"We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us." -Lucy Maud Montgomery
Who…
For so long it's just been the two of us. I know the others are back at Tic Toc, but their distance from us, across time and space, makes them almost surreal figures of our imagination, characters in a fairy tale we perhaps believed in as children, but no longer.
What…
It's hard to keep track of everything we've done up to this point. If I had to write a book on my experience traveling through time, I'm not sure I'd remember the big things; that is, our unsuccessful attempts to change history as we know it. No, I think it would be the details that would spring to mind first; the beauty of a meadow in Germany or the unnerving silence of London at three o'clock in the morning.
Where…
We're never in the same place, and we haven't been anywhere twice. It's a little scary, though I wouldn't for the world admit it. All I want is one stable thing, something that will never go, never change.
But nothing in the world is like that.
When…
We never know when we first land, and can't until finding a newspaper or asking someone the date. It makes me wonder: what day, what month, what year are the Tic Toc personnel writing at the tops of their reports? Is it still 1968? Are they still in the twentieth century? Are they even still alive?
Why…
I don't blame Tony for our current predicament. How could I? What kind of cruel, heartless friend would that make me? I know why he did it. I know and accept. Nor do I blame Senator Clark; after all, there is no point in shooting the messenger.
I suppose the object of my wrath, then, should be the government. But, deep down, I know Project Tic Toc wasn't their fault, and that they weren't aware of what they were planning to cut off. Only a person who was there every day could know the glory and triumph of some days, the horrible mistakes of others, and the mediocrity that fell in between. Only a firsthand witness could have told what went on, and how close we really were to sending a man through time and returning him.
So in the end, I don't know who to blame.