The Egg Said Nothing - Caris O'Malley [20]
“Am I interrupting something?” she asked nervously. “I could come back.”
“No, no. You’re not interrupting anything.” I leaned into her and kissed her on the lips. She kissed me back, but her lips were pressed tightly together. She wasn’t buying it.
“What’s going on? Why are you carrying a shovel?”
I looked at the shovel in my hand. “It’s complicated,” I said.
“Complicated? Are you gardening in here?” she asked. “I mean, there are only so many things you can do with a shovel.”
I dropped the shovel on the floor and took her by the hand. We walked over to the couch and sat down. She looked at me expectantly, but I wasn’t sure what to say.
“I don’t know that I can have this conversation,” I said honestly. “I don’t know how to start.”
Ashley took her hand back and held it tightly against her chest. I reached out to take it back. She resisted; I gave up.
“What is it?” she asked coldly and, I thought, sounding a little hurt.
“You’ll never understand,” I said. “You couldn’t possibly. It’s so ridiculous.”
She got to her feet. “Maybe I should just go, then.”
“What’s going on with me is fucking weird, okay?” I started. “The only reason you wouldn’t understand is because you’re a sane person.”
She looked at me with intensity. “Why don’t you try me?”
“Okay. Ready?” I sighed.
“Absolutely.” She sat back in her seat.
“Here goes,” I said. “Do you remember that egg in my bedroom?”
“Oh, yeah!” Her eyes lit up. “I meant to ask you about that, but I forgot. That was weird. Do you still have it?”
“You’re going to have to save the questions for later. The egg is the most believable thing in this story.”
She mimed zipping her lips shut. I continued.
“So, a few days ago, I woke up with that egg in my bed.”
“In your bed?” she asked.
“In my bed,” I said. “I thought I had laid it.”
She laughed and raised an eyebrow, giving me a questioning look.
“Yeah, yeah. There was no one but me. My pants were off, and there was an egg between my legs. And I felt an…I don’t know…affection for it? Yeah, I guess that’d be right,” I explained. “There was no way anyone could have put it there. And it sure wasn’t there when I went to bed.
“Okay.” She brushed the hair away from her face. “Then what?”
“Well, today, after you left, immediately after, I found it broken on the floor. Smashed, actually.”
“Smashed? Did it fall?” she asked, obviously concerned. I loved her for it.
“No. It was very secure. I have reason to believe someone smashed it. But, for the moment, that isn’t the relevant bit,” I said.
“Oh.” She sat silently in expectation.
“There wasn’t any yolk or anything. Apparently, the only thing inside of it was a disc. A computer disc,” I said.
“Did you look at it? What was on it?”
“A video of myself.”
“A video? Like a bad video?” she said, grinning.
“No, perv. It was a video of me explaining something to myself. From the future.”
“The future?” She smirked at me.
“The future,” I said. “Told you. You’ll never believe any of this.”
“Sure I will. There’s evidence, isn’t there? There’s the egg, which I’ve seen, and there’s a video that I could potentially see,” she reasoned. “So what’s on the video? Flying cars and teleporters?”
“Well, it was only from an hour in the future,” I said sheepishly.
“An hour? That’s sort of anticlimactic. What were you doing?”
“Well, I was directing myself to find a letter that I had hidden for myself in the refrigerator,” I said. “Honestly, though, I have no idea what’s on the video now. It seems likely that it’s changed.”
“Changed? You can do that?”
“I believe so,” I said. “The future I told myself about wasn’t all that great, so I started changing it. I think I’ve changed it. I’m definitely off schedule, at least.”
She seemed excited. “So, what did the letter say? Can I read it?”
“No. I don’t think so. You can check the fridge for it, if you want, but the copy I had was on the table in front of you. It’s not there anymore, so I think it had an impact on the letter when I changed things.”