The tale of Ricky

 It was the year 2178 when the detection, final definition and ability to produce dark energy and matter made the creation of a certain kind of exotic matter possible, so the creation of wormholes was possible too. This enabled space travel outside of your traditional run-of-the-mill space craft, and enabled the terraforming of Mars without costly, heavy equipment being sent there on risky space missions inasmuch as Earth was able to transport said equipment through said holes. Mind you, and as Richard Feynman postulated a while ago, Earthlings were not able to readapt to the cruel of Earth's gravity once they lived on Mars since, well, their bodies accustomed and in the case of born-Martians, grew to the frailty of Mars' gravity. Bone would rupture and organs would squish if going back to the primordial planet. So going to Mars, or being born there, was a stay-on-Mars status quo. It was like that for a while until Daemon Lintor stabilised the man-made exotic matter to the point of allowing time travel. It was not stable enough to make long ''distance'' time travel, especially if you meant to also travel in space since it was one or the other. The further one could go was months less than twelve, so the Astronomic Agency set a limit of one month as the permitted amount of time someone could go back. To avoid irrefutable, devastating time paradoxes, time travel was highly regulated as to conditions assuring and reassuring their impossibility had to be closely set and monitored. Not that it was cheap to travel like that either. So, if a certain position, whether clerical, political or entertainment-related, required a physical back and forth between Earth and Mars, time travelers would need to indulge in time travel showers, a day or week's per shower, to skip the adaptation to Mars' environment and make bodies as close as possible to how they were when they crossed over. This would permit bodies stay Earth-like while visiting the red planet. Short-term memories were at times affected, but long-term seldom were, thus travelers recorded why they had made the trip. As you might have guessed, Martians were not able to go back to the blue planet to do whatever because they would still rupture and squish, so this was just done by ''blues'', who also needed very expensive suits which granted Martian navigation. Time travel was dangerous as well since each shower subtracted around two years of life cause tissue degraded due to exotic radiation.

Alfred Lintor, born 2323, discovered a method that stabilised exoticism of matter, hence one could go back a couple of years. When Alfred was on Earth, he was offered the position of Chief Astrophysicist Consultant in the Perseverance Martian University, which he accepted right away with a simple ''Yes'' and a wry, sincere smile. He told no one before deciding, thinking it would mean a better future. Earth traditions would not interfere with his research of matter, so he could go as astray as he wanted, being regulated but never watched over the shoulder. Alfred lay in bed that night wishing he had been offered the position even earlier in this life (he was 33) so his experiments reached their goals sooner. He thought of the endless possibilities of working at the University before he fell asleep. The following morning, the smell of synthetic bacon woke him up. Natural bacon would not have done so, but synthetic one was, well, so false that its creators would try quite hard to convey the sensation of eating the real deal through aroma. You could never blame food makers for trying. There was naturally still actual bacon on Earth, but it was so pricey a professor was not able to afford it. When Alfred reached the kitchen that morning, he saw Teal, his four-month girlfriend, cooking breakfast. They had agreed to meet at his place that day to go out for a meal, but he had forgotten. When she saw none of her messages replied, she simply used her key to come in and prepare something. After going to the kitchen, he approached her, pulled her close from behind, covered her mouth and grabbed her by the neck as she liked it, rubbed himself against her while she moaned, turned her around and furiously kissed her. They made love and fucked until very well past noon. It was then, while Alfred hugged Teal from behind, covered by a simple cotton bed sheet, that he decided to tell her. Because of the position he was in while he told her, he did not watch her open her eyes so widely that they hurt. He was so excited about the news that he could not hear the grinding of her teeth while he said he had accepted the post and that they would leave in two months' time. When he asked what she thought, she immediately stood up and started pacing around the bed. She was wearing nothing but one of the black cotton thongs that he loved and that he had bought for her three months before, so he admired her for some time, looking at her buttocks and hips, before he asked what the problem was. She made grating, wordless sounds for a minute before she began shouting. —What the fuck is your problem, Alfred? You say you love me, yet you make decisions, a life-altering decision like this one, without even mentioning it to me first?! How am I supposed to believe you, asshole? She started throwing things on his chest of drawers at him. The first two hurt a little, but the following ones started to really sting in his arms while he tried to cover himself using as much as possible. —I mean, I can't go there, and especially on such a short notice. Two fucking months?! Are you serious?! It is not a year would suffice either. I don't want to go to fucking Mars, you jerk! Teal started to dress herself. When Alfred began to get up, she told to lie down. —Don't you move, prick, and don't you follow me, asshole. She went to the den, grabbed her bag from where she had thrown it earlier, and made for the door and slammed it as hard as she could. He waited around half an hour before he called on his wrist phone. He heard the Yorkie ringtone she had switched to the first morning they spent together after having been together all night long coming from the kitchen: she had left her wrist phone there since she had decided to play some music while cooking. Alfred felt hopeless at first, but hopeful later because she would not risk missing any updates about the job she had just applied.

Days passed, then a couple of weeks, and Alfred felt there was something really wrong. He started calling their friends in common to inquire whether Teal was alright. Everybody mentioned they had no clue, that they had not seen her since Lucrecia's birthday party a month before. At first he thought that they were simply covering for her, Teal telling everyone what an idiot he had been about the whole Mars affair. After all, they were rather her friends than his. But then, when hearing what sounded like actual concern in their voices, he decided to begin looking for her. It was not easy cause her family, the whole lot, had left for Mars the year before. She had never explained to him why she did not leave with them. —It is not me, she always exclaimed every time he pressed her on the matter. In the meantime, Alfred was to also plan his relocation, packing things, selling others, looking at his and her wrist phone every now and then to no avail. When the Dean of the  Perseverance Martian University called in to ask whether he was ready, he started sobbing having realised there was no time to continue looking. He excused himself by saying he was having some type of Earth blues, which was not unheard of from people moving off-planet, and said he was.

