The Man Who Tried to Change Yesterday

Nobody believed Dr. Marcus Ellery when he said he could change the past.

Not his colleagues. Not the university. Not even his wife.

“You can’t rewrite time,” they told him. “You’ll only break yourself trying.”

But Marcus had lived through one thing no man should endure.

He lost his daughter.

It happened on a rainy Tuesday. She was seven years old, walking home from school. A distracted driver jumped the curb. No warning. No chance.

The driver lived. The child didn’t.

And Marcus never forgave time for moving on.

For five years, he worked in secret. Funding dried up. His reputation vanished. But one thing kept him going:

"If I could go back… just five minutes… I could pull her out of the street.”

His invention was crude. A prototype stitched together from stolen tech and black-market parts. It wasn’t meant to carry a man through centuries—just a single jump. One moment backward. One moment forward.

And one impossible chance.

The day came when he was ready.

He sat in the machine, trembling, holding her favorite scarf. He had memorized every second of that afternoon—the bus schedule, the traffic light patterns, the rain forecast.

“Five minutes,” he whispered.

He pressed the switch.

The world around him shimmered. Light cracked like glass. Then… silence.

He stood outside the school. Rain fell softly. The exact corner. The exact time.

His watch blinked: 2:54 p.m.

She would step into the street at 2:59.

He waited, heart pounding, his hands shaking.

At 2:58, he saw her. Lila. Red coat. Yellow backpack. Alive.

He shouted her name.

She turned. Smiled. "Daddy?"

He ran to her, grabbed her hand. "Come with me."

"But I’m supposed to wait here."

"Just trust me," he begged.

A bus roared by. She frowned, confused—but followed.

At 2:59, the black car sped past the corner, horn blaring, tires screeching.

It hit no one.

Marcus collapsed, crying.

He had done it.

He had saved her.

But the world around him shifted.

The air felt wrong.

People began to move… oddly. Jerky. Repeating. A woman across the street blinked twice—and then again, in exact sequence.

A glitch.

Time had noticed.

Marcus turned to his daughter. She was still smiling. But her eyes were now... blank.

“Lila?” he asked.

She blinked. "Daddy?"

Same tone. Same pitch. Same smile.

Repeat.

Looping.

Something was wrong.

He rushed back to the alley where the machine had landed.

It wasn’t there.

In its place stood a black monolith, pulsing with light. As he approached, a voice echoed from it:

"Temporal violation detected. Sequence correction initiating."

"What does that mean?" Marcus shouted.

"You altered a fixed point. Restoration required."

"No!" he screamed. "She’s alive! Let her live!"

"The universe does not allow paradox. Time must resume the path.”

He turned to run—but everything around him froze.

Cars. People. Birds in the sky. All frozen in place.

And Lila... slowly faded from view.

Marcus woke up back in his lab. The machine was gone. The scarf lay on the floor.

The clock read 2:53 p.m.

The day after her death.

Time had reset everything.

Only one thing had changed.

A note lay on his desk, written in his own handwriting—but he had no memory of writing it.

It read:

“You cannot save her. But you can remember her. Let time move forward—this time, with you in it.”

Marcus never tried to travel again.

But every year, on the same rainy Tuesday, he stood at the corner where the accident happened.

Not to change it.

But to honor her.

Because sometimes, the past is not meant to be rewritten…

Only remembered.