It wasn't like he really thought about his life now. It was just something he did. He taught basic physics at the community college for a paycheck and the free time it afforded him. If he'd chosen a real university they would have demanded research time from him, leaving little or no time for his own research pursuits. Jeannie thought he was crazy but she'd visited once or twice a year to help out. Well, at least the first ten years or so. After that, he began to see less and less of her.
She didn't understand, none of them did. He could still recall her words the last time they'd seen each other, more of a fight really.
"You have to give this up, Mer," Jeannie said.
Staring at the whiteboard, he erased another section of equations, only to start over. Pointing at the board, he ignored her and asked, "What about this? The coefficient looks off."
She stormed to the board and yanked the marker from his hand, throwing it across the room in anger. "Would you stop! Look at you, Mer." She swung her arms out in a wide arc around the room. "You live like a hermit. You go to work, you come home and spend every waking moment on this." Stomping to his work table, she snagged at the day old pizza box. "You eat terrible and when was the last time you went out with friends?"
Rodney snorted, uncapped a spare marker and returned his attention back to the board. "I don't have any friends."
Jeannie stepped closer, got right in face. She was livid. "Because you never make the effort. You teach, you come home. Is that what you want out of life? Someday you'll wake up and find you are all alone."
He lost it then, the rage inside him burst out. His face was red as he yelled back, "You're the one that doesn't get it. I lost all my friends. Every damn one of them. I'm already alone." He waved at the board, still shouting, "This. This is all I have left. It's my one chance to get them back."
Shaking her head, Jeannie slumped into the ratty couch he'd crashed on more than one night. "You can't bring them back, Mer. They're dead."
With a deep breath, he returned to his equations. "I won't leave them behind when it is in my power to change what happened." He nodded towards the board. "If I can figure this out then they can have their lives back and it doesn't have to end."
Jeannie sadly shook her head, defeated. "And what about your life, Mer? How long are you willing to put your own life on hold?"
She didn't get it. He answered solemnly. "My life ended when I lost them all. Not just one or two of my friends, Jeannie, but every single one of them."
"You won't get them back. Even if this works and you figure it out, you won't get your friends back. You'll die a miserable old man, right here-- on Earth and you'll never know if what you are doing even made a difference. Why can't you drop this?"
Staring at the board, Rodney couldn't see, his eyes blurred by unshed tears. "Because another me in that timeline won't have to go through what I did. They won't have to watch as everyone they ever cared about died, for a cause that no one else believed in. They made everything we did, everything we fought for, meaningless. Somebody has to make it mean something." He rubbed at his eyes, before returning to his work, absently erasing and redoing his work.
He never heard her leave. She called only occasionally after that. It was the last time he saw her.
She was right in some ways. He'd given up his life for his work, to save someone he would never meet. He would die alone, with little to show for his passing. Everything he ever accomplished still locked away in classified files. But she was wrong too. He wouldn't die a miserable old man. Oh sure, he'd die, even he couldn't stop the hands of time, but he could make it mean something. He would die knowing he'd done everything in his power to save those that had stood by him and counted him as a friend.