My gray walls rested within the realms of probability; that is, they existed, they were bounded in the temporal sturdiness of what one might call 'the present', I could feel them and I knew that they would feel the same every single time. The sole window told me it was day in my region of the simulacrum, with all the requisite notions of life existing somewhere between me and the sun to lend credence to that notion of the extemporaneity of life.
The only sound within was memorized mantra of stability: the only existing moment is now; the previous seconds are waves, the future seconds are storms; the present is the eye.
It was all I needed within my living space to rectify stability to my mind, which was still attempting to consolidate the knowledge of my previous two failures, all the steps I took, and how easily I failed the third time even when I was so close to preventing the deaths of millions.
But the singularity of existence will allow me to continue on. It will allow me one more chance, Golem willing, to prevent catastrophe. And if I could not, then they will find another from an untattered timeline, and turn him into their savior, leaving me to exist as a braindead mongrel in a time that shouldn't be.
'A war that never was', they always tell me. A war that never was but was now. The erasure of trillions of future humans that eventually led to the extinction of the species at the end of the universe; the Golem calls it 'the unfathomable genocide'. Even now, as I recite the mantra to myself, the Golem tells me the history of the unfathomable genocide from its light in the wall, the history I can recite word-for-word with it.
But the war, the truest incarnation of it, rests in the continued scars I receive, now three on my right shoulder. Three ticks for three failures, three cuts for three continually poor attempts to do my job to save the species.
I don't deserve a fourth.
Golem paused his recitation of the future history.
"Tailor 3712, your fourth excursion on case 40PD has been approved."
