'The End’s Beginning' by Annie Bien

When you fly from one time zone to another, from out into the future back into what has already passed but has not happened yet, is there a moment when you can alter the universe from an event occurring that had already happened in Singapore that has not even had a chance to occur in New York? 

She stared out the window now that morning was about to begin again and again over timelines. She might have been able to speak to him once more, longed for him to take her hand like he was cradling a child’s, would she have been able to have emerged from the cave sooner and skipped the packed lunch under headlamps, but they were so deep inside the limestone cavern, enthralled by the cool darkness, absence of familiar sounds except for their feet stepping into the river bed, washing coolness over her socks and plastic shoes, everything so unfamiliar and so full of familiarity that she suspended her usual thoughts. She had not thought of him as anything but how he was, aging steadily but not finally, his hands had fingered those scriptures every day, the same worn sheets of rice paper he brought from Tibet into India to America and every day his fingers turned those pages. She had been so sure, so sure she would see him again. Emerging from the darkness, the Earth releasing her in womb-like safety, the guide returned her phone, congratulating her for walking well. She doffed their borrowed shoes, removed her drenched socks, sat in the car to return to the farm stay, then she read the news: 

…. passed away peacefully this morning, from 4-6am IST. 

In the car, she sensed his presence, thought of replying to the text but wasn’t it too early? When you fly from one time zone to another, from out into the future back into what has already passed but has not happened yet, is there a moment when you can alter the universe from an event occurring that had already happened in Singapore that has not even had a chance to occur in New York?