[ WP ] You open your computer to a Word document that you do n't remember leaving open . In small font you read :

[ First ] ( https: //www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/54we3i/wp_youve_come_to_regret_faking_your_own_death/d8645pp ) - [ Previous ] ( https: //www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/54xzr8/wp_while_eating_your_favorite_dish_at_the_office/d8646ml ) 
 
 -- -- 
 
 > Dear Samantha, 
 
 > At the age of three, you had a stuffed animal named'Mr. Teddybar'. That spelling was n't intentional but you told everyone it was. It was actually a stuffed dragon toy that you insisted was a bear. 
 
 > The part that proves I'm you: You knew the entire time. You named him that way on purpose as a joke, and you never let anyone in on it. 
 
 I looked at the screen, pausing from what I'd just typed. When I'd appeared in my own office instead of the cafeteria I'd just vanished from, I had a moment of hope. Maybe whatever glitch had thrown me into an alternate universe had been fixed, maybe I'd been bumped back into my own world. That lasted until I'd opened the computer and looked at a document that I definitely had n't left open. 
 
 This universe's version of me apparently had a much more active imagination and a significant other she intended to share it with. Even if it was just another version of myself, it felt like prying to read the increasingly graphic details. 
 
 The other clue that this was not my home was the date and time: In this universe, the experiment had not yet taken place. In fact, it seemed like I had nearly a whole day of lead time. 
 
 This was n't time travel. Changing the fate of this Dr. Samantha MacGowran would n't change my own. But if I had the chance to create a timeline where I had n't stepped into that machine, should n't I? Countless timelines where that was exactly the case had to already exist, so my efforts would be a drop in the bucket at best, but.... 
 
 I could n't not do it. I could n't just let it go. 
 
 So I'd saved my counterpart's love letter off to somewhere I hoped she'd think to look later, and replaced the text with my own note: 
 
 > The experiment is both a success and a failure. It does transport you to another timeline. Unfortunately, the transition is both stable and unstable. The instability prevents you from staying in the world you end up in. The stability pushes you to another, seemingly random, timeline. 
 
 > I know that should n't be possible. Only a standing Chronokinetic wave would cause such a thing, and such a thing is contradictory by the math as we understand it. Clearly, we are wrong. 
 
 > In short: The machine is not safe. Examine the timelines clustered around 118b5ed9-fa53-41c6-b094-615176b39482 and you'll see the fallout from what's happened. 
 
 118b5ed9-fa53-41c6-b094-615176b39482 was n't my locator's full ID; as large a number as that was, it was n't nearly enough to start uniquely identifying all possible timelines, but it'd give my counterpart a place to start. 
 
 In my timeline, we'd done a cursory search of nearby timelines to see if disaster had fallen, and everything had seemed to work okay. I now realized that the successes we saw were the appearances of other timelines' Samanthas we had n't realized did n't belong. Without a heads-up, this timeline's version of me would likely make the same mistake. 
 
 `` Hey, we do n't have long,'' Alice said from behind me. I had n't heard her walking up to me, but given that she was a hologram this was to be expected. 
 
 `` Alice, give me some good news,'' I said. Alice was the person who kept the company running and one of my closest friends, and right now I needed her more as the latter than the former. 
 
 Alice, however, shook her head. `` No such luck, Sam. We're barely getting the hang of predicting how long you'll stay in a unverse, much less figuring out how to get you back. Sorry.'' 
 
 I sighed, but I had n't expected much else. I'd only been gone, what, a few hours at this point? `` How long do we have?'' 
 
 Alice looked down at her smartphone. `` Seconds, again. Sorry, locating you took most of the time we had. If we can find a universe where you stick around for longer, we might be able to come up with a plan, but...'' 
 
 `` You have no way of predicting that.'' I said. I gestured to the computer. `` At least we have one version of me who wo n't make the same mistake.'' 
 
 Alice glanced over the text. `` Mr. Teddybar?'' 
 
 `` Like you did n't have a stuffed pet as a kid?'' 
 
 Alice waved away the objection. `` Anyway, that was a good call, warning yourself. That means there's another version of you who'll have a head start on examining the problem. The whole 118b5ed9 and so on cluster is trying to work together on this, but we'll take all the help we can get.'' 
 
 At least the inter-timeline communication devices worked. 
 
 `` I just hope I can get some sleep at some point,'' I said. For this universe it was the middle of the day, but for me it was nearly midnight. 
 
 `` You've earned some rest, that's for sure,'' Alice said, watching her smartphone instead of me. `` But for now....'' she turned the smartphone around to face me, and I could see the last few seconds ticking away. 
 
 `` Bye,'' I said. I even waved before I vanished into the [ next universe ] ( https: //www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/55xnw8/wp_humanity_has_just_invented_interdimensional/d8epyc5 ). 
 

