# Advice That You'd Give to Your Younger Self

It couldn't fail. Not again. All the calculations I've made, over and over, all the trial and error - so much error, dear God, they'd gotten me so close, each and every time; closer with each iteration. But that trial is not without its risks. Every single time, I go back, and every time, I suspect, I leave another piece of my mind behind. Oh, it isn't important things. I still remember my goals, the trial, and the outcomes, But random things are gone. What's a turtle? I know the word, and I have memories of knowing what it is - and I'm sure that a net search would bring it right back, but I want to not know. It helps me chronicle all that I've lost.

Because of this, alone, I'm fighting the clock. There's no one left who would oppose this - for all I know, there's no one left, period. I've been in this room for years, calculating, trying, testing different inputs. But every time I go back, I return with less mind. At one point, in a fever, I tried to record everything I knew. I realized very soon that this was fruitless. Would I watch hour upon hour of me reciting just to figure out what I'd lost? Intriguing, but impossible, given the time constraints.

There was another risk, as well. Every time I went back, it was to change things. And they did change. At least 30% of the time, I came back with an eye-patch. Some limbs missing. One time, I came back blind and screamed for three days before I could get myself back and reset things.

What if one of these times I came back to a future where I'd died? I didn't know if that was possible, but the thought did concern me. I must be a survivor, but the odds couldn't keep holding out forever.

I reminded myself that it was all good. I had this. I'd figured out the advice I had to give to my younger self in order to prevent nuclear war.

Let's not kid ourselves. I didn't cause World War Three. Blame someone else. But because of the machine I was strapped into, I could travel back and give a piece of advice to twelve-year-old me, and some trick of DNA guaranteed that he ... er ... I would listen and take the advice. I have memories of over twelve hundred lifetimes. Lives where I ran and hid. Lives where I saved my mother. Lives when I killed her myself. Lives where I overthrew the government. Lives where I ran the government. None of it worked. But over the last three months, instead of guessing and hoping, I've been using the time to test theories, to get more information. I was always, in my first life, a disinterested student, and after the war, history, books, and any interpretation of the past was rewritten by the Cubists, the faction that won the war. Over the past number of my lives, I've traded any number of things for access, for knowledge, for unbiased information. I write it all down, as here, because I fear not being able to remember what I've learned.

Regardless, it is time to go back, to fill my younger self with cryptic clues to what to do, things he cannot comprehend but will carry out, regardless. I would say, "Wish me luck," but luck is irrelevant, and there is no one to wish it.

Another failure. I can't help but feel as if fate is having a joke. I've lost my eye. No worry. It is a common enough occurrence. But I feel as if I've lost something more. I cannot fathom what it is, but it feels essential.

The feeling I mentioned about fate smirking down at me persists, stronger now than before. I don't believe in fate, but if I did, I'd be convinced that this war was meant to be. I'm so disheartened by my most recent failure. Everything seemed to be moving in the right direction - peace talks, detente, even a change in the year of the war by more than a decade. This was supposed to be the one - the culmination of all of y efforts, but like the fish that is grasped too hard, the opportunity has somehow slipped from my grasp.

I do have another card to play, some attempt that I feel could have significant impact, but I believe it has to wait. I have some suspicions that I believe must be tested beforehand.

Test #1 is a success. I had myself give me a tattoo. The truth is, other than the differences in the timeline that I remember, and the occasional loss of sight, I have nothing that informs me that my instructions were actually carried out. So I told me to get a tattoo. I have the memory of it now, the persistent buzz, the slightly annoying jabbing sensation in my arm. I feel like I can go forward with some other experiments as well.

By the criteria I set out in my experiment, this can be considered a success, but by no other measure. Over the last ten lifetimes, I have removed body parts, gotten huge scars, even had an organ removed, just to ensure that I am being thorough. The memories which flood through me on returning from these excursions, not to mention what toll the alterations take on my physically, have me questioning each time, whether it is worth it. But it has all borne out, so I will continue to try. Thank goodness, because I was beginning to lose heart.

Nothing I do matters. A year it's been, or close enough, since I stopped altering my body and started down a different track to prevent the war. I had good ideas, ran experiments, had certainty on three separate occasions that the next iteration through would bear fruit. It is in the aftermath of these "certain" trips when I feel the contempt. I can't say for sure where this contempt comes from, but in these moments, I feel the most like the universe is playing a joke on me. This is the way I feel now. This latest gambit was three months in the making - some seventy trips into the past to play God with my past self. It could not fail! I was more sure than I have ever been. And yet, disaster. I remember it, so clearly, going wrong in such a different catastrophe. God shits on my efforts. The change is too great. I cannot succeed. I know this. I need to stop, but I cannot live on. Yet I cannot bring myself to commit suicide. This would be a problem if I didn't have a younger self who would do everything I commanded. Three weeks I pondered the situation. Three weeks in which I contemplated the repercussions of what I planned. I had lived lives great and small - lives I could be proud of, and lives that would make a normal man blanch at the body count. Nothing I ever did changed a single thing that mattered, so there would be no "It's a Wonderful Life," style regrets for me. Eventually, I reached the conclusion that this was the only solution. I could not carry on with the rest of my life, knowing I have this power, and I could not bring myself to batter myself against this impossible problem. I would not be hurting anyone else - it would be me I was killing off. And in the end, if this final solution would not take, if the suggestions baked into DNA could not extend to suicide, then I had lost nothing but a single trip. I stepped toward the machine, trepidatious, but determined. If all went well, I would not be returning.

