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“We guarantee nothing, except dinosaurs.”
While it wasn't a particularly reassuring line to hear, when the time for a Jurassic safari was rapidly approaching. Granted, their job was quite easy, all things considered. But it wasn't the job, really, as much as it was the people accompanying them.
“Remember, watch the arm, okay? Just because they could speed up the process doesn't mean you should be swinging heavy things around with a cast around one of your limbs.”
One of their parents’ old friends, Gabriel, reminded them as he made sure for the third time they had everything they needed. They were certain his wife had helped him rehearse for most of that paragraph, considering despite his efforts it was pretty easy to see he was concerned, shuffling through their trusty satchel to make absolutely certain it had everything they would need in there.
“I know, I'll be fine. I'm not the one doing much of anything, anyway. It's just a safari into the jungle. Nothing bad can happen so long as we stay on the Path.”
They brushed him off, getting him to halt his scrutiny as they closed their bag, the metal bits that clipped together so the top flap remained over everything within making a familiar snap. It was decently old at this point, especially for the year 2055, but they liked it. It wasn't too big, authorized on their journeys as long as they kept it in the time machine, wrapped in some special casing that kept it from making contact with anything in the past, and only opened it when the time machine was closed, and had plenty of space.
“..Stay safe.”
Cam blinked, just then noticing how Simcoe as they knew him, or some parental name they called him, either teasingly or affectionately, had approached the two of them, with a simple nod in response being all they could give him before they were signaled to join the hunting party in the time machine, waving at the two of them with their right arm, the one that wasn't broken, before trotting to join their colleagues as well as the hunters paying for the safari into the time machine.
Cam's thoughts drifted as the time machine jostled and hopped as they went on back through time. They were essentially an intern at Time Safari, but they were also Travis, the Safari Leader's apprentice assistant. They hadn't been in the position for very long, and yet they had already seen sights most men wouldn't even hear of within their lifetime, taken under the wing of Travis’s then assistant, Lesperance, and taught how carefully and well done the job had to be done. The sights were unlike any other, except for maybe in movies.
Large dinosaurs, formidable, jaws filled to the brim with teeth capable of crunching down on any prey it so pleased, though those were the carnivores, the kind of quarry for an experienced hunter. A man of much less caliber and experience would likely faint at the prospect of such a creature. So there were also the herbivores, often spotted searching for food that was no longer growing, or eating it as they were taken down minutes before their scheduled death with the aggressive sound of gunfire.
The sights were one thing, but the careful precision the job required was another thing entirely. They had to stay on the Path, always, Lesperance constantly reminded them as they carefully tracked potential prey for a safari. If they were to step off the Path, there were severe consequences awaiting them beyond what could possibly happen in the future if they were to accidentally alter something in the distant past. They didn't want to think of it, so they simply followed the rules as closely as possible.
The time machine journey, while jumpy throughout, and most likely concerning or anxiety inducing for first timers, was a routine they had gotten used to, something as simple and familiar as a car ride, or climbing out of bed in the morning, though it still unsettled a deep part within them. All the risks that came with it, and yet they did it anyway. They watched prehistoric creatures and present day men alike die before their eyes in a blur of fresh blood and quick gunshots. Sometimes they marveled at how they were still alive. And how long would such luck last?
Cam’s thoughts paused when they were instructed to put on their gear, the oxygen helmet fitting as it normally did around their head as they prepared to leave their satchel in the time machine, wrapped as it should be to prevent any sort of contact with the Jurassic era. Before they did, they snuck a quick glance at the picture they kept neatly tucked within one of its pockets.
It was a film picture, another incredibly ancient thing of technology that existed long before they were born, but Cam liked the history older technology told. This particular picture was on one of their earlier birthdays, the friends that were essentially family all surrounding them in a warm, familiar bundle of love. It was enough to make them smile before they closed up their satchel once again.
There were three hunters on the Safari with Travis and Lesperance as the leaders, well acquainted with Jurassic era expeditions. Billings, Kramer, and Eckels. They used to have a hard time with names, but getting a job like this, they didn't find it as hard to recall the names of many anymore. Some of those names were chiseled into their skull as well as the memory of blasts coming from the guns around them, like an engraving on an epitaph. A terrible, terrible engraving that sent shudders down their spine, but an engraving nonetheless. Names were less difficult to remember when you knew the face it belonged to, frozen in time.
