”

He closed the door, leaving me I holding the pen in my hand, breathless. Suddenly I realized that I really didn’t have any other choice, and I had to recognize my interest in pursuing this adventurous life. Plus, being a painter? How would I even survive in this world?

My heart pounded as I signed my name. I sprinted towards Mr. M, who was just entering the elevator, and handed the contract back to him, “I’m in.”

Mr. M didn’t smile, but I saw his eyes brighten just enough to show me he was pleased. He said, “let me introduce you to someone, and you can ask all questions.” He took me to the training area again, and we walked towards a young boy, who was about the same age as me. “Good evening, sir,” he said, wiping the sweat on his brow. And he turned to look at me with that pair of pure azure eyes.

“D. I’ve seen you fight, act under extreme conditions, and do a whole lot of amazing things, and I can feel your determination of doing this for the rest of your life. You are one of the best members I’ve ever had, and I want to introduce you this new member I see potential in. You’ll have to train her, communicate with her, because she will be your partner.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good luck.”

So I was left alone with this… D. We stared at each other. I watched beads of sweat rolling down from his eyebrows and perching on his eyelids. They dropped as he blinked. He was quite good-looking. He would be my partner.

D named me X.

“X sounds very cool, you know, because it sounds like ‘ex’,” he said, “I don’t know, maybe it sort of commemorates your life before this.”

Then he said, “Happy birthday, X. New year, new life. Cheers.”

He seemed like a very good partner.