He looks down at the body on the metal gurney, icy to the touch. Her beauty is perfect, like a rose in full bloom. He gently pulls the blanket over her face and slides her back into the locker. As he walks out, he pulls a wad of bills from his pocket, peels a few off without bothering to count, and hands them to the bemused coroner.
Outside, the sky is grey and lightning flashes in the distance. He shuffles over to his favorite bench and pulls the notebook out of his briefcase. He flips through dozens of pages, each lined with two filled columns, and finds his current spot. At the very bottom of the page, the first column reads:
Leave her a break-up letter and a ticket to Paris.
Wearily, he crosses out the line, writing in the second column:
Hit by a malfunctioning self-driving car at 2:09 PM while crossing the street to reach the airport.
His wristscreen flashes, a dozen unread notifications screaming silently for his attention. He ignores it for a moment, pulling out a wrinkled, torn newspaper next from his briefcase. He stares for a moment at the front page ad, laughing bitterly at his own foolishness, before letting it go in the wind. He then taps at his screen, and opens the interface of the only app left on his device. The date and time are displayed above a bright green button that simply reads GO. He scrolls the time and date back to three days ago. He taps the bright green button.
"That will be 80,000 credits. Your remaining balance is 3,244,123,012 credits. Would you like to proceed?"
He taps on the button to confirm.
Still thousands of chances more. Aria, my life, my song, we'll be together again.
He breathes deeply as a gentle golden light swirls around him for a nanosecond - then, he is gone. In the distance, the newspaper swirls, caught by a gust of air, before a gentleman next to a cardboard sign with a crudely written plea for help picks it up off the ground. The front page ad reads:
"If you have the credits, we have the time travel."
He is curious only for a moment - a man passes by, and he engages him in a conversation regarding the value of just a single dollar and how it could help him purchase a transit pass, the newspaper already forgotten, dancing away on the breeze.