It was 2357 when he discovered the aforementioned method and devised what he called Flux Capacitor in honor of his late great-grandfather who had shown him a very old, 20th-century film about a boy who travels back in time. The device was not bigger than your regular twenty-two cubic feet fridge, so he could fit it in his pick-up. He left two of the three he had made at the University, one to be used there, another for spare parts. Alfred began experimenting, going further back every trip, until he reached a year. He recorded a message telling himself why he was doing it to avoid starting with a blank slate as to the further he went, the fuzzier his memory got. When he was able to go back a year three consecutive times, he decided to cross the wormhole back to Earth. Due to the high radiation around space travel cabins, facilities with them had nothing but travelers in. The entrance to the road to the facilities was heavily guarded, but his being a highly regarded scientist made it possible for him to come up with a valid excuse: taking new, experimental equipment to the wormhole so it could be tested and even sent to Earth for inspection. Dumbly enough, he was the sole one who needed to sign the papers because of various administrative loopholes. So Alfred took the one he had purposefully made easier to assemble, as one would a lawn travel chair, and that he would take with himself every time he time traveled, and went to the wormhole facilities. He waited until Earth's night to go back. Leaving the building on Earth was easy since as explained before, there was no one there. When he reached the gates at the end of the road to finally leave the facilities, he explained to the military personnel that his travel had gone awry and had stayed the afternoon to revise the equipment before someone went over the following day. He explained the box with the portable Flux Capacitor as some parts he had detected were faulty, so the technician for the day after would come with working ones already. Again, due to his position, there was no doubt he was not lying, so he was able to leave after a cleansing treatment to wash off any possible radioactive residue. After leaving the gates, he went to his abandoned apartment, which was completely empty. When he arrived, he assembled the Capacitor in the bathroom, and traveled two months into the past. He had it in the bathroom since the morning he told Teal about Mars, he had first stopped there for a quick face wash. When he opened his eyes, he did not recollect why he was in front of the mirror. A deep boom along with a vibration came from his wrist phone, and a video started playing. It told him he was back on Earth to look for her. He finally grasped that he was not the Alfred from that time but the one who had lived without her for a year or so, ran to the kitchen, and saw her standing there, stirring whatever was in the electrowok.

He hesitated about what to do. He thought of running to her, getting to his knees and asking for forgiveness. He thought of acting nonchalantly and casually dropping the news while hiding he had accepted. He thought about acting natural and having breakfast as if the most awful year of his life had not happened. —Everything alright, love? She had never called him that, ever, so his legs trembled. He walked towards her with an empty mind. When he felt she was about to turn around, he finally approached her, pulled her close from behind, covered her mouth and grabbed her by the neck as she liked it, rubbed himself against her while she moaned, turned her around and furiously kissed her. They made love and fucked until very well past noon. It was then, while Alfred hugged Teal from behind, covered by a simple cotton bed sheet, that Alfred thought clearly again of where he was and why. He hesitated. He hesitated bad. He attempted to say he missed her, that he would never forget that morning, that she was the love of his life, but he plainly muttered he had been offered the position of Chief Astrophysicist Consultant in the Perseverance Martian University and that he had accepted right away.

When Alfred came back to his apartment on Mars early in 2356, he started crying. He could not determine why he had lived that loop. Why he let everything unravel the way it had. Why he was the coward who had not dared say it had been a year without her. Why he was not brave enough to leave everything as was and stay a life with Teal. He lay in his bed and kept crying until he fell asleep. A year passed. One morning, he grabbed the portable Flux Capacitor, which had a blank copy of the forms to enter the wormhole facilities in its box, and left. In the forthcoming weeks he traveled one, two, three, four, five, several times back to 2356, went back to Earth, and did almost the exact same thing: he went to his empty, abandoned apartment, assembled the portable Flux Capacitor in the bathroom, traveled two months into the past, felt a deep boom along with a vibration coming from his wrist watch, saw the video playing in it, ran to the kitchen where Teal was standing, ran to her without hesitation, stopped to listen to her say, Everything alright, love?, to finally approach her, pull her close from behind, cover her mouth and grab her by the neck as she liked it, rub himself against her while she moaned, turn her around and furiously kiss her. Every time did they make love and fuck until very well past noon. Eventually Alfred stopped going back to 2357, traveling back to Earth as soon as possible. Eventually Alfred stopped watching the whole video. Eventually Alfred stopped listening to her say something since he did not recall what she was going to say. Eventually he stopped grabbing her by the neck, but every time he covered her mouth, rubbed himself against her while she moaned, turned her around and furiously kissed her until they ended up making love and fucking until very well past noon. One, two, three, four, several, many times this happened. But then, then, while Alfred hugged Teal from behind, covered by a simple cotton bed sheet, she eventually got up and started dressing. He asked her what the fuck was wrong, using a tone of voice he had never used with her, the same ire one he used when people did not do what he wanted them to do. Teal simply turned around, slowly, as if time would eventually stop. —I don't feel like it is Alfred who just made love to me. She went to the den, grabbed her bag from where she had thrown it earlier, and made for the door and closed it as softly as she could. Alfred thought about getting up when he felt pain in his chest. When he tried to move his arm, he noticed he had no strength and felt a sharp pain as if it were broken. He began trembling, and knew right then why he was unable to do something different after fucking. With his last breath he uttered, A paradox...