History: "Fragmented Paths"

 

Fragmented Paths

Dr. Aline Knorr was a brilliant neuroscientist who had dedicated her life to unraveling the mysteries of the human mind. Together with her assistant Esther, a passionate young researcher, they had been working on an experimental project that combined the study of brain frequencies and concentration. What began as an investigation into different neural states had taken an unexpected turn towards a deeper discovery.

During a routine session in the laboratory, Aline was adjusting the scales to measure the brain frequency of a test subject, when something strange occurred in the device intended to measure brain activity.

The results did not match the expected patterns. Esther, sitting next to the patient, was watching the screen cautiously when she whispered to Dr. Knorr : "Look at those spikes, Aline... they are not normal. The brain resonance is outside of what we have recorded so far." 

Aline stared at the screen . "I know... But there's something here. It's like the waves are responding to something else... something more external than the subject's concentration. We're going to repeat the experiment, but this time we'll set the frequency generator to maximum resonance. I want to see what happens when it reaches the limit."

Esther agreed and adjusted the generator. They both watched in silence as the subject's brain waves aligned with the new frequency. Suddenly, the readings changed dramatically, showing completely unknown patterns at a very high frequency.

Aline said quietly, almost to herself , "This isn't just normal brain activity... It seems we're picking up something else."

Esther looked on in amazement . “Aline, do you know what this means? “It's unlike anything we've seen in previous measurements.”

Aline was excited and answered very quietly to avoid upsetting Frank, the test subject whose brain they were studying - "Esther, I think Frank has come into contact with a higher plane of consciousness. Do you remember the theory of superconsciousness? The concept that all minds are linked at a deeper level, beyond time and space..." -

Esther was perplexed - "Yes, but that's just speculative theory. Are you saying that Frank found a way to access that plane?" -

Aline said , "It seems so. What we're seeing here isn't simply Frank's mind activity in the present. If that's what I'm saying... it's as if his brain waves are interacting with his own versions of the past. The superconsciousness works on timeless planes. If I'm right, Frank could be sending thoughts, intentions... into the past... into the superconsciousness."

Esther frowned, doubtful . “Sending thoughts back in time? That sounds… impossible, Aline. How could something like that work without breaking every law we know of?”

Aline smiled with a mix of excitement and fear . “That’s also where quantum physics reigns. At the most fundamental level of superconsciousness, time is not linear, it’s a series of probabilities. If consciousness can navigate that space… it could influence past events. What I’m suggesting is that our minds, through superconsciousness, may be able to alter the past. Think about what this means: we could rewrite decisions, modify the course of our current lives to better standards.”

Esther stepped back a little, impressed but uneasy. "It's fascinating, but also dangerous. If we change something in the past, what would happen to our present? How would we control paradoxes?"

Frank, the test subject, seemed to come out of the deep trance he was experiencing as his brain waves returned to normal waking state. Both Aline and Esther watched him with curiosity. Once the man was conscious and awake, he sat up from the table. Dr. Knorr and her assistant set about removing the sensors and probes attached to different parts of his body.

She didn't want to influence the man's observations, so Aline asked him casually, trying not to sound nervous. "So, Frank? How's your meditation going?"

Frank stretched out in satisfaction, as if he had been sleeping for a long time . "Excellent, doctor! For the first time since you studied me, I reached a state of deep meditation... I managed to locate my Akashic records." The man seemed excited.

Aline confirmed - "We saw something different today in the brain waves. Something we didn't see in the previous sessions." She didn't want to be more specific. - "Tell me, Frank, what did you do with your Akashic records?"

Frank replied as the last electrodes were being removed from his arms - "Well, nothing unusual. I tried to open them up, look for what was bothering me and somehow draw conclusions and see how the problem would go away... the usual." He made a small movement with his shoulders.

If Aline and Esther's conclusions were correct, then it was precisely man's contact with these Akashic records that was what scientists called the superconsciousness. To make contact with it was to reach the collective unconscious of psychiatrists, which governed the basic morphology of human thoughts. And above all, it connected living beings in a space outside the material reality of three dimensions and operated outside of time.

If all had gone well, Frank, through interaction with the superconsciousness, should have operated on his problems in the immediate past and generated changes that would somehow modify his present.

Now came the important part: they would compare his vital signs before the meditation with his current vital signs to see if the change had taken place. Aline waited anxiously while Esther took the new parameters. Frank's blood pressure had dropped slightly, his heart rate had decreased by five percent. His muscle tone had relaxed by ten percent. The rest of the parameters remained the same and stable.

Esther knew that this research had special value for Aline.

Dr. Knorr had spent years trapped in a loveless marriage, where the initial glow of the relationship had long since faded. Although she deeply loved her two children, the weight of unhappiness she felt with her husband was suffocating her. What tormented the researcher most was not the present, but a persistent question she had never been able to silence: what would have happened if she had not left Roger, her boyfriend?

Roger had been her youthful boyfriend, the man who had made her feel complete, understood and loved. They had separated for reasons that at the time seemed insurmountable: divergent life goals and professional dreams that led them down different paths.

Then Aline met her future husband, a stable and reliable man, but over time he had lost his passion and connection. The affection she had once felt for him had dissolved into routine and indifference. Doubts and regrets about her relationship with Roger had begun to blossom like shadows she could not ignore.

That all changed the day Aline made a groundbreaking discovery in her lab. As a neuroscientist, she was one of the most brilliant minds of her generation, and together with her young assistant Esther, they had been investigating the limits of human consciousness. In the midst of an experiment with brain frequencies and quantum theories of time, Aline had accidentally unlocked a technique that apparently allowed people to send thoughts into the past – more specifically, to their past selves who were part of what scientists had begun to call “Superconsciousness . ”

This technique not only allowed her to communicate with previous versions of herself, but also to influence her past decisions to modify the present. Aline immediately understood the power she had in her hands, and the temptation was impossible to resist. What if she could change that one decision that had ruined her life? What would have become of her life if she had chosen to stay with Roger, the love of her life?

Sitting in the lab, with the lights dimmed and their brain waves synchronized, Aline breathed deeply. Esther watched from a corner, worried. After the initial success with Frank, Dr. Knorr did not want to waste any more time and had decided to become a guinea pig for her own research.

Esther asked for the umpteenth time - "Aline, are you sure about this? You know we can't foresee the consequences."

Aline stared into space as she reflected on her own life. She replied , “I can’t keep wondering ‘ what if… ’. I can’t keep living with that doubt. I have to try.”

The device was ready, her brain waves said that her consciousness was about to integrate into the superconsciousness, into that space where time was an eternal present. Aline fixed her mind on the exact moment: the day she met her current husband, twenty years ago. If she could influence her past self to reject that encounter, she could try to rebuild her relationship with Roger.

The machine hummed softly as the process began. Aline closed her eyes and concentrated, sending a single thought to her younger self: "Don't choose him. Stay with Roger ." She applied the same technique that Frank had used just a couple of days before. Her body began to relax as she felt the sensation of everything spinning around her. Somehow, she felt her consciousness recede and a sensation of walking through a tunnel backwards made her feel like she was being drawn into superconsciousness. Time seemed to have stopped as external stimuli slowly faded away. The last thing she felt before total blackness enveloped her were Esther's words that barely reached her as whispers entering her mind.

She had no notion of the time that had passed. When Aline opened her eyes, she immediately realized that something had changed. She was home, but the atmosphere was different. The walls that had been decorated with photos of her family now displayed images of her and Roger. Her heart skipped a beat. "I've done it ," she thought.

She walked down the stairs and saw him. There was Roger, his hair a little grayer, but the same warm smile. Memories began to reorganize in her mind: how they had stayed together, how they got married and built a life. She felt happy, at peace, until her children entered the room. But something wasn't right.

They were different.

The two children looking at her did not seem to be her children. They were others. Different features, different personalities, different names. A void opened in her chest. She realized that her family was no longer the same. She had lost them. By changing her past, she had also changed the nature of the children she knew and loved. Her happiness with Roger had erased the existence of her children.

Aline, devastated by the result, decided to try again. She called Esther, but it was unnecessary. They had already agreed to meet in the laboratory to perform the first time regression experiment on herself. It had only been a couple of days since Frank had tried it. Curious and strange . In this timeline, she would experience regression for the first time. But in her own timeline, today she would try it for the second time.

