Page 65 of The Book of Lost Hours

“If I had left with you when you asked the first time, you mean? It wouldn’t have worked, Ernest. All your theories were right.

When I first came out of the time space, I was in and out of consciousness for a long time.

At least a month, although they kept me sedated.

I had to be given fluids through an IV, I could barely walk.

We would have been caught… you would have been killed.

And then where would that have left us?”

Neither of them spoke but Moira could sense the wheels turning in his head as he grappled to reconcile his anger with the reality of the situation. After several minutes, he reached out and took her hand, entwining his fingers in hers.

“I would have taken care of you,” he said.

She gripped his hand tighter, hoping it meant forgiveness. “Have you considered walking away from this? Leaving through the time space like you planned and abandoning the rest of it?”

Ernest sighed. “I have. I want nothing more than to take you and Amelia and run somewhere far, far away. Let the others figure this out. But I started this. I have to finish it.”

Moira understood there would be no talking him out of this. This was a mess they had made together. They couldn’t walk away now. They sat still, leaning against each other as the wind blew around them.

“Did you know that Elaina’s memories aren’t in the time space?” Ernest said abruptly.

“They aren’t?”

“I looked for them for a long time. But they aren’t there. I never understood why until you told me what you did, and now…” He began toying with the watch on her wrist absentmindedly. “Maybe it’s part of the solution.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you ever heard the saying that time is a construct?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Well, what if it isn’t just a construct? What if we constructed it?”

“Meaning…”

Ernest took a moment’s pause, sifting through the ever-shifting sands of his thoughts, trying to grasp the pearls hidden there.

“Meaning what if… there is no true past beyond the one we’ve constructed?

No true history. If body and consciousness are separate things, why do we all accept this idea that we experience the same version of the world?

Scientifically speaking, this idea of shared human experience…

of collective consciousness… it doesn’t add up. ”

He began speaking in terms of quantum physics and equations. Things Moira did not and had never been able to grasp.

“You’re losing me here, Ernest,” Moira said, cutting him off.

He paused. Regrouped. Began again.

“When we first met, you told me that everyone remembers things differently. That each memory, tainted by nostalgia and circumstance, presents a different view of the world. Who’s to say that the same can’t be said for all of history?

What if the only reason all of us have this collective version of the past…

of reality… is because we’ve been systematically constructing it ourselves for thousands of years? ”

“But how?”

“Through processes of assimilation. By keeping the memories in books, by forcing memory to conform to a specific version of things, we’re affecting the entire ecosystem of time and consciousness.”

“Right…” Moira said cautiously.

Ernest barely heard her say it. “The theory of conservation of energy states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. Which means that consciousness cannot be created or destroyed. And so… all the consciousness that has ever existed or will ever exist has always done so. It transfers from a person, into the time space, and back, and when we die, it is trapped inside of books by timekeepers. Stored for all eternity—not dead, but imprisoned. When the memories are burned, the energy from the fire transfers that energy elsewhere through heat and flame, but a part of those memories remains. In the timekeepers who stored and destroyed them. In you…” He reached out, laying one hand on her cheek, his eyes bright with possibility.

“The woman untethered from Time. But it isn’t destroyed.

Not truly. Because memories are energy and energy cannot be destroyed. So they must go somewhere. Right?”

“But where?”

There was another pause, this one longer than the first.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about the chasm,” Ernest said slowly. “You said it appeared after you changed the past to put Amelia in it, right?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Maybe it isn’t a chasm at all. Maybe it’s a passage.”

“Passage?”

“To a different time. Like the Einstein-Rosen bridge. Maybe it leads to the alternative past you created. A different time altogether. Maybe that’s where Elaina’s memories are. And all the other memories we can no longer touch because we’ve eliminated them from our version of the timeline.”

“I suppose… that’s one theory at least.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You don’t like it?”

“I don’t know. It’s all just speculative.”

“Maybe I’m wrong. But if I’m not… just imagine what the world might look like. Imagine all the different versions of history that might have existed. That might still exist. Somewhere.”

