For all the Pastime Variables by Kiera Lesley

They have amazing toys and gadgets here. Portals and matter creators and holographic projections. They especially love playing with time: rewinding, changing perspective, throwing variables in to create new iterations of dead scenarios. They have every fancy gizmo and innovation from the start to end of time at their disposal and they don’t mind me playing around. Interfering.
I’ll admit it’s fun. Though, so far, I’ve only used it to dig deep into one day.
I’ve hidden your socks and your toothbrush and your breakfast cereal. I’ve silenced your alarm and sent brunch messages from friends.
But you wake out of routine and flow through the day regardless. You get other socks, you use the spare toothbrush, you have toast and you book those friends for another day.
Not all is lost, there’s other opportunities.
If you had chosen to not go shopping after work. Reheated one of those seven cans of baked beans you unearthed in a recent pantry purge and swore you’d work through. But, none of the well-timed food delivery promotions or strangers speaking about the benefits of fibre near you on your lunchbreak or a lower number showing on your banking app dissuade you. You wanted pumpkin soup and you needed to buy pumpkin for it. End of.
If you had taken the short path running between buildings, you would have come out in the other shopping car park at the same time as your friend Emma got out of her car and talked for ten minutes about how her youngest had broken his arm falling off one of those modern art playgrounds for the third time this year and child protective services had surely flagged her, but he was just one of those kids that leaps you know?
But not even changing light levels or spontaneous roadworks or catastrophic sewer disasters are enough to steer you that way.
I’ve teleported every possible friend and family member and saintly passerby to intercept you, but you sidestep or politely dash off or are outright rude as you push on – it’s late and you have groceries to collect and TV to watch.
I’ve set up a portal to anywhere in the galaxy along your route, but you walk past it every time. You who would have run off with the Doctor.
I’ve added in phone pings and signposts, but you swipe them away or misread them.
And so each time I watch you come here. Watch your ex step out from the car he’s parked out the front of your apartment.
I’ve replayed this thousands of times now, with different angles and modifications, and from the way he was scrolling on his phone and fidgeting in his seat he was moments from leaving, from second guessing, from running out of adrenaline and letting the uncertainty in instead.
It would take so little for you to not be here when he is, brought about by changes so much less impressive than what I have been applying. Any of them should have worked by now.
I’ve thrown weapons and lifelines on the ground in front of you and, when that didn’t work, direct into your hands: knives and lasers and impenetrable safety bubbles. But you fumble or step over or discard or cut yourself and a hundred other unhelpful acts.
I’ve opened the screen door of the neighbours over the back fence who are the kind who would intervene if they heard yelling but they do not come.
I’ve sent you whistles and sirens and an unplugged green exit sign you could use as an ironic bludgeon.
I’ve cast statistics and recommendations no one had the political impetus to action in the air around you.
But none of them make a difference.
I can influence so much in your world, but all the neon lights and portals and serendipity I add to this scenario don’t change it.
You always end here, instead, watching the same day on a loop from outside and throwing useless solutions at the back of your own then-still-living head.
This day is already done and the outcome was never about your choices; the consequences didn’t flow from you.
It’s nice here. The view and gadgets are fun. They especially love playing with time.
So do I, as it turns out.
They tell me this game will get old soon, that I’ll move on to other things, but for now I’m still hoping to find a way to twist your fate and let me save us.