I broke the first rule of Time Team.

I doubted myself.

But I was so mortified, I had no choice. I had to come back.

What happens this Friday night can not happen again. I've gone through the protocols - the precog modeling, the existential Madonna drawings, deep-root and flower analysis, and everything points to a re-do. I get to do this over.

I did not take this to the executive committee because I had to act quickly. I had to come back to today - immediately - if all the pieces are to remain in place.

Or, their new places.

I am keeping this log as evidence to the future that my actions were necessary.

There are three basic time travel dynamics for the past.

1) I can go back to see the dinosaurs, or Hitler, or whatever.

2) I can go back and see my birth, or myself at any age.

3) I can go back and become myself.

Option three is most simple (and the first one you learn). It's got a big POV anchor, and it gets rid of the Witness Problem.

The thing is, you're going to change stuff, no matter what. And when you're visiting your own timeline, that means there will be two of you - one that saw the change, and one that lived it.

Creating such duplicates can be problematic.

But when you go back and become yourself - inhabit the body you were at the time - that means that there's only one of you. You eliminate the witness to what you've changed. There's only one of you.

Only one of me.

No one else will have ever seen what I've seen - I will have bent all of time around it.

My date with Kyle. Friday night.

I am biding my time. Everything is memory. It's not quite just "going through the motions," because I need to make sure I'm going through exactly the right motions.

It would probably be better if I didn't really think about it. But I can't.

"Hi Morgan! See you at lunch today?"

"You bet, Taylor!"

I know that's not going to work out at all, but it's what I said.

Everything else... it's like having deja-vu, 24/7. Except not constipated. I really do know the full content of that short story we're about to read in Etruscan. I breathe the cold air through my nose as I walk between classes. I can see the mistakes I'm making on my temporal Caratheodory's extension quiz, but I don't fix my answers to get them right. I'm only back here to change one thing, and it's not my spacetime mathematics grade.

My "date" tomorrow isn't even set at this time. Kyle and I meet up at the Transitive Nightfall of Diamonds event tomorrow night at the observatory. "Randomly." "Accidentally." I know it's going to happen, and it's not like there are big "signs" or anything. I just have to walk the straight line to it.

And undo what I've done.

Tonight was the night. I headed over to Samkhya Observatory after dinner, to take in the Transitive Nightfall of Diamonds event. Can't even remember why I originally decided to go. It only happens every 947 years. Maybe it had something to do with that.

But this time, I knew what was coming. And facing it was the whole reason I was here.

I was on the big stone patio, near the ledge, by the wall. Over the wall, you couldn't even see bottom in the dark.

That's when I felt the first movement inside my purse.

This time it didn't surprise me, but it was just as unnerving.

Then, Kyle. He appears out of nowhere and walks up to me. Alone. Just the two of us. A few other students are milling around, staking out a place to watch the sky. Hardly any clouds at all.

He starts talking to me. I've got to be careful not to finish his sentences for him. I'm twice as nervous this time around, and the squirming in my purse really doesn't help. I feel it snapping, biting at things.

I can tell Kyle's nervous too. He keeps making small talk. This time I can tell he's trying to work up to tell me something.

Meanwhile, the movement in my purse has become more regular, pulsating. A pumping little heart with a pulse of its own. It's distracting me terribly. The throbbing. The pounding.

Then, he says it. Exactly like before:

"You know, lately I've really been wanting to put on a pair of wax lips."

Time begins to slow down. Like it can anticipate the change I'm about to make, the dent of the gravity of the moment in the fabric of spacetime. Well, we know it does anticipate. Or maybe the temporal well around this moment was always here? Did I sense that the last time?

But I'm not making the same mistake this time around.

Instead, I reach into my purse, grab the wax lips, and hand them to him.

"Like these?"

Tonight was the first night of the rest of my life.

The first time around, I didn't hand Kyle the wax lips. And I couldn't tell you why. Nerves? Shyness? Feeling stupid for carrying that old pair of wax lips around with me and not wanting to admit it? Yeah, that last one sounds about right.

But I did the long term modelling, and ran simulation after simulation in the Reality Generators, and aside from it just feeling "wrong" the next day, things would have gone really, really wrong if I had never changed what I did. If I had never handed Kyle those wax lips.

There was the time spent in the Marines. Then the law degree, the meteoric career, the governorship, and finally the White House.

Left on their own, those wax lips rose all the way to the Oval Office.

And the nuclear launch codes.

What turned those lips so bad? Made them so driven to succeed at every level, but with the annihilation of all life on earth as their one true goal?

I think it was the absence of love. I'd had those lips in my purse since last Halloween, with frankly no intention of putting them on. Ever.

But Kyle, bless his heart, with his youthful high spirits, his floppy blonde mop. He offered those wax lips the one thing that made all the difference.

The sweet caress of his own lips against theirs.

Now I can get on with my life again. And frankly, we all can.

You're welcome.

I hope this log serves as evidence that my actions were necessary.

To: @Jessica Moon

I've run the models, and a time-stream rewrite just isn't possible - the fabric of time is too weak, following all the work @Nova Toaster did at the dance. The only way out of this one is through it.

Give 'em hell, kid!