The God Complex

Memories are like old Polaroid photographs. No matter how old or worn they may be, snippets of what has been, what could have been and what will never be, can still be glimpsed from its fading chroma.

*** 

In a not-too-distant future, where the past and the present have inadvertently unified to a phasis of cosmological confusion, a man who has toiled for years in pain and sweat is once again about to glean the fruit of his plodding. His name is Brian Baxter and he is a man consumed by two of the most basic and weak elements of human nature. The first is arrogance; "the inability to accept and admit to one's error because of one's self assumed superiority", the second is regret; "the inability to let go of his past and live on". He is now guided solely by his instincts, knowledge and the fading memories of a past he can no longer acknowledge.

*

The Present: The year is now 2219 AD

Eureka!

Finally, his work was complete.

As Baxter sits in his office, lost in retrospection, the slimy tentacles of sadness slowly creep into his weary and desolate heart. The most distressing aspects of his retrospection is not the pain his memories dispense, but the melancholic feeling of loneliness and wretchedness that gleefully accompany them. His gaze wanders to the framed photograph of his daughter and a deep yearning envelops him as the memories of the good times they never shared, leave him feeling dissatisfied and unaccomplished.

He remembers the unfulfilled promise he'd made to his daughter during her mother's funeral and he clenches his fist in shameful anger. On that day, he'd hugged her tightly under the heavy downpour, and promised to always be there for her no matter what. He'd intended to uphold that promise, but he'd been too consumed with regret and guilt that he'd buried himself in his work. But now that he is finished, he realizes that his unfulfilled promise may have left an indelible scar in his daughter's heart.

Soon dear! Soon we would be a family again, he whispered.

He glances at the photograph of his wife who died several years ago in an auto crash and his heart breaks for the umpteenth time. He draws her photograph closer and begins to caress her delicate features as he remembered how they had met. They'd met at the Schonberg institute of innovative science, where he'd been pursuing his higher advanced degree in quantum physics, while she'd taken a summer job in the institute's bibliotheca. It had been...

*

The time was now upon him!

The sudden droning sound jolts him back to his present and he stands up and takes a cursorily glance at the laboratory he'd practically lived in since his wife's death before slowly proceeding towards the whirling blackness the gaping portal offered. An overpowering feeling of déjà vu befalls him as the all too familiar sense of repetition hangs heavily in the air. Something about his present action threatens to elicit memories long disregarded, but before he can contemplate what he feels, the droning resonates in urgency, so he gives no further thought to it. He calmly struts into the blackness towards his supposed redemption.

*

The Past: The year was 2204 AD

The persistent noise in his head was the curse for his ingenuity!

The brilliant and narcissistic physicist, Brian Baxter was haunted by severe migraines. He claimed that they were caused by loud and frantic chatter of the voices in his head. He also claimed that although the voices were a terrible menace, they were also the source of his many ingenious ideas and contributions to science.

Most of his colleagues were of the opinion that he was schizophrenic and thus unstable, but he considered them as envious of his mental and academic superiority. He further claimed that if there had ever been a line between ingenuity and insanity, he most definitely had erased it.

In his arrogance, he'd unequivocally proclaimed himself a god amongst men!

Baxter had always been obsessed with the idea of time travel and the many opportunities it offered. Most in his circle thought it impossible because of the argument the "Grandfather's paradox" posed, but he thought differently. He was of the opinion that we existed in a universe of probabilities; therefore all events are not inevitable consequences of antecedent sufficient causes. He believed our future was not determined by our past or present and therefore not stamped and sealed. So he surmised that the future could be glimpsed and subsequently probably altered. Traveling back in time was another matter which he conceded was a much harder feat to achieve, but not entirely impossible.

And this became his research focus, taking up more than eight years of his life. Finally his hard work paid off and he created an archetypal time travel machine. Over the course of his testing, he successfully traveled to the future where he excitedly glimpsed a little portion of things to come. First, he started by traveling a few hours ahead of his present, then he proceeded to days, months and finally years. It was during one of his numerous tests, that he'd glimpsed a personal tragedy that was to befall him five years from his immediate time.

In that future, he'd glimpsed the death of his wife and the horror it had brought upon himself and his daughter. So to avoid such a tragedy, he decided to directly influence the circumstance that led to her demise. He began to believe that building the time machine and using it to save his beloved was the only purpose of his existence.

*

The Past: The year was 2209 AD

The past is sometimes not where you think you left it.

Baxter opened his eyes to bright afternoon sunlight and discovered that he was seated in the park across from the place where his wife would die. Ten years back in time, he saw that everything had remained exactly the same way he'd left it. Although his memory chose not to serve him, this particular day also remained the same way it had been when he'd seen it as the future in his past.

Suddenly, he looked up and saw her walking elegantly to her car. He quickly got up to stop her from driving it. He was almost upon her when she saw him and a surprised smile escaped her.

She was still smiling when a large truck slammed into her at full speed.

By the time he got to her, she was a heap of broken bones and ligaments. He went down on his knees and cradled her bloodied head in sorrow. He wished the ground would open up and swallow him, for despite his efforts, he still hadn't saved her. But after about a minute he collapsed in a faint as his mind was suddenly assaulted by alien memories, made timeless by his past meandering.

As he lay beside his wife's mangled body, Baxter understood what his errors were. But would his memories choose to serve him when the time came?

As he lay on the floor, the flitting memories of his numerous failed attempts at saving his wife assaulted his senses and the echoes of his silent screams resonated in his tortured soul. What his consciousness had failed to register was that he was now trapped in a time warp, for he was now forever lost in between parallel universes because of his futile and feeble attempt at playing god.

He will never know that it was his first attempt at trying to alter the future that caused a logic ripple which destabilized the delicate balance of the multivers. This disruption had, in turn, led to the malfunctioning of his time machine, starting an inferno that razed down his laboratory; an inferno everyone presumed he'd perished in. So with his time machine destroyed, he was trapped in his future, nonexistent in his past and his life force almost removed from the universe. He was little more than an echo in space-time. An instability deemed to be dangerous by the powers that be. In order to manage the anomaly he'd created, a fail-safe was activated to infinitely loop him through times and parallel universes. This was the only way his error could be managed without dragging the universe into a paradoxical vortex. He was cursed to live this fate over and over again in different ways.

This was the price to pay for attempting to bend that which was not meant to be bent.

What Baxter had not understood fifteen years ago, was that what he'd glimpsed in that future was the effect of his own narcissism, arrogance and obsession for his work. By trying to directly alter what he'd glimpsed, instead of heeding the warning, he'd irrevocably sealed that future and damned his past. For a man so manically brilliant, he'd myopically never considered that even though we may live in a world of probabilities, there were still constant variables supervised by mysterious and arcane forces we can never begin to understand.

For the past can never be relived, but only learnt from, likewise the future can never be directly altered, only carefully guided.

*

The Past: The year is still 2209 AD

The rain was falling so heavily that it seemed as though the celestial bodies were also in mourning. In a section of the cemetery, Baxter and his daughter were huddled together in the rain, silently mourning. They were drenched but they cared not because the best part of their lives was about to be buried. Soon, his daughter lost control and began to wail loudly, so he lifted her off her feet and tried to console her.

After a time, he stole a look at his daughter's sorrow-ravaged demeanor, and a heavy feeling of guilt tore at the core of his soul. So under the mourning skies and nature's protests, he hugged her tight and promised that he would always be there for her no matter what.

But first I have a machine to build, a wrong to right and a wife to save, he said to himself.

And thus began the cycle.

His memories have yet again betrayed him!

***