The only reason they managed to get such a job and keep it without protest from the others in their life, was because they omitted certain things. They said they were just an intern, never getting too close to the hunts themselves whenever they went through time and space to watch what they did. They were glad they never questioned them too much. They probably wouldn't be able to keep as much hidden as they did if they did.
The others were talking, and they recognized the familiar spiel of Travis explaining the importance of staying on the Path as they looked out to what was outside of the time machine. The Jurassic period, right before their eyes once again. The era when dinosaurs roamed the earth and no one they had ever known and loved was around yet. That was the main thing that frightened them into following the rules. The slightest slip up and they could have someone completely different in their life. Or, simply no one at all.
As they stepped onto the familiar floating metal Path and trailed alongside Lesperance, their thoughts drifted as their superior explained what his job entailed, silently observing and recognizing the things in the ancient jungle, the land long before their own time.
There was a bird sitting in a tree nearby, but with the enormous size of the trees, much larger than even the redwood trees of the present day, the world around them made them feel tinier than ants, and they imagined they did. It was incredible, the size difference between then and now. They themselves were hardly guaranteed they would make it back from these Safaris alive and entirely able bodied, and even still, they couldn't help but marvel in awe at just how vibrant and alive everything seemed back then.
As the journey moved on, the T-Rex the hunters were hunting appeared right on schedule, the large formidable reptile incredibly frightening, large enough to blot out the sun and make less men quake and tremble in its presence. And that was what one of the hunters did. He was frozen in place, like a baby bunny staring up at a wolf poised to devour its soft flesh and ripe and gore it to pieces. Maybe that was what he had been imagining at that moment. His own mortal form, all blood and gore, bones snapping and tendons splitting apart under the strength of the teeth that lined the Tyrannosaurus’ mouth.
“Cam!”
The gunfire had already started, the prehistoric king of the jungle roaring in what might've been pain, anger, or a mixture of both, when Lesperance caught their attention, gesturing at the still frozen man amongst them as the shots continued to fire.
They quickly moved, trying to get Eckels back down to this plane of existence as they shoved him back down the Path and back toward the time machine, the man moving much quicker and mechanically than they thought he would, which resulted in them slipping and falling onto the textured metal of the Path and onto their casted arm, a gasp of pain leaving them before they got up to catch up to Eckels, who was still moving, so filled with fear he hardly knew how to move his own body.
They froze against their own will when they saw it. A butterfly. A small, delicate thing, its wings covered in iridescent, practically glistening greens and golds. It fluttered through the air as though gravity was of no importance to it. And then, Eckels, still partially paralyzed by fear, stepped off the Path, and onto the small creature, the soft dirt of the prehistoric earth sticking to his boots as he kept moving.
They inhaled sharply, a chilling fear like no other, not even the sight of a butterfly enough to make them feel terror the way they had in that moment. They heard themself screaming at him to get back onto the Path, though their heart was beating so loud they were afraid their screams were hardly audible over it and the sound of the T-Rex roaring loud enough to shake the earth.
By the time they had finally made it back to the time machine, they couldn't find it in themself to be relieved, their heart still pounding as they watched Eckels sink down to the floor, trembling like a frightened child. They had been that way once. Cowering in fear from things that seemed so formidable in the moment.
“The Path.. you stepped off the Path. You stepped on a butterfly.”
“Do you know what this means? What it could mean?” Left unsaid, dropped from their tongue the second the man glared at them in a manner they could only describe as apathetic.
“So?”
Their fear and anxiety nearly fell away, melted like snow on a warm morning and replaced with a boiling anger.
“”So?” That's all you have to say? Do you know what you've just done?! That butterfly could've been the reason anyone we've ever known lived to today, and you've just, squashed it!”
They couldn't find the energy to be even angrier. Now, their head just hurt. With the panic, the fear, the noise that had now died down outside the time machine. The butterfly, likely dead on the underside of Eckels' boot. All of it made their head hurt. They just wanted to be home. The home that might not even exist because someone had stepped on a butterfly in the Jurassic era. If they had thought about it too hard, they might've laughed at how comedic the mere concept was.