“So what? You want to open a chasm that would swallow the whole time space?” Ernest didn’t answer. “You do,” Moira said, her eyes going wide. “Ernest, that’s insane.”

“Maybe. But maybe not.”

“No. It is. That’s just a theory anyway. What if you’re wrong? Who knows what kind of damage you’d be doing.”

“But what if I’m right? I was right about you, wasn’t I?” He put his hand over her mouth playfully as she tried to protest again. “Say I was right in this case. How would you do it?”

She eyed him suspiciously before deciding to humor him. “I suppose… I suppose it would require another change to the past. A big one this time. But that’s dangerous. You never know what the consequences will be. You can’t control it.”

It was the same way with the present. You never knew the future you were creating with your actions. As Azrael had always said, living was the most dangerous thing.

“But if you could?”

Moira looked at him intently. “Ernest, what are you planning?”

His eyes slid to the left evasively. “Nothing.”

“Ernest…”

“Nothing yet. I’m still working it out.” He stood up, still holding on to her hand, and pulled her to her feet after him. “Are you hungry? I can make something.”

She wanted to press him but didn’t want to argue.

This was progress. She relented, nodding at him.

He stepped toward her and kissed her softly on the lips.

A real, lingering kiss. Neither heated nor distant, as all his others had been.

She kissed him back, quieting her apprehensions, and followed him inside.

Ernest used the last of the bread to toast sandwiches on the stove. They were running out of time, but neither was ready to acknowledge it yet. Eventually, as Moira had known it would, talk turned again to Amelia.

“Why was Jack so insistent on getting Amelia involved?” Ernest asked.

Moira tensed, not wanting another argument.

“He had theories about her,” she said. “He always suspected that I wasn’t telling the truth when I told him she had died.

Insinuated that he knew I’d put her in a memory.

There was no way he could have known which one, so I thought as long as I did as he asked, he wouldn’t go looking for her.

But then Amelia remembered something I had attempted to erase, years ago when you brought her to the office, and I realized it too late.

Jack saw your ‘death’ as an opportunity to test me and decided to get her involved.

Threatened to have her locked away like he did to me when I first got out of the time space.

So we sent her in to find the book. The TRP has been looking for it and I hoped that if she found it, it would help explain things. ”

“But how did Amelia remember what you’d tried to erase?” Ernest asked as he handed her a plate. “I don’t understand that.”

“The theory is that Amelia is untethered from Time even more than I am. I merely lived inside the time space, but she was born there. She can remember things I’ve erased.

Can move along her own temporal plane. I saw her do it the first time she wound your watch.

She is exempt from the ordinary forward limits of Time, almost like she exists separately from it altogether. ”

He pondered this for some time. Moira could sense him mulling it over, even as talk turned to other things.

They finished eating and he left to go take a shower, kissing her in that lingering gentle way he had before.

In his absence, Moira stood up to fiddle with the radiator, which had shut off yet again.

Her eyes fell on the notes Ernest had strewn across the table.

The black notebook he kept with him even when sleeping.

Curious as to what he’d been doing, she glanced at the bedroom door, listening to make sure he was in the shower before opening the book.

S HE WAS waiting for him when he finished. She stood in the middle of the bedroom, her arms folded over the black notebook, chewing her lip anxiously. He stepped out of the bathroom with the towel still wrapped around his waist. He jumped when he saw her.

“Do you enjoy scaring the daylights out of me?” he asked, laughing until he noticed the book. “Why do you have that?”

“Don’t do it,” Moira said firmly.

“What?”

“What you’re planning. Don’t do it.”

His eyes flickered down to the book in her hands, then back up to her face. He looked mildly impressed that she’d been able to piece together his chicken scratch notes, but mostly he looked guilty.

“You were going to do it without telling me, weren’t you?” she said sharply. “That’s why you were asking about Amelia.”

He bit his lip. “I had to be certain she would be okay,” he admitted.

She stared at him in horror. “You still intend to do it.”

He gave her a long, heavy look. “It’s the only option, Lisavet.”

“No, it isn’t. It can’t be.”