Mother of Learning. Arc 3 Incomplete

«You actually tell them you’re a time traveler?» asked Zorian incredulously. He didn’t know whether to laugh or bang his head against the table.

«Yeah,» confirmed Zach. «What’s the worst that could happen?»

Zorian felt a pang of phantom pain in his chest where, in another timeline, a masked assassin stabbed him through and killed him. Did Zach honestly never experience consequences like that when trying to convince people of his story? Then again, he said he tried to convince them he was a time traveler, not that he told them about the invasion. In fact, he didn’t actually tell Zorian about that either — he danced around the topic whenever Zorian tried to lead the conversation in that particular direction.

«This could have all been avoided if you just held back a little in classes,» Zorian sighed.

«I kind of like the attention,» Zach admitted.

«Really?» asked Zorian. «I’m only going through this once and I’m already sick of it. You’re saying the novelty of all that attention still hasn’t worn off after, what, more than a decade?»

«Oh come on, do you really think I spend these reverts attending classes, of all things?» scoffed Zach. «That got seriously old after the third revert or so. I spend most of the time doing my own thing. Hell, usually I’m not even near Cyoria! I only attend the classes when I want to relax or when I am feeling nostalgic. The only reason why I’m here right now is because I got kind of roughed up in my last revert and I’m still trying to sort out the holes in my memory. Oh, and because you’ve kind of caught my interest.»

«Why did I catch your interest, though?» asked Zorian. «Not that I’m complaining or anything, but how come you’re willing to invest so much time in me? Isn’t it all going to be useless in the next revert?»

«That’s a pretty cold way of thinking about things,» Zach said. «I don’t really think like that. I’ve tried to get to know all of our classmates in these reverts, even though some of them were pretty uncooperative with the idea, and I’ve never thought of it as a waste of time. This is the first time I’ve gotten you this friendly, and I have no idea what exactly I did to cause that. It’s best to make use of it while I can.»

Now he was starting to feel pretty bad. Not only had he never tried to get to know any of his classmates during the reverts, the idea had never even occurred to him. And this wasn’t the first time Zach had insinuated that Zorian was kind of a jerk to him in the past. Just what had happened between Zach and past-Zorian to leave that much of an impression?

«I see,» said Zorian uncertainly, not knowing how to respond to that.

«I really do wonder about you, though,» Zach continued. «You’re so different from the Zorian I knew, I’m starting to wonder if you’re really the same person.»

«Who else would I be?» asked Zorian, honestly at a loss as to where Zach was going with this. He didn’t appear to have figured out that Zorian was ‘reverting’, as he would say, so what was he getting at?

«I think I may have shifted timelines, or something,» Zach said.

Zorian gave him an incredulous look. Shifted timelines? That’s his explanation? Really? Really really? He almost revealed himself right then and there, just so he could tell him how silly that was. Almost.

«Or something,» deadpanned Zorian.

«Whaaat?» protested Zach. «It could happen. Do you know how temporal mechanics work? No? Didn’t think so.»

«I did look up a couple of books about time travel after our first meeting,» said Zorian. It was a lie, of course, but only a small one — he had sifted through time travel related texts, just not in this particular restart.

«And learned nothing,» concluded Zach. «It’s a total wasteland. All they write about is about various ethical dilemmas and time paradoxes and whatnot. That was the first and last time I set foot in the academy library, let me tell you.»

Zorian gave him a strange look. «That was a joke, right?»

«Which part?» Zach asked.

«The part where you only visited the academy library once,» clarified Zorian.

«Err, well…» tried Zach, chuckling nervously. «What can I say? I don’t really like to read…»

Zorian stared at Zach, wondering if the boy was pulling his leg. He would totally understand if the old Zach, the one he knew before the time loop, told him he never set foot in the library. He wouldn’t be terribly unique in that regard — lots of students never visited the library before their third year, since they couldn’t access the spell repository before their certification, anyway. But this Zach had lived through this month over 200 times, and had access to the spells buried within its depths. And he never tried to search through it. Because he didn’t like to read.

The mind boggled. Well, Zorian’s mind boggled.

«You’ve clearly read our textbooks,» Zorian noted. «There’s no way you’d excel as well as you do otherwise.»

«Yeah, well, I didn’t say I don’t read at all,» Zach countered. «Just that I’d rather avoid it if I can. I learn much better by example anyway.»