Right on TIME

I stare down at the tablet in my hands. I scroll through the articles again, as if I expect them to change somehow. Although the idea was mine, although I developed every bit of the technology, although my "business partners" seemed trustworthy, my name is nowhere to be found.

I've lost count of all the articles I've read throughout the last twenty years that have raved over my creation, Bitcoin. It's popularity has gone through waves of staggering highs and dismal lows, but Bitcoin has persevered through it all to become the most profitable concept in history. Yet my name is nowhere to be found, I haven't seen a dime of the profit, and if I tried to tell anyone my story they'd never believe me. That is why I must change the story.

My name is Hikaru Nakamoto. I was only nineteen years old when I came up with the concept of Bitcoin, only twenty-four when I felt like I had everything ready to release, and only twenty-five when I lost it all.

A group of older "friends" convinced me that I needed them and their expertise in order to get this project off the ground. They convinced me that it could potentially be successful, but only with their help. That they had the kind of experience it would take to promote this thing correctly and really make the most of it, and it would be such a shame to have something so good go to waste just because I didn't have the proper tools on my own, and was unwilling to accept help.

Bull.

But I bought it.

I handed over all of my work with starry eyes and high hopes, only to have these friends suddenly go completely off the grid without a word. Less than a year later, Bitcoin was all anyone could talk about, but the name Nakamoto never passed through their lips. Not once. They had no idea.

As I sit in potentially the smallest and grungiest apartment in all of Osaka, watching water drip from a crack in the ceiling to a metal bucket on the ground, I imagine what my life would be like if I hadn't been so darn naive. If I hadn't given away the only good idea I'd ever had in my life. And maybe if I hadn't shelled out all my savings, and over fifteen years of my time, and probably a lot of my sanity, in a failed attempt to regain what had been stolen from me.

I picture a penthouse apartment in Tokyo. I picture shining, expensive things, and framed pictures taken while on grand adventures all over the world. I picture a kitchen full of food. I picture hard floors, and soft blankets, and no water comes through my ceiling no matter how hard it rains. I picture a family, something that never seemed to be in the cards for me.

For so long I wasted my time, endlessly chasing my justice. And by the time I was done chasing, I had no clue who I was anymore. Most of my adult life had been running and now I was just empty-handed and tired.

But everything could change. I have the power to rewrite this story. On my wrist is a watch. It is very plain looking if you don't know what to look for, it is that way by design. The plan would not work if it was something big and flashy that people would notice. I guess Bitcoin wasn't my only good idea.

Tired as I was, I didn't ever really stop chasing, I simply changed direction. Instead of destroying myself in vain to seek justice, I will prevent the transgression from happening at all. With the watch on my wrist, I will travel back through time, and I will release my own idea before it can be stolen.

The planning process took almost as much time as creating the technology itself. Before I put so much effort into this watch, I had to be sure I could use it in a way that would work. I had thought of going back to just before the wretched deal took place and telling my younger self not to fall for it, but in the time-travel movies, interacting with yourself from another time never works out the way you want it to. I thought of doing something awful to the men who swindled me out of billions of dollars, but something about that idea just felt wrong. I thought about just selling the time travel technology, I could make more off of it than what I had lost from Bitcoin, but I do not trust anyone else with this power. I'm not even really sure if I trust myself with it.

In my mind, the only logical solution is to go back to just after my past self had come up with the idea, but before she had started development. In this time, I would live under an alias, keeping the family name Nakamoto, but exchanging Hikaru for Satoshi. I would redo all of my old work to create Bitcoin, and then releasing it on my own. I will work and grow with it for as long as I can before returning to my own time and my own life, which will be drastically different if everything goes according to plan. I can only stay in the past for as long as the battery of the watch is still working, once the battery dies, I do not know what will happen. I have images in my mind of spontaneous combustion, or being zapped into some rip in time and space, or accidentally creating a black hole or something dumb like. Ridiculous, I know, but I don't want to test my luck. I have to be back in my own time before the battery dies.

I twist the face off of my watch to reveal a glitchy low-quality screen. I turn the little knobs until the screen displays the correct time and date. I take a deep breath and close my eyes as I prepare to press the final button.

If this works, I will be twenty-seven years in the past when I open my eyes again. If it does not work correctly, I might just open them to see the face of God. Or maybe the fires of Hell, I guess. That thought gives me pause, but I push the button anyway.

Zap.

My ears are ringing, and my skin feels cold and tingly, like my whole body has fallen asleep. When I open my eyes, I see an empty parking lot in the place where my apartment building used to stand. Or where it will stand eventually. I can't move for a long moment. Did this actually work?

I feel my mind jump suddenly from crawling at a snails pace to racing like a rabid squirrel. I run down the street to a convenience store, looking around madly for something, anything that would have the date on it.

Newspapers!

I rush back to the rack of newspapers and magazines just outside the store, startling the elderly man who leans against the ice machine with a cigarette held up to his dry lips. The man jumps a little and drops the cigarette as I come to a screeching halt, just short of crashing into him. He curses under his breath as he picks up the old cigarette and hobbles over to an ashtray. I bow my head slightly as I mumble an apology, he waves me off and walks off down the street, lightning another cigarette as he goes.

