Crone's hands were wrapped tightly around my throat. We'd been having . . . "issues" during this life. And the last one. I've lived many lives and died many deaths. My people are used to that. We started before time began. We were nothing, less than dust. We floated along with all the other stupid molecules bonding together and becoming something out of nothing. Eventually there was the spark of life and then the spark of consciousness. And that's where my memories begin, that's where I begin. And even from that first moment, even though we were in the lowest possible form of consciousness, we knew that we were different. We knew that we are immortal. We just keep going. We inhabit one body after another, traveling through time adding memory to memory, trying to make sense of it all.We recognize each other, we're part of a very small tribe. Some of us have loved each other, some of us have hated each other, but in the end we know that we are from the same place. A place we can never return to. And unlike the mortals we walk among, the so called "Time Bombs," our grudges and regrets, our mistakes and transgressions, are never erased. They build over time until our loves and hates are so deep they threaten to destroy us. And so it was I found myself being choked to death by Crone. In his current incarnation his name was Christopher Sarton, but we tend to refer to each other by nicknames that we acquired long ago. It can become confusing life after life to have to learn everyone's new name and demographics. Especially when we know these details to be meaningless. Inside whatever shell we happen to inhabit at the moment is the same consciousness we've known all along. Crone was rightfully upset, but I felt that killing me was taking things a bit far. I had interfered in matters I now see I should have left alone, but it was all with the best intentions. There are rules we try to follow, and when a fellow Inhabitant seems to be slipping, there's nothing wrong with trying to help them back onto the right path. Or so I thought at the time. But obviously Crone saw things differently. I was staring up at his very angry face, trying very hard to breathe. He was staring right back and making it clear that was probably not going to happen.
