The Archivist
Lena could rewind exactly one second, and that was it. No flying, no invisibility. Just one second, back in time. At first, it seemed useless. What could anyone change in a heartbeat?
But with practice, Lena became a master of the moment.
The first time it mattered, she was in a cafe, when a coffee cup slipped from her fingers. She watched it fall, helpless, and then blinked. One second earlier, the cup was still in her hand. She gripped it tighter. It never hit the ground. Shocked, she tried to do it again. It worked, and she gasped loudly. The customers all turned towards her, staring at her with confusion and annoyance. Realizing how loud she had been, she quickly tried to rewind to before her gasp.
However, she realized she could only go back to the second before, where the customers were still in the process of turning their heads. Lena apologized hastily and rushed out of the store. After that, she tried it on everything. One second was enough to change the outcome, only if she could react fast enough.
Eventually, she discovered how powerful it could be in conversation. Her coworker Mark once found her, visibly upset about a late report.
“You didn’t even check the timestamp,” he snapped, voice sharp.
She thought about time moving backwards. Blink. Rewind.
He was just finishing his sentence again, his voice rising. This time, Lena didn’t argue. She softened her tone and said, “I think you’re right. Let me pull it up now and double-check. If I missed something, that’s on me.”
He paused, thrown off by the sudden shift. His anger faded into confusion, then settled into calm. The tension dissolved before it had a chance to grow. Lena walked away, both her pride and the relationship intact.
Little by little, she grew more precise. She could feel the shape of time bending around her. No one else noticed the rewinds, not even the people standing inches away. But Lena lived inside them, and it was like every moment carried an echo.
She joined the emergency dispatch center a year later, after watching a wreck unfold at an intersection and rewinding just long enough to shout at a driver to stop. The other car barreled through the red light. Horns blared, tires squealed, but no one died.
In triage calls, she would pause for a breath, feel something shift, then blink. One second earlier, she would say something different. Ask a clearer question. Flag the urgency in her voice. Once, a caller’s panic hid a stroke in progress. She felt the hesitation in her own phrasing. Rewind. She sharpened her words, raised her tone, and the paramedics arrived three minutes faster.
Every correction was a thread pulled from chaos. She never saved the world in one grand sweep. Although there was no headline with her name, no viral story, no statue in a plaza, she still saved someone every day.
No one ever knew.