I can finally direct my attention to the newspapers, each of which proudly display the date somewhere on the front page. The year is 2005. It worked. I have another moment of shock. It really worked! I catch a glimpse of myself in the glass door of the shop, I'm not sure how time travel usually works, but I am a little startled to see that I look like the same twenty year old girl I was in 2005.

I try to push the joy and excitement aside as quickly as I can. I must remain calm, in control, and as inconspicuous as possible in order to be successful in this endeavor.

I find another small apartment to live in, with a small second bedroom that I can use as my workshop. It is slightly nicer than the one I'd occupied in my own timeline. I dedicate every waking moment to recreating all of my work. My progress seems to be on track for a release sometime in 2007, maybe 2008 if I run into trouble.

I live a quiet life here, I walk with my head down, I move with purpose and do not interact with anyone. This goes on for nearly a year before a sound breaks through my fog of single-minded focus. The sound of a struggle and children shouting.

As much as I try to remind myself of my mission, as much as I try to use fear of messing with the future as an excuse, as much as I know it would be much easier to continue my quiet life with my head down, I cannot ignore that sound.

I round the corner and see a small crowd of five or six young boys. They all look to be around thirteen or fourteen years old, but I've never really been good at guessing that kind of thing. The boys are circled around two more boys fighting. Well, I'm not sure I would call it a fight, one boy has the other pinned to the ground, and they re just shouting obscenities at each other. I guess I just missed the actual fight, the boys both have blood on their faces.

I can't tell what is being said, but the boy on the ground becomes very angry, trying to shake the other boy off. The boy on the ground is a good deal smaller than the other boys, his efforts don't do much, and the crowd around them starts laughing.

I pick up my pace, jogging towards the circle, "Hey!" I shout from a short distance, "What do you think you're doing?" There is a small amount of panic at the sight of an adult, even a kind of young-woman-adult. The kids start to scatter. By the time I reach the boy on the ground, he is the only one in sight.

"Are you okay?" I ask the boy, he looks at least a few years younger than the boys who had encircled him earlier. Maybe eleven or twelve years old.

"I'm fine." He says, there's just a little bit of anger in his voice as he drags the sleeve of his jacked across his busted bloody lip.

"You don't look fine. Who were those guys? Who should I call for you? Your parents? The police?" I ask quickly, the boy jumps to his feet.

"No. don't call anyone." He says in an annoyed tone.

"Surely someone is concerned about you. Do you know their number? Please let me call them." I push on.

"No. I don't need any help." He states firmly.

"Well, even if you don't need help, someone ought to hold those boys accountable, they can't just go around attacking people like that. The police could-"

"I threw the first punch." The boy cuts me off. I don't say anything for a second. Why would such a little guy go after a group of older, stronger boys? It didn't make sense. "There's no one to call." The boy adds, "Just leave me alone." He starts to walk away, but I follow him.

"No one to call?" I ask, "You're a child, someone has to be responsible for you." I see his eyes tear up for just a second before he catches himself.

"No. Stop following me!" He shouts. And I almost listen.

I almost convince myself that this isn't worth my time. I have to save my future. But maybe, just maybe, his future is as important as mine.

"Where are your parents?" I ask, trying to put on an authoritative tone.

"They're dead." He says in an even tone that must be meant to unsettle me, or scare me away from asking more questions.

"Who is responsible for you then? Grandparents? Aunts or Uncles? Some kind fo family or something? There has to be someone, where are they?" I continue to prod.

"Yokohama." He states in that same unsettling tone.

"Yokohama?" I ask, "That's hours away, what are you doing here?"

"It's none of your business, I told you to leave me alone." He snaps again, but I can see something a little broken in his eyes. I can't leave him alone.

"Stop for just a second." I order, and I am shocked when he listens. "Your eye is starting to swell up," I tell him, which is true, the skin around it is bright red, but will start to turn to a stormy bruised purple soon enough, "Come with me and I'll get you some ice for it." I offer. The boy looks around for a minute, as if expecting someone to jump out of the bushes or something, but he soon nods his head and begins to follow me.

"What is your name?" I ask

"Yuta." He tells me. He declines to tell me his family name, but he lets me ice his black eye and dump rubbing alcohol on his cuts and scrapes. I offer him some food, and my couch to sleep on, but he declines. Yuta is gone within an hour.

I feel something crack inside my chest as I watch him go out the door. He is so young, practically a baby. He is so small and so alone and so far away from his family. I wonder if they're worried about him. I wonder why he left. I wonder if his parents really are both dead or if Yuta just said this for the shock factor, hoping it would scare me away.

I see Yuta frequently after this day. He mostly just hangs out around convenience stores or at the nearby park after school. I stop to chat every time I see him. He becomes very talkative after a few conversations. He eventually tells me that his parents died in a bus crash a few years ago, and that his aunt and uncle in Yokohama are supposed to be raising him, and he doesn't get along well with his cousin. He was ready to tough it out and deal with the cousin drama until he turned eighteen, but one day he heard his aunt and uncle arguing about finances, and his name came up. He felt like he was a burden to them, and he did not feel like they should have to hold the responsibility of raising him anyway. So he wrote a nice note, thanking them for the time they had cared for him in, and asking them not to come looking for him.

And at eleven years old, he just left. He hopped a train to Osaka and hasn't looked back.

I find it hard to focus on work, especially when it rains. It's hard to pretend I don't know this child is out there in the rain somewhere catching a cold. It worries me that I am not working hard enough on Bitcoin. But I feel this tug in my chest, like I was meant to find this kid for some reason and now it is my responsibility to look out for him and I am doing an awful job at it.

I've discovered that if I offer to take Yuta somewhere and buy him food, he will decline every time, but if I offer him food that I already have on hand, he will accept. I've gotten used to walking around with snacks. My concern only grows as the months get colder, I don't know exactly where Yuta is living, but I would be willing to bet it is not warm and cozy in the winter.

It is on a very cold day towards beginning of 2007 when Yuta knocks on my door for the first time. I'm surprised he finds the place, considering he'd only ever been here once, on the night I first found him. He is shivering and pale from the cold as he shuffles in the door. And all of a sudden, my home was his home.

Over the next year I grow to feel like I finally have a family, and I think Yuta feels the same way. I help him with his homework, I feed him, I buy him warm clothes, I even move my workspace into my bedroom so the second bedroom can become his. He does the dishes after dinner every night, and he begins to write Nakamoto as his family name on all of his school papers, and tells me that he wants to be a singer when he grows up. I almost cry when he asks if it's okay if he tells his friends I am his mother, I actually cry the first time he calls me "mom". All the while, I am making progress on Bitcoin at a remarkable rate.

I never dreamed my life could be so full, especially when I haven't technically succeeded in my ultimate goal yet. Yuta has a vague idea of what I am doing, but he has no clue what has happened or what it has taken to get me here. As time goes on, I do research on theories of space and time, trying to develop my own theory or what will happen when I need to go back to my own time. This did not feel extremely important until I had a child to think about, but now it is very important. My watch battery is dying a bit more every day. I do not have much time to figure it all out.

In 2008, I am able to officially unleash my project into the world under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto. And it is the same raging success that it was in my time, only now, my name is everywhere. I try to keep a low profile, not knowing how my own fame could effect the future, but everything is going exactly as I planned it, and it is incredible. My watch battery is starting to run low, but everything is going as planned.

If my research is correct, when I jumped back in time I replaced the version of myself that lived in this time. I pray that when I have to go back home and the other me is back in control, she will somehow have all of the memories I have made. I pray that she takes care of Yuta, and Bitcoin, and everything else that I am trying to create for us.

The fame of Bitcoin only grows, becoming even bigger than the original had been in my timeline.

In the year 2010, my battery runs out.

Zap.

In the blind of an eye I am back in my own time. I scrub away the stars in my eyes. I rub my arms, which feel as cold and numb as they had when I travelled to the past so long ago.

My jaw drops as I look around the room I am in. It is a bedroom with framed newspapers all over the walls. They all fawn over the great success of Bitcoin. The bed is huge and fluffy and warm. The floor is hard and the ceiling lights are bright. I move into the next room, where huge windows overlook a city I do not recognize. On the walls hang platinum records for songs I've never heard of by a group whose name I do not recognize. They must be Yuta's, he must have become a singer, just like he said he would be.

Everything is beautiful, everything is amazing. One wall of my home is covered in pictures from all over the world. The first one my eyes lock onto is of myself, a man close to my own age, a young man, a young woman, and a little girl in the young mans arms.

As I stare at this photo, I feel a rush of memories overtake me, I feel everything that has happened in the time between when my watch battery died and this moment. All of the joy, all of the work, all of the stress, all of the amazing adventures, and my family.

My husband, Riku. My son Yuta, who is now a grown man himself, with his own wife and daughter Sana and Karina.

My life became amazing, my life became beautiful and full of adventure. But it wasn't like that because I made Bitcoin, it wasn't like that because I had all these material things, it was like this because of these people. I feel my eyes fill with tears at the sheer joy in my spirit. This really is my life.

I hear the door swing open, and Yuta strides into the room. He is not a little boy now, he is tall and strong, my son has grown into a man. I feel the tears coming all over again as I wrap him into a tight embrace.

"Mom? Are you okay?" He asks.

"I'm fine." I tell him through sobs. "I am just so happy with my life, and I am so happy you are a part of it." I add, I know now that the most important decision I'd ever made had nothing to do with Bitcoin or money or any business exchange, it was opening my heart and my home to the raggedly little boy who liked to start fights.

"I'm really happy too." He says, hugging me back just as tightly, "But are you sure you're okay? Did something happen."

"No. Nothing. I promise." I tell him. And I mean it.

I suddenly remember that my husband will be home soon, that my daughter-in-law and my granddaughter will be coming over for dinner tonight, that we will all be going to see my son sing on stage with his best friends next weekend, and that there is nothing more in the world that I could have ever hoped for.