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Read The Mind-Blowing Time Travel Story Someone Wrote About A Random Picture Of Keanu Reeves

November 24, 2015

After someone posted a recent photo of Keanu Reeves eating pizza, comments poured in about how the 51 year-old has managed to stop the aging process.

One very creative commenter took it a step further, and wrote this mind-blowing short story about the random photo...

via imgur

The mistake... I'll never forget the look in his eyes when he walked back in the door.

For us, no time passed. It was instantaneous. Aging had been solved long ago, and in the year 2072 time travel was one of the only barriers left. And the launch was almost complete.

"He" volunteered to be sent ten minutes back in time, so we could test out causality. And we all saluted him for that.

He kissed his wife, told her everything would be fine, and stepped into the hyperlock chamber.

By the time I realized my mistake, it was too late: the wormhole was active.

That hole in spacetime wasn't going to send him back ten minutes. It was going to send him back ten thousand years. I raced to try to figure out how to stop it, but there was nothing I could do that wouldn't rip him apart.

As soon as he disappeared, I fell to my knees and began to cry. His wife rushed over and asked, "What, what happened!?"

"I sent him too far. I sent him ten thousand years," I cried, and then I realized that for all practical purposes it shouldn't matter. He wasn't going to die of old age; if he just managed to survive dying.... as insane as that sounded... he should be -

...and then he walked in the door. It had been a mere 20 seconds for us, but I saw eons in his eyes.

The man was changed. His physical body may not have aged, but his soul did. He had seen the rise of civilization and every awful war and tragedy our species had ever committed.

We were but children to the man who walked in the door.

But it was far worse. Imagine from his perspective, knowing that every breath you take might alter the future and change everything. The butterfly effect is real.

He lived ten thousand years aware that if he hid in the shadows he would die, and if he thrived he would alter the future. And yet he persevered, all in an effort to make it back to us, to his family, to his beloved wife.

He walked in the door and stared at us, as his wife screamed and ran to him, wrapping him in a hug.

He looked numb. He stared down at her and patted her on the back, and I saw a single tear roll down his eyes.

Then he bent down and kissed her on the hair.

Many years later, after all the restrictions and bans had been put on time travel we were drinking late into the night. We had nearly finished the bottle and I saw a sullen look in his eyes - it was the same look he had the moment he walked in that door after those ten thousand years.

I had often picked his brain for wisdom since then, so I presumed to try my luck once more on this occasion.

"Tell me," I urged.

He stared up at me with the most wretched stare I've ever seen from another human being. Tears fell freely down his cheeks.

"It's not her," he said.

"What?" I asked. "Who?"

"That woman I'm married to. That's not my wife. Regina, in this timeline, she was never born. She doesn't exist."

As the horror of the situation unfolded on me, I could only watch as this man who had lived hundreds of lifetimes buried his face in his hands and fell into the worst sobbing imaginable.

"She's gone. Everyone-" he said, but stopped.

What could I do? I took another sip of my rum and wrapped my arm around my friend in a hug. That's when it occured to me.

Maybe I wasn't his friend after all.

For those who are still trying to comprehend the brilliance of what just happened, here's a simplified explanation:

Tragic Traveler (T2 from here on out) got sent back in time by Team A (included his wife Regina). Something T2 did changed the future, so a new timeline is created where some group still had to invent time and send T2 back into it. So in said timeline a different group of people (Team B, with a version of him called Tragic Time Traveler AKA T3) invent time travel and send T3 back. T2 walks in 5 second later, remembering only Team A who no longer exist.

T2 returns it's to a room full of strangers who recognize him, but he doesn't know them, and in that moment he realizes he could either freak out or just accept it.

Years later with his "old friend" (Team B) T2 finally confesses that they aren't the people he left behind (Team A). The narrator realizes his sympathy didn't mean much to the guy because for all intents and purposes he's not the person that T2 knew him as from his timeline.

Horrifically enough, T3 will walk in right after Team C sends back T4 (Terribly Tragic Time Traveler) and experience the same horror, ad infinitum, until some law of time and space finally cracks and one version of him is crushed by a wayward jet engine.

Credit: americanpegasus