Two sets of memories existed in my mind simultaneously, and the contradiction was making my head pound even harder.
"What... what year is it?" I asked, dreading the answer. My father looked at me with concern. "Are you feeling alright, Jake? It's 2008. You've been sick for almost a week." I was nine years old. I was in third grade. The smartphone revolution hadn't happened yet. Social media was barely a thing. AI was still science fiction. The economic recession was just beginning. I had my entire life ahead of me. And somehow, impossibly, I remembered all of it—both the life I had lived and the life I was apparently going to live again.
As we prepared to leave the hospital, my father settling the bill with money I knew he'd borrowed from relatives, I tried to process what had happened. Was this real? Was I really back in my nine-year-old body, armed with seventeen years of future knowledge? Or was this some elaborate hallucination brought on by whatever accident had occurred with Roney's machine?
The walk home felt surreal. The streets looked exactly as I remembered them—narrower, less developed, with fewer cars and more open spaces. The air was cleaner, the sky bluer. Everything had a quality of freshness that I'd forgotten existed.
"How does the air feel so fresh to breathe?" I said aloud, more to myself than to my father.
He smiled. "The fever must have cleared your sinuses. You'll feel better soon."
But I knew it wasn't just about clear sinuses. I was breathing air that hadn't yet been polluted by the industrial expansion that would come in the following decades. I was seeing a world that still had hope, that still had possibilities.
"Ahh, how the air feels to breathe—this fresh air. It will be rare in the future," I thought as we walked home from the hospital, my small hand still clasped in Dad's calloused grip.
The roads were rough and dusty, made worse by the recent rains that had turned patches of dirt into muddy traps. "There will be many years till a good road will be constructed around our house," I mused, stepping carefully around the puddles. My thoughts felt scattered, like I was on some kind of holiday, like I'd come here for vacation. But this was home—yes, this was home.
After reaching our house, a modest single-story structure with one bedroom, a kitchen that doubled as storage, and the main room where the TV was always on, I saw my brother Jason watching cartoons. Today was Saturday, weekend time, and he was glued to the screen. If I was in his place, I would also be watching this show—it was one of those premium shows that had just started airing for free after a year, and it was genuinely interesting.
As we walked, I found myself cataloging all the differences, all the opportunities that lay ahead. If this was real—if I had somehow been given a second chance—I wouldn't make the same mistakes again. I wouldn't be naive about career choices. I wouldn't waste time on useless pursuits. I wouldn't let my health deteriorate. I wouldn't accumulate debt for a degree that would prove worthless.
But first, I needed to figure out what had happened to me, and whether this miraculous second chance was permanent or just a cruel temporary reprieve. The weight of possibility pressed down on me as we walked home, and for the first time in years—or perhaps for the first time in this new timeline—I felt something I had almost forgotten existed: hope.
Mom still had that youthful glow in her eyes, bright and merry. Actually, her name was Merry—fitting, really. Father was Jacob, and interestingly, all our names started with J. Jacob Cipher was now thirty-three years old, while Mom was twenty-seven—quite an age difference, but that was normal for arranged marriages in our time.
"Jake, come sit down. You must be tired," Mom called from the kitchen, her voice carrying that particular warmth that only mothers possess. I settled into the old wooden chair by the window, watching Jason completely absorbed in his cartoons. The ceiling fan wobbled overhead, making its familiar creaking sound that I'd somehow missed without realizing it. "Dad, can I borrow your mobile for a minute?" I asked, trying to sound casual. Jacob looked up from his newspaper. "What for, beta?" "Just want to check the cricket scores," I lied smoothly.