Free The End Came With a Kiss by John Michael Hileman

what is this? Am I fabricating this with my imagination? No. That's not it. This is a real memory. Everything I experienced that day is accessible to me. It's just malleable.
    "Do you mind?" I ask, pointing to the clipboard in the young scientist's hand. He passes it to me with a curious expression. I did not look at this clipboard the day this occurred, so what will I see? Will it be blank? Will it be indecipherable?
    Interesting. There is actually some information written on it. It’s blurry, but I can make it out. I wonder if I did get a view of the clipboard on this day, but only from a distance.
    The temptation to slide back into the timestream and find out is strong, but just thinking about it creates a wave of panic. I fear I might lose myself in this dream state. If simple curiosity can get me so distracted, I'd hate to see how lost I could get in the sea of pleasant memories I have stored in my mind. After the nightmare I've been through, I don't imagine I would have the willpower to defend myself from their lulling effect. I suppose eventually I would wake up, but then I would have failed my mission.
    "May I?" says the young scientist, whose name I never got a chance to learn. I'd ask him now, but the answer would probably be an invