A dying man once told me that time was like a river of angry ants, devouring our flesh and pressing ever onward, down a path we can’t accurately predict, leaving a clear swath behind them.

While most of you can accept that part, it was the rest of it you’d have trouble with.

It’s when you start playing with time travel that the similarities really stick out. Just like with the ants, you can try to change the flow, but they just continue to climb over whatever you toss in. Sure, with a large enough obstruction, you might cause some of them to route around, but in the end, they’ll reconnect with the mass.

It really doesn’t matter what you throw at them, they’ll continue to move forward, endlessly.

His final warning was to avoid anything that might create one of those damn ant balls. I can only guess he meant a time loop.

Of course, given that he was me, I’m pretty sure he knew his advice was likely to be passed down ineffectually when I became him, watching me fail to understand the lessons that we shared.