Salem blinked, and the world around him stuttered. One moment, he was standing in the flickering neon-lit hallway of the Narrative Processing Department, and the next, he was sprawled across cracked asphalt under a sky bleeding orange and purple. Somewhere distant, sirens wailed like ghosts of events that hadn't happened yet—or maybe ones that had already been forgotten.
"…Not again," Salem muttered, scrambling upright. His journal was gone. His hands were empty, but the buzzing in his skull—like a thousand overlapping alarms—remained. The static of time skipped in waves, thrumming across his nerves.
A whisper hissed through his head, mocking and playful: Welcome to your tangent, protagonist. Do try to keep up.
Salem groaned. "Fine. Fine, I'm awake. Can we not—"
BZZZT.
A blinding flash sliced across the sky. Then, like someone fast-forwarded a film, the scene shifted again. Now he was inside a crowded hospital ward, the scent of antiseptic and fear thick in the air. Children lay on gurneys, coughing and drifting in and out of consciousness, their eyes wide with confusion. Salem's stomach lurched as the memory of July flooded in—the revolution, the chaos, the countless young lives extinguished before they even had a chance to live.
Time wasn't linear here. Not anymore. Every skip, every tangent, had pulled threads from the past, scattering them into the present. And now he was standing in a historical loop he wasn't supposed to enter yet.
A nurse passed by, blinking at him with mild irritation. "Sir… are you a volunteer?"
"I… uh…" Salem stammered. He didn't belong here. He belonged in the chaos of his own skips. But the voice inside—the Writer—wasn't letting him rest.
"Oh, don't look so lost, Salem. This is precisely where you need to be. Past meets present. Cause meets effect. Fun, isn't it?"
He clenched his fists. "You're enjoying this too much."
"Like an author with way too many plot threads. Now, focus. You're carrying something forward. Something… contagious."
Salem froze. His mind raced, and a horrible realization struck him: the virus. The glimpses from the future he'd accidentally touched—the beginnings of COVID-19—echoed here. He was the anomaly, the carrier across time. One wrong step, and this timeline would crumble under the weight of unintended consequences.
The ward blurred around him. One heartbeat later, he was somewhere else. A dim classroom in 2020, masks hanging loosely from the ears of students who didn't yet understand what was coming. The world's fear was nascent here, a seed ready to bloom into hysteria.
"Careful, Salem," the voice snickered. "One sneeze and you could rewrite pandemics."
"Shut up!" Salem snapped, pressing his hands to his ears as the layers of reality flickered like a dying hologram. Every voice, every event, collided in a dizzying symphony. A student coughed. The timeline shivered. Somewhere, a shadowed version of him winked knowingly.
Then, the air warped again. He felt the tug, the familiar pulse that meant a temporal anchor was nearby. Salem had only one choice: let go.
He stepped forward, and suddenly—bang—he landed in 1971.
Gunfire echoed faintly in the distance. Smoke curled across the horizon like ink dropped into water. Children ran, mothers screamed, chaos bloomed like wildfire. The revolution, the war of liberation—he was in the thick of it now. Every skip, every tangent, every fragmented memory converged here.
"Oh, my protagonist," purred the Writer. "Now this is where you start to fix things. Or break them completely. No pressure."
Salem's knees shook. He wasn't just observing anymore; he was a participant. Every choice he made would ripple forward, tangling with the virus, the revolutions, the lives he'd glimpsed, and the multiverse waiting for him in the future.
A child tripped near him, eyes wide with confusion. Salem instinctively reached out, helping them up. For a moment, the world paused. Then the narrative pulsed—strings unraveling, threads snapping. His hand tingled as if the universe itself were scolding him.
"Careful! This isn't just historical play-dough! Every touch, every breath, every smile can fracture timelines!"
He gritted his teeth. "I get it! I'll be careful!"
Salem moved through the war-torn streets, dodging gunfire and rubble, his mind racing. He couldn't just fix one thing—he had to thread multiple timelines together, balance the chaos with precision, and somehow survive himself in the process.
And then—the familiar glitch. A doorway materialized, impossible and glowing, hovering in midair. Salem's reflection shimmered within it, distorted and strange.
"The choice, Salem. Red or blue?"
He narrowed his eyes. "You've done this before."
"Of course. But the colors mean different things now. Red: intervene and try to fix the war. Blue: take the virus forward and preserve the future, leaving the past in chaos. Make it count."
Salem swallowed hard. One wrong decision, and entire generations could vanish. He could feel the pull of each timeline tugging at him, desperate to bend his choices.
He glanced through the portal. Shadows of himself—older, scarred, confident—stood on each side. One whispered, Do it right this time. Another grinned maliciously, Screw it up like I did.
Salem shook his head. He didn't have the luxury of hesitation. The war, the virus, the future, the multiverse—they all demanded action.
He stepped forward. The portal shimmered. Reality buckled around him. Time itself screamed as he hurtled through layers of history, chaos, and narrative fragments.
And for a fleeting second, Salem laughed. A manic, terrified, exhilarated laugh. Because this—this chaos, this madness, this broken story—was his to navigate.
The Writer chuckled inside his mind.
"Good. That's the spirit. Now go. Fix it. Break it. Rewrite it. Or just enjoy the ride. Doesn't matter. You're the protagonist."
Salem's vision blurred, the world a kaleidoscope of past, present, and future. One thought anchored him: he had survived every skip, every glitch, every fourth-wall crack. And he would survive this too—because this story, no matter how fractured, still needed him.
As he landed, the city around him whispered promises of chaos and revelation. The first tendrils of the virus's path intertwined with the revolution's chaos. Every choice he made now would echo across centuries.
Salem inhaled. Exhaled. And stepped into history.