I was living in what looked like a house that had been carved out of a cave or something. I was expecting my father to get back, but to my surprise he was already there. We chatted for a few minutes and then heard someone coming to the door. He went to go answer it (it was around the corner) when I heard him say, hello! anyone there? And then dad walked in from his trip. He asked how I opened up the door and then got back to the front room so quickly.
That’s when I realized what happened. A future version of him had managed to leak into the past. When he came into contact with his previous self, there was only one of him. That totally freaked me out. It was like seeing a ghost of him. Later I worried that he might actually be stuck in a time loop too… it got worse later on…
Since I had a time anomaly on my hands, who better to call in than the crew at Big Finish (the guys that do the Dr. Who audios)? The gang was all there, Jason, Nick, the Pauls, and even Lisa. Why I thought they could help I have no idea, but it was a dream, it all made sense. Then, my stepbrother came in with a bunch of his friends because they were making a student film. Here’s where it gets complicated.
As future versions of folks came in, the current people were absolutely terrified. Seeing themselves was just too weird and unsettling. The future folks had it just as bad, they were seeing ghosts of themselves too, but they remembered what it was like to see themselves in the past and relived the experience plus had all of the weirdness of seeing their ghosts. Then it got worse. Now when future and past versions came into contact, they would merge into one person. The problem was that they simultaneously had the memories of all the things that had happened, and also understood that they hadn’t done those things because they essentially got sucked into the future. And then future versions of themselves would show up and the effect would compound.
Between the disorientation and the fear, people started to go totally insane. And we started to accumulate multiples of the same people. Different groups of person would react in different ways. Some thought they were aliens discovering their true nature, some were convinced all of the others were trying to kill them, and more than a few were just curled up and crying.
The panic level was getting out of hand. At some point bullets started to fly. That’s when I understood what was going on. I was sure that at some point, a future person was going to kill a past version of themselves and create a paradox. The effects of that paradox would spill outwards both in the future and in the past. Retro-causation is a tricky thing, but it made total sense. Then I woke up.
How’s that for a dream?