Apologies are Hard to Come By

His third and, so he swears, his final working time machine is a lot more dangerous than the first two. It doesn't just move along the central Time Stream for one thing. It's about the size of a watch for another. A lot easier to steal. A lot harder to fix. An incredibly lot more dangerous to operate. But no one else is to know about it, it has no written blueprints – he hadn't dared risk it even if it did make the whole process take longer – and he'll destroy the thing as soon as Wilbur is safely back from dropping off Lewis in the past four days from now.

Because, as dangerous as his mission is with the TAR-15 it's hopeless without it. He'd promised never to invent DORIS and in this timeline he hadn't. And he can't simply invent her now and drop her off in the past because there is no guarantee she will hold a grudge against him or even be similar enough to the DORIS to enact the same strategy.

He'll have to venture into the pocket universes, the oxbows cut off from the time stream by changes to the flow upstream; the past. After that his mission is simple: steal DORIS, bring her back to the central current, turn her back on, and lock her back up in the vaults. Mikey's forsaken older self would have to come to, just to ensure as little as possible changes in the retooling of the events thirty years in the past and three days in the future.

Cornelius laughs with pleasure. No one in this time stream would ever imagine the famous baseball player and chargeball coach Michael G Allson as the grim shadow he alone remembers. Goob had really made a wonderful life for himself and Lius can't regret his decision to change his roommate's future, even if it does make everything devilishly more tricky for him in the here and now. Besides, he, Lewis, still owes the man, that Goob, an apology; an apology and a second chance that with all luck he will be able to deliver when this is over.

That night at dinner, a round three months since he'd initiated his most recent plans for the past, he announces his faux plans for a business trip. He doesn't remember how long he's supposed to be gone so he gives it three days, a long weekend. If he comes back early he'll just hide until the right moment for him to appear.

"It'll be easy", he tells himself over and over again, "plug and chug, just like quantum physics."

The rest of the time he desperately hopes he's not fooling himself into signing away his future and his son on a theory so crazy that he knows even with his daring he'd never present it to the board of critics.

The next morning he strolls out the front door, waves goodbye to his family, and pauses. If everything goes well he'll be seeing them all in just three measly days; seventy-two hours; 259 000 seconds. But if not, he may never see one of them again.

"Wilbur! Wait!"

The teenager turns and for a moment Cornelius sees his best friend again before time and attitude wisk the memory away.

"What. Dad?" His tone is resentful and irritated. Cornelius wonders what happened to turn his little boy into this. He wonders if things will be different between them next week, after the adventure.

"Just wanted to give you this."

Wrapping his arms around his only son, his best friend, and the one person whom he may well love more deeply than anyone in the whole of space-time he holds back his apologies and profusions. Explanations will have to wait until they make sense. But it scares him that of all the lives on the line the one most at risk is his first friend and baby boy. That one person should be both seems cruel now that he must risk everything to ensure nothing changes; to solidify the future with the .000001% probability.

"All right. Enough already." Wilbur is stiff in his arms.

He lets go reluctantly. "All right Kiddo. Stay safe. Use your head. Remember-"

Wilbur raises his head at the catch in his father's throat.

Cornelius pauses. The words don't make sense and he'd already decided not to say them but the apology and explanation roll out anyways.

"I did it all for you."

And then his hand finds the dial and he's off with only a slight buzz of static like that of changing a radio station and a smear of color to indicate that he's going.

Behind him, Wilbur watches the head of Robinsons Inc disappear in a rainbow shroud of light and wonders when, if ever, he'll get his Daddy back.

Please tell me if anything doesn't make sense. Character development I can fix. Time travel theory might be a bit harder but share anyway. Thank you!