If only... By Phil Stokoe He had read that it was called an 'unhealthy obsession'. but Pete didn't really believe that. He thought that it had dated back to six months ago when he had read in a local newspaper that the girl he had longed after in his school days had been killed in a car crash without him ever having told her exactly how he felt. On reflection, however, it went back much further and deeper than that. Really it was all Stephen King's fault. You see Pete was brilliant, he would never acknowledge that fact but he was. He was way beyond most other humans abilities, his IQ, if it had been measured, would be off the scale. It wasn't something to boast about...it was just a fact. A fact however that no-one knew about, not even Pete. He knew he was different, he just didn't know how. It was June, and six months earlier he had read that Sonia Smith had been killed outright in an horrific head on collision after her car had skidded on black ice. He remembered it as if it were yesterday. Pete always remembered everything. There were times he didn't know if it was a blessing or a curse. He had sat at the breakfast table and opened the newspaper to read the gory details of how Sonia had not stood a chance. The car had been going too fast, skidded and smashed straight through a shop front window. Sonia had been beheaded on impact. Every time he closed his eyes he could see it. The words that he had read were burned onto his brain and painted the most disturbing mental image. He could hear the smash of the glass, he could feel the short sharp pain of the glass slicing through his neck. Except that it wasn't him...it was Sonia, and she was gone. Six months he had spent thinking about her. That wasn't exactly true, he had spent the last ten years since school thinking about her. How different things could have been...if only...six little letters that spelt the biggest two words in the English Language...if only. It was during these last six months that he had brought to mind the story that he had read which was by Stephen King. The story was called 'Word Processor of the Gods'. Pete could recall every single word of it. How the Word Processor had the ability to make things happen...how what you typed on the screen could become real. How you could change the past, and bring people back. And so had been born the obsession. Pete hated what his life had become. He hated everything that he hadn't done with his life. The wasted chances, the missed opportunities, the dead-end jobs, but above all the fact that he had never plucked up the courage to tell Sonia exactly how he had felt...if only he could go back...if only. Then one day it came to him. It hit him like a flash of lightning right between the eyes. He had been sitting, brooding, listening to Kid Rock, ironically the song was called 'I Wanna Go Back', when it hit him with such force and intensity the he was blinded by the brilliance of it for almost five minutes. When his vision cleared he knew exactly what he had to do. He didn't know how he knew, he just knew that he did. He spent the next few hours beavering away in his spare room with heaps of parts from various household objects. A broken VCR had given up parts, his blender and clock radio had been cannibalised and he was working away furiously. Outside day had given way to dusk and eventually into night. Pete had been soldering, tinkering, building for 18 hours straight and still he kept going. Why not? He had nothing else to do, and no-one else to do it for, he had never married, he had never had children, he was an only child and all of his immediate family has passed away. How different his life could have been. For years he had read articles of regret and chances that had never been taken by people in magazines. He could always relate to them because he was one of them...but not any more. He was going to change, he would make a difference. In that one brief flash 18 hours earlier, for the first time in his 26 years on this planet, he saw everything clearly. He saw how his life was supposed to have been, the life he should have led...the life he was going to lead. The Stephen King story had planted the seed, and the Baseline of Kid Rock had watered it, and what had grown was the realisation that no-one had to settle for second best, everyone could make a difference, some moreso than others, but everyone had the ability to change their lives. Only Pete was equipped with the ability to do more about it than others. Morning came, and he was done. What stood before him was not polished, and it was not pretty. Pete didn't even know if it would work. If it did work, what were the implications? Pete didn't care, he knew that he had to do it. He could step into the light of the machine and be vaporised, or he could be left feeling incredibly stupid in his bedroom. Or, he could be about to cross the boundaries of time and space. He walked towards the light of the machine that he had laboured over. In that instant a thousand questions flashed across the front of his mind. Every Sci-Fi story he had read, every movie he had seen, a myriad of questions about time travel and the possible ramifications, the very fabric of existence could unravel, and that would be it. But he kept coming back to if only. He knew deep down that unless he tried those six little letters would plague his dreams for ever more, and, as if prodded by an invisible finger he steeped in and felt the warm light wash over his skin and he was gone. What happened?..Where did he go?..Did he die?..Where in time is he?..Questions, always questions, but some questions don't have any answers, we just have to accept that. What I will say however is this...I'm much happier now than I was back then. Back when?..Well, that's for me to know.