SF Flash Fiction: The Watcher

Some people read the news on their lunch break, but I know the news is just the first draft of history, and my job is the final draft. I’ve read every single Marvel Comic book ever printed over three centuries worth of coffee breaks. You might think that a frivolous way to spend one’s free time, but I get enough real life in my regular work that I’m allowed this bit of escapism. People who understand invariably ask me who my favorite superhero is, and I answer, “The Watcher.”

Whenever something big was going to happen in the Marvel Universe, the Watcher would appear, this giant alien bald guy in robes. He didn’t do anything; he was only there to watch. There were a few single-shot issues given to the Watcher, but you can probably understand that there wasn’t much demand for stories about a guy who stands stoically and observes great events in time, never getting involved.

I admire the Watcher, his resolve, as I spend my days at the chronoscope, sifting through the moments of history. My job is generating digital archives of historical events, and it took decades of training to get certified to use it. There are ways to hack the chronoscope or use it clumsily enough, that one might disturb history, and so we few professionals process requests from academic institutions, historians, and scholars for digital facsimiles of time periods and events.

Most of this is very rewarding, the moments of discovery, evolution, revolution, and improving quality of life all the way up to our own times. I love researching these best of times, and, for the most part, it is the most constructive periods that historians are interested in.

But sometimes not, and I haven’t slept for days for what I saw recently. I sat through the reign of Caligula, the Spanish Inquisition, and Adolf Hitler with clinical detachment, but this chance incident, not even part of my assignment, has wrecked me.

I know why I followed her story out of the village, because she looked like my daughter. I didn’t know where it would go, or how quickly it would end at the hands of those bandits. I watched the body vanish, decaying into the field without anyone ever finding it until I happened upon it 3,000 years later looking through a portal in time.

Masochistically, I watched it over and over in horror. Hoping that somehow through the Heissenberg principle, the photons from my observations might somehow alter the outcome. Such a senseless loss, committed by a few thugs who would die without leaving any measurable consequence on the world on a girl who hardly anyone would notice was gone.

Really, if you think about it, the Watcher was affecting the outcome of events. By the mere act of showing up, he signaled to the superheroes that big things were about to happen. The heroes knew they were being watched. If those bandits only knew I was watching them, recording their actions for future generations, their great grandchildren to the hundredth power to witness, they might have shown mercy and dignity. How we behave when we think no one’s watching, that’s our true character.

I could change that moment in ancient history, just that one moment so that she could live. But I mustn’t think like that. It’s a momentary shock, and time will help me overcome it. Until then, I’ll lay awake at night, and pray for the strength of the Watcher.