Chapter 1: An introduction

I was born with a peculiar blessing. I could visit any memory I chose for as long as I wanted to. For better or worse that was the entirety of its scope. I was careful never to tell you about it because it is not something I share with people. It scares me to think about what it could lead others to do to me as a result.

I tried telling you during on our wedding night because I wanted to - and because it would already be too late for you to back out - but I didn't expand. 'I said I would probably visit the memory of this day the most', and you answered "Well, then it is a good thing we are taking so many pictures." I laughed at your cluelessness.

"There's something I need to tell you," I said as we were sitting at the airport about to start our honeymoon.

"Anything," you said as you kissed my hand, and looked at me with those eyes that radiated attention, and the most selfless kind of love I knew. Having all your focus on me still gave me goosebumps. Who was I to deserve thoughts and dreams of the smartest, kindest man to walk this earth? I fell in love with your head as much as I fell in love with your soul. If being your partner was all I ever accomplished in my life, it was enough. The ambitious and determined workaholic that I am would have traded her career for you in a heartbeat without any regrets. That probably doesn't sound like much, but when you are as type A as I am, it means the world. "It's going to take a while." I elaborated.

You nodded and sat back, as you indicated for me to proceed, and I explained everything. For a second, I saw a flash of concern about my mental state across your face. You openly asked me if I needed help, and tried to explain to me that what I said didn't make sense. It was hilarious that I fell in love with a logical man, and here I was asking him to accept magic as part of his vocabulary. You looked at me playfully and stated that I was insane, but you accepted to believe me at face value. I understood then that you thought I was playing a game with you.

It took years for you to believe me entirely, but you eventually did, and our love was a kind of magic I never knew before. This coming from a woman who knows about magic. That knows about abnormal, and about gifts, like mine, which we humans keep secret.

"Is it like time traveling?" You asked me curiously once, as you absentmindedly rolled your fingers through the palm of my hands.

"Yeah" I said. We laid in bed at 3:00 pm on a Sunday afternoon as you held me, and wondered what it would be like to time travel.

"Can you go to the future?"

"No"

"Can you change the past?"

"No"

"So you just, live the same day again and again without being able to change any of it?"

"How do you think I got my 4.0 GPA all through schooling?"

You laughed. "Cheater"

"It's not actually cheating" I argued.

"So what happens when you are gone? You know, to the past. To your memories."

"Time stops for you"

You looked at me, troubled. "So what's your record?"

"What?"

"What's the longest you have avoided the present? Jumping from memory to memory"

"A week"

You were silent, so I expanded. "I traveled through my memories of my father for a week the day my he died."

"Hmm. Did it help?"

"No. I can relive memories, but I can't make any new ones. I've memorized his best days already. Every time I go there I know the dialog by heart. The same way I children memorize movie lines."

"Hm. What happens if you try changing the past?"

"The thing is that, as you relive the day, your conscious mind is at the same level of conciseness that it was during that day. The back of your head knows that it is a memory, but the back of your head feels asleep. It doesn't have the strength required to take the wheel. So when you come back you remember why things happened the way they did, what you felt like, what you thought, what someone told you. But you can never change it because when you are there you are not the person you are now. You are the person you were then."