Upon returning, I immediately reached into my chest pocket. Memories flooded me, with the truth. Betrayal and a kind of sheepish guilt at the same time. The cognitive dissonance was too much, as I'd predicted it would be. But I hadn't predicted that, unless - too much. The overriding concern, the need that sat in the front of my mind, turning down the volume of hundreds of lives lived, was the directive to read the letter I now held in my hand. I noticed that there was no physical deformity this time. Giving in to my compulsion, I unfolded the letter and scanned it quickly, then sat with it. It was obviously from me, and dated four years in the past. Despite that it wasn't addressed, it was clearly a letter.

"At last," it began, "we have come to the end of our game. "It didn't strike my conscience, all of the things you have believed. One thing you must understand now is that none of it is true. That is not strictly the truth. The first few iterations were as you remember. I did as you asked, and eventually understood your strategy. Borrowing from your strategy, I figured out, at the same time, how to prevent the explosion. But I also saw that, once the war was prevented, you would not come back. "You see, for some reason, as each iteration happened, just as you were able to remember past lives, so was I. I knew your purpose in coming back as well as you did. I, however, had another purpose. Immortality. "As long as you kept returning, I could continue my research, furthering the cause of humanity. I needed a solution. You may find it implausible that I invented a machine to alter memories, to erase existing thoughts and replace them with new ones. But, considering you managed to create a time machine - a feat that I haven't been able to reproduce this side of the thought divide - I firmly believe that you will come to accept it." I stared at this part of the letter, amazed. Thought-erasure. What a concept. And yet... thought divide? I had to read on. "How many years of life I've taken from you I can't give back. And for that, I feel a little guilt. But look back - really focus - on the years we've gained; all the knowledge. I believe, and I think you will come to agree. "I implore you not to close your eyes to the possibilities that your wonderful invention opens up. I have already learned so much, done such good. "I know that you did not come up with whatever the missing piece was for the time machine. That must have been provided to you by another. I know this, because of the first few iterations. I did not erase our memories on those passes, and so everything that you knew, I also knew. I also know that you would not have been able to live with that lack of knowledge. I know that you would have come to understand the technology with it sitting right in front of you. "I have not had that same luxury, so I am stymied on this side of the thought divide. If you were to share it with me - with your youth - think of all the good that might be done all throughout history!" The letter was similarly unsigned. I thought about all I'd learned - about memories, both false and real, about the arrogance of youth. I thought about how used I'd been, and how blind I'd let myself become to the world outside this room. The food replicator created my meals. The toilet took them away. It had never occurred to me, over the years, to run diagnostics on the outside world, to see if my memories could be trusted. It had been a toxic wasteland before, and I'd grown accustomed to the idea of a life in isolation. It is likely that my seclusion for the last half a dozen years had all been to further my past self's ambitions. I won't say I was untempted by the offer. But even as the false memories faded - explosion after explosion, extinction after extinction, I realized that handing time travel to a person who could torture another over and over, convince them of the futility of their own existence, and lead that person to suicide would be a mistake. I made my decision, even as I quieted my inner voice. It said that my experiences would be a moderating factor in the younger version of me. That there was no thought divide, and that young me would have to resolve the same cognitive dissonance that I had. In the end, whether it was because I could not trust myself or because the younger version was truly that different, I could not go back. The letter was correct. I had figured out, with study, how the contributions of Dr. Lehrer worked. She had been a genius, but it didn't take that level of thought to reconstruct another's work, and if pressed to it, I could reproduce the time machine from the bolts out. I could not pass that knowledge on to a younger, more impetuous version of myself, who had not lived with lifetime after lifetime of the consequences of man's inhumanity to man. Not when any danger to him, anything that threatened his - our - life also threatened nuclear annihilation, again. I destroyed the time machine. I left my room and navigated to where I knew the memory machine to be. Sitting in the seat (I had become an expert in the use of this machine thanks to this most recent pass through life), I targeted my knowledge of the making of the time machine. Then I ended my exile and re-entered a world in bloom, full of life and possibility.