Shaun Telman called for an ambulance upon discovering Bianca had passed. His parents let him skip school the next day as he processed the loss of his elderly friend. He’d been visiting her ever since he was old enough to walk.

Shaun thought a lot about Bianca’s stories and her longing for different times in her life. He wondered if, after all, in her death, she may have been able to connect with those times. Young and naive, he couldn’t truly grasp the concept of time.

The next week, Shaun returned to school. As he walked into his class, he passed by Fiona and knew he should make a move before losing his chance. Though she was one of the most popular girls in school and often ridiculed Shaun, he had deep, inexplicable admiration and affection for her.

 

Fiona always wore the same red dress to school and she stood against the back wall of the classroom. All the girls were jealous of her beauty and all the boys were not-so-secretly in love with her. Shaun would not be the first to make a romantic proposal.

During class, Shaun tore out a page from his notebook and wrote down a heartfelt, sincere love note intended for Fiona. After the lunch bell rang, he noticed there were a couple of other boys around her fighting for her attention. She was wobbling around, paying them no mind.

Shaun approached timidly, holding out the note he wrote Fiona. His heart broke as her hand failed to grasp the paper and it fell to the floor. The other boys watched him and chuckled quietly. Embarrassed, Shaun ran to the cafeteria and sat at an empty table in the corner. The boys who saw him came as well, laughing as they walked by.

Surprisingly, Fiona came to see Shaun at his lunch table after a short time. She stood in the corner beside him and reached a hand out. Shaun lit up, he reached forward to take her hand and she wrapped both arms around him tightly and launched him through the window. Then she moved away from the window as the entire cafeteria turned their heads. They all shrugged and figured a bird shattered the glass.

 

Shaun flew from the building and directly into the mouth of a dark monster that floated in the water below the cliff where the school stood. He screamed as it swallowed him whole, ending up in its stomach within seconds, knocked out from the force of the fall.

Just before this, Shaun was in the classroom with his note in hand, ready to hand it to Fiona. He handed her the note and it fell to the floor. The other boys picked it up and read it, laughing at all of Shaun’s cheesy lines. In the cafeteria, Fiona launched him out the window, into the belly of the beast, knocking him out.

Just before this, Shaun was straightening out his suit, tophat and monocle, hoping to look as sharp as possible before approaching Fiona. The other boys scoffed at his low status, flashing gold chains on each of their monocles. Fiona dropped the note and launched Shaun into the monster, knocking him out on impact.

Just before this, Shaun reattached his legs so that he could walk over to Fiona. The other boys laughed as they attached much larger legs. Fiona quickly launched Shaun out of the cafeteria window, knocking him out when he landed.

Infinite Shauns were launched into the beast below. Infinite Shauns awoke and survived in the stomach for days before hunger took over. Within the beast, only small sea creatures swam in pools of stomach acid before burning up. While Shaun avoided these pools, he scoped them out for a chance at food.

 

Infinite Shauns caught a shrimp that fell into the beast’s mouth and took a bite straight through the shell. This event was the first and only event that would ever occur simultaneously in all universes in exactly the same way. Time raged like a storm in infinite dimensions around Shaun and the shrimp. The result of this chaos was a being outside of time itself, with complete control over it.

Shaun was a shrimp, floating in the endlessness when he began to explore his powers, though his future self was inside already, and knew how to manipulate time already. He visited his own timeline and knew exactly what he would do.

Shaun visited many places and times, doing his best not to interfere with too much. He knew that any alteration to the natural order could have catastrophic effects. There was one change he felt compelled to make, but struggled to decide whether to do it. He heard Bianca’s voice, “Be brave enough to make the hard choice.” Shaun risked causing destruction to spacetime and chose to be brave. 

At the moment of her death, Shaun took B’s consciousness and combined it with that of her younger self in another timeline where she would become what she knew she should have. He watched her take steps towards her future, and felt satisfied.

In emptiness, he felt the collision of two cosmic powers. He knew this was caused by himself, as it wasn’t anything he’d ever experienced in any past or any future. He would have to correct whatever he broke, protecting the universe as Shrimp Temporal.