As the others arrived, Travis was understandably angry, with Lesperance trying to get him to calm down as he yelled for Eckels to get out of the time machine and remain in the Jurassic age. Even when Eckels tried to bargain to be able to go back to the past, he wasn't too satisfied at being required to grab the bullets left on the creature’s corpse. And while they might've protested if they hadn't seen what they had, might've said Travis was taking it a little too far, all that mattered to them was informing their superiors of what had happened. That was what they were supposed to do, after all. Their ears felt stuffed with cotton and static as they tried to speak up.
“We're going to be fucking ruined for this. Not once, no matter how many men have died, nor how many dinosaurs they've taken down has anyone ever stepped off the Path!”
“Um..”
“Travis, it's already been done, and there's nothing more we can do about it.”
Their heart was still thudding in their ears like thunder moments before lighting strikes, feeling like there were an invisible barrier keeping them separate from the others within the time machine as they cleaned up.
“Guys…”
“We should just leave him here. The damned fool nearly got us and himself killed thinking he could take down game like that until the last minute.”
Travis's expression was ablaze with fury, rage he needed to channel somewhere, onto the source of all their issues. But Lesperance was right. It had all already been done. They had a time machine, that was for certain, but trying to alter the part of the past that had just been written could, for all accounts and purposes, cause a time paradox. Those were incredibly dangerous. No one wanted to draw anywhere near those things.
“Travis, that would only make things worse. He would affect the past and present as we know it so much more if he were to stay here. If he was staying here, maybe all we'd come back to in the present would be a wasteland, or a world so unfamiliar we've never thought of it possible.”
“I um.. I saw something.. when he stepped off the Path…”
While the other two hunters left in the time machine were still cleaning up, looking rather queasy, Lesperance and Travis immediately focused their attention on Cam when they had spoken up.
“You saw something? What was it, kid?”
They swallowed thickly, the air in their lungs feeling like ash as they forced the explanation out.
“Eckels, when he.. when he stepped off the Path… he stepped on a butterfly.”
Their heart quaked within their chest again, their ribs practically vibrating as they realized their satchel wasn't in the time machine where it should've been.
Travis seemed to only get angrier at the knowledge, clearly seriously considering leaving the man behind even after he had collected the bullets, but letting him collapse onto the floor of the time machine holding the bullets he had collected regardless.
Lesperance mumbled something about not having to make him do what he had as Cam nudged Eckels, the small rise and fall of his shoulders a sign he was breathing and enough for them to determine he was still alive. They stood back up and wrung out their hands, their head feeling full of static as they tried to ignore the churning in their stomach.
When they returned, Travis quickly asked the official at the desk if everything was alright. Everything seemed fine. The same. At least it appeared to be the case. Everything didn't quite feel the same, however.
They pat at their side, remembering their satchel wasn't there because it had disappeared. They'd been too busy trying to come down from the high of panic to be too concerned or focused on why it might've been missing.
With a mere cursory glance, one could tell the room was essentially the same. And yet different from when they left. But the sign on one of the walls had changed.
TYME SEFARI INC.
SEFARIS TU ANY YEER EN THE PAST
YU NAIM THE ANIMALL
WEE TAEK YU THAIR
YU SHOOT ITT
There was no way. It couldn't be possible. A tiny butterfly, capable of collapsing eons and ages of dominoes down to something so familiar as written language, everything shifting from the teensy difference in the past. They glanced back at the man who had caused it. The man to blame. He seemed just as startled, the panic quickly set into his face as he asked the official who had won the presidential election.
Deutscher. That man, out of all men. He spoke of him so highly compared to when they had left. They could hardly handle the disorienting feeling of the present being the same but so different at the same time.
In a panic, they pat their pockets down for the picture they kept on their person. They had more than one of those film pictures, in the case they either lost one, or something so catastrophic and nearly imperceptible happened such as this.
It was a photo of them on their birthday. But it wasn't the same as before. They were alone. Entirely alone, frozen in a moment of time, the loneliness deep and etched into their soul behind their eyes. They were alone now. Because of a butterfly. A butterfly, and an unimaginably foolish man.
Cam exhaled shakily, their heart thudding so loud in their ears the world around them was tuned out. Everything was gone, like the people they had known and loved before they had stepped into that damned time machine. Not the tears running down their face. Not the sound of the photo they held slipping through their trembling fingers and landing on the floor with faint flutter. Not even the sound of Travis firing his gun in what could've been a loud sound of thunder. In that moment, they wished they were the one he was pointing that gun at.