She spoke with Roger for a few minutes and then returned to the lab to adjust the device. Knowing that the method worked, she decided that this time, she would send a different thought, something that would lead her to keep her original children but also allow her to be with Roger. With Esther, they adjusted the frequencies, focusing on a new moment in the past, years after she met her husband, but before her children were born.

-"Don't leave Roger. Find a way to make the relationship work"- That was the message she sent to her younger self, hoping to find a balance between both worlds.

When she woke up again in the present, she found herself in a luxurious house, larger than the one before. Memories of her years with Roger flooded back into her mind: they were successful, financially stable, and most importantly, their children were there. But as she examined her new life, she began to notice small details that made her uneasy. Roger was not the same man she remembered from years ago.

Her husband was distant, cold, absorbed in work, and the connection they once shared was no longer there. As she looked back on her life with him, she found that even though they were together, he was never able to give her the same level of love and commitment that he once had. In this new present, although her children existed in the forms of her original children, her relationship with Roger had deteriorated in a different way, and the emotional emptiness she felt from the beginning was still present.

Desperate, Aline decided to try one more time. She didn't tell Esther that this would be the third attempt. She wasn't willing to accept any of these versions of her life. She told herself that this time she should find the perfect way to keep the original Roger, her beloved children, and the happiness she so longed for.

When she sent the last message to her past self, some problem in the equipment's electronics caused a short circuit, and as she was going back through the tunnel to connect to the superconsciousness, something in the machine caused an unexpected error. Timelines began to overlap in her mind, mixing fragments of memories from diverse pasts and divergent presents. Suddenly, her mind was entangled in multiple versions of her life. She was unable to determine which of the realities she saw was part of her timeline. In one, Roger was alive and with her, but her children did not exist; in another, her husband was still the same, but she could not remember Roger; in a third, her professional life was destroyed.

Reality began to fragment around her. She felt incapable of maintaining coherence. Through her analytical mind, Aline realized that, by trying to change the past and thus correct her present, the exquisite choreography of each of the components that made up her life was restructured, deformed or reconstructed. It was a labyrinth of crossroads that only allowed her to travel towards the future. She realized that she had completely lost her bearings. Her memories began to fade, her past and present life collapsed into a series of paradoxes that were impossible to reconcile.

Aline opened her eyes. She was in the lab, in the midst of preparations to begin the experiment… once again . Esther was busy programming the equipment. She sat up straight on the table and was silent for a moment, aware of the implications. The promise of changing her own life had begun to cloud her judgment. In her mind, a single question arose: What if this was not the way? Maybe the mistake was changing her husband. Maybe if she could change herself to transform all the decisions she considered wrong and that had tormented her in the last few years…

Aline said whispering to herself , "If I could talk to my twenty-year-old self... Change my own perspectives..."

Esther turned around worried - "Aline? What are you talking about?" -

Aline stood up from the stretcher as she removed the electrodes. She walked over to look out the laboratory window, her gaze lost.

She told Esther , "My marriage, Esther. I've spent years wondering if I made the right decision. Roger... he was the love of my life before I met my husband. I've always wondered what my life would have been like with him. If I had the chance to send a thought back and change that decision... everything would end up being different. But I would still be unhappy. There will always be wrong decisions."

Esther replied cautiously , "Aline, this could be dangerous. We don't know what consequences it could have. Playing with the past, even in small doses, could destroy what we know."

Aline, turning to her with determination - "I've realized that, Esther. If we have the power to correct our mistakes... is it worth risking what we've achieved?"

Esther takes a deep breath, aware of the moral dilemma Aline faces. Unaware that the experiment had already failed three times, and thinking that they were going to perform it for the first time that morning, she felt a chill run down her spine at the thought of what they were about to do.

Esther was serious as she said , "If you do this, Aline, there will be no turning back. And you have a lot to lose if something goes wrong."

Aline stopped looking out the window. She had her beloved children in the present, but she had been abandoned by her husband more than twelve months ago.

Aline finally said , "I'm not going to try."

Esther, visibly relieved, began to turn off the equipment.

On the desk, Aline's cell phone began to hum softly. It was an unknown number. Dr. Knorr decided to answer it. On the other end of the line, she recognized the voice of a ghost that had been haunting her for a long time. It was Roger .

END