Time Pieces (working title)

My name is Freddy Zalta. I am 51, well, almost 51 years old. I am writing this as a testimony should anything happen to me or the world as we should have known it. Or as we should not have known it.

Officially I work as a watch salesman – selling the means for telling time. We sell watches in all colors and styles – for kids and for adults alike.

Unofficially I work at a company called, “Timekeepers.”  The only thing that it has in common with my official job is the ability to adjust the time on the dial, Timekeepers, is a company that is employed by the U.S. government to maintain and to improve history and control the future.

I am a time traveler. Although I am only able to travel back in time within the time period of my lifetime. Since I was born in 1966, I cannot go back in time before that time and since I am only alive at this point in 2017, I cannot travel beyond. There are a ton of restrictions about traveling – most important, for obvious reasons, is no sexual relations.

Why am I revealing this to you all? Because as of last week, time travel is no longer possible. I was the last traveler to return to my actual time. But it wasn’t an easy task. Since there is no proof of my time travels – the agency has since been erased from all tangible proofs – my stories can be read as fictional. Although I can show you scars and rewards – there is no way to prove to anyone that I have indeed, traveled back in time.

Recently, or technically, 24 years ago, there was a plane crash which took the life of a deranged man who, if he had survived, would have caused millions of innocent deaths. Due to some tampering with the past, a he deboarded the plane right before takeoff. My job was to ensure he stayed on the plane and died along with the rest of the passengers. In the process, there was a moment of weakness which caused havoc on the time continuum. This is the story.

 

I walked into my house feeling exhausted. I was happy no one was home, I didn’t want to explain why I was home so soon, I was ready to feign a headache just in case. When I came home earlier than usual my excuse was I was working remotely.

Technically I had only worked for 15 minutes but in my own distorted reality it had been over two months. This time it had been two months during the hardest part of my life, repeated once again. This time, I almost couldn’t return home.

I had just returned from January 1994; it was a difficult time for me since I had just separated from my then wife and the mother of my two sons. I felt a constant pain in my stomach which was the result of the separation from the boys; the girl I got over easily; the kids never. I would smile from time to time but then I would be reminded that after my workday I would be going to an empty space I called home.

This wasn’t my first trip back in time, it was my twentieth one. I had been working for this company for over a year at this point, in the actual year of 2016, when this assignment was given to me.

The name of the “company” I worked for is called, “Timekeepers.” We are the “good guys” in the industry, which, as in any industry, contains the good and the bad. There are companies who aim to disrupt the time continuum but are very careful in what they set out to disrupt. Any disruption can cause a chain of events that can cause the world to cease to exist.

So far, no crazy terrorist organizations have been able to obtain this capability; but just in case; we also have people on standby to take care of that, should it occur. Remember, we can go back in time.

The technique of time traveling is simple if you possess the “Gift” to be able to do so.  The process of doing so is meditative and truthfully makes no sense. But once you understand the process, it seems simple enough for a child. There are no machines, exploding flashbulbs or Deloreans involved. It’s a matter of closing your eyes and allowing yourself to transport your “current self” to your “past self” to the time of your choice. Although it sounds simple and far fetched; it’s not as simple as it sounds and I can tell you it’s possible. But; for some reason it is only possible for a handful of us in existence. Or at least for the handful who have been made privy and given the chance to try.

I do not understand why I am given this “gift”, the whole idea scientifically or intelligibly makes no sense – but, I am able to achieve this and I know several others who do so as well. Once we do return to our actual time, the memories of our trip become like those of a dream. You remember it clearly initially upon awaking but as the seconds pass the memories begin to fade. This is why we are to write reports as soon as we return.

Another plus is, no matter how long we spend back in time – when we return we are the same age as when we left. The negative is – we can die and that can alter the continuum considerably, catastrophically. But then…someone can go back and attempt to save the mission from being a disaster. So far, I have been spared that destiny.

The first step to time traveling is spending several hours immersing myself in the time period I am aiming for. I am placed in room decorated and set up exactly (or as close as possible) to where I slept in the time period. In 1993 for example, I slept in a bare room with just a bed and a plastic table for my alarm clock and a picture of my sons. The blanket was dark blue and the sheets were cream colored. I had two big pillows and one ½ window which gave a grounds view of the street. I would be listening to recorded radio broadcasts from that date I am stepping back to. I then close my eyes and imagine myself feeling the feelings that I had felt at that time period. Sometimes remembering what I was actually feeling at the time can be a little bit tricky; but since this was such a traumatic time period for me; moving out of my home –  away from my kids had left a scar with me that will never go away. So it was easy, though painful, to put myself back in that position once again.

Remember, I cannot keep the fact that they are now grown up and I am now remarried in my back pocket. I need to totally wipe that out of my mind and that is not a simple task.

 

On June 4th of 2017 I went back to November 29, 1993. My assignment and the reason I was being sent to that time period to make sure that a man, I will call him John, would get on a plane from Minneapolis to Hibbing, Minnesota on December 1.  

John was a Russian scientist who never got the memo that the cold war had ended and communism had failed. He had been brainwashed at an early age to live and die for the USSR, so when it was disbanded officially on Christmas of 1991, he was left alone. Alone that is, with a hate filled ideology and the ability to back up that hatred with invisible weapons of mass destruction, specifically, Sarin.

I closed my eyes and then I opened them. I was back in 1993, in my bed in my apartment on avenue x and east 14th st. The smell was familiar; cleaning products and moldy aromas combined. The walls were bare and there were no windows. I stood up, felt dizzy, sat back down again. I tried to remember my task at hand – December 1 John would be taking a flight from Laguardia to Minneapolis and then be connecting on to Hibbing. The flight from Minneapolis would crash while descending into Hibbing killing all on board. According to historical records, he was on the flight. Somehow that all changed; for some reason he would be getting off that flight. He then would drive the 3 and a half hour trip and meet up with his comrade in arms. What happened after that was catastrophic.

John was carrying 500 thousand dollars in cash in a satchel in order to transport it to a comrade in Cloquet, Minnesota. Apparently the “comrade” was a Native American, call him, “N.A.” with a major chip on his shoulder against the country. He considered the 500 hundred thousand dollars as a partial reparation for the way his descendants were treated. John would be bringing the payment to “Native American” and in return, “N.A.” would be providing the distribution of the Sarin throughout the country’s biggest cities. In reality this never happened; but as of June 3rd, 2017 there was a notification in our reporting system which showed that history had changed