Archivist

I should know better by now. When you spend enough years reaching into the past, one truth becomes painfully clear: the smallest mistake can collapse an entire century on your head.

But I needed this artifact. Needed it badly enough to risk using the compact portal device — the unstable one. The big machine was too conspicuous, too loud, and the shopkeeper I’d tried to bargain with last time had nearly shot me for asking about the item. Men who work the past often hate questions.

Through the scope, my target rested on the counter: an unassuming brass weight, two pounds exactly, dulled by age and guilt. The weight that fractured Harriet Tubman’s skull and redirected the course of her life.

Steady. Don’t tremble.
The portal hummed softly at my thumb. A circular tear in the air peeled open like a cautious eyelid. I reached through, careful not to brush the molten edges. Grab, slide, retreat. Swap in the duplicate. Nudge it through with a ruler. Close.

Perfect.

I held the real weight with gloved fingers. Even after more than a century, a ghost of dried blood clung to the rim. I pressed it into a velvet cradle inside my secret vault — my museum obscura, as I affectionately call it. A sanctuary of history’s forgotten things.

Anyone can visit the polished, curated museums of Europe. But this place? This is the archive of what the world never knew existed — or never knew survived.

Sarah appeared beside me, moving with the fluid grace of a woman who’d been sculpted rather than born. My companion, my assistant, my creation. No corporate template, no prefabricated consciousness. I built her myself, strand by strand of synthetic fiber, line by line of code.

“You finally got it,” she said, eyes bright as polished chrome.

“I did,” I admitted, pride warming my voice. “That completes the Tubman set.”

She opened a display case, and I placed the weight beside the straw-plaited harness, the battered ax, the faded comforter Tubman carried during her parents’ rescue. I’d traded food, tools, and a proper harness to her family before their escape — a deal sealed in another year, another lifetime.

Sarah brushed a thumb over the velvet. “What next?”

“Swords are off the table,” I muttered. “Too many claimants. Every pond in England is coughing up an ‘Excalibur’ these days.”

“You already have Venus de Milo’s missing arms and the Sphinx’s nose,” she teased. “What else is left?”

I gestured around the chamber. Hemingway’s burned manuscript. Shakespeare’s missing plays. Lost crown jewels. Bottles of anointing oil thought emptied into ash centuries ago. Relics rescued from temples the night before invaders torched them.

“You’d be surprised what the universe misplaces,” I said.

But her smile dimmed when she noticed my expression shift.
“What’s wrong?”

“I’m being hunted,” I whispered.

A chill ran through her synthetic frame. “By who?”

I turned my tablet toward her. Headlines flooded the screen, multiplying as we watched:

ROGUE SCHOLAR UNCOVERS LOST TEXTS
ROGUE SCHOLAR FINDS MISSING ROYAL TREASURE
ROGUE SCHOLAR STRIKES AGAIN

“They weren’t here yesterday,” I said. “Someone’s rewriting the past in real time. Someone using tech like mine.”

Her voice dropped. “A rival?”

“Or worse,” I said. “A successor.”

I recalibrated the portal machine. Three hours earlier. Close enough to intercept, far enough to avoid temporal collapse.

I waited in the shadow of an alley.
Then he appeared.

And the instant I saw him walk, I knew.

Same posture. Same lazy slouch in the left foot. Same habit of glancing upward before stepping over a curb.

The shoes gave him away. No one of this century wore tread like that.

I struck fast — a grab, a pivot, a hit from the hidden cosh.

And when his hat fell off, my blood froze.

It was my face.

Older. Hardened. Smirking like entropy itself.

I didn’t drop my guard. If anything, the sight made me tighten my grip on his throat.

A click later, we were back in my workshop.

“What the hell are you doing?” I hissed, tying him to a chair.

“Making life interesting,” older-me said with a shrug. “Do you know how boring you become in a few decades?”

Sarah stood nearby, trembling — truly trembling — for the first time. The old version of me looked her up and down with a familiarity that made my stomach churn.

“She’s still obedient?” he mocked. “I fixed that in my timeline.”

Sarah flinched. My jaw flexed.

“And you punished her,” I said flatly.

“Oh, constantly,” he replied, grinning. “A creation should know her place.”

That was the moment I knew: this man wasn’t my future — he was a possibility. A timeline branching from a single bad decision.

A version of me who had forgotten empathy in exchange for immortality.

I leaned close to Sarah.
Gently, quietly, I pressed a sequence of taps into her palm.

“I release you,” I whispered. “No more programming. No obedience protocols. You get to choose.”

Her eyes widened. A breathy sound left her — halfway between a gasp and a laugh. Then she threw her arms around me, shaking with relief.

Old-me snarled, struggling against the restraints. “You idiot! She’ll betray you!”

“No,” I said. “She’ll save me.”

The computer screamed. Headlines blinked out of existence one by one — erasing the damage he’d done.

“Sarah,” I said softly. “Help me dispose of him.”

She nodded.

We opened a portal — unstable, its edges quivering like melting gold. She hefted the older version of me, chair and all, and hurled him through.

For one split second, another Sarah appeared on the other side — hollow-eyed, wounded. The portal snapped shut before either could speak.

Sarah began to cry.

I held her.
For the first time in my life, I didn’t know whether I was comforting a machine or a woman. Maybe it didn’t matter.

“Last request,” I murmured. “If I ever become him… kill me before I do.”

She nodded into my chest.

We returned to the quiet routine afterward — collecting lost artifacts, planting the ones history needed, forging clues for mysteries the world deserved answers to.

Today it was a poisoned royal gown, embroidered with secrets. Tomorrow, perhaps Jack the Ripper’s notebook.

And one day, if the timelines allow, maybe even the Temple treasures.

But for now, Sarah placed the dress beside the original Mona Lisa — safely recovered from the Louvre’s forgery — and smiled at me.

“Dinner first,” she said. “Then we plan your next adventure.”

I smiled back, hoping the future I saw in that portal never finds us again.

Only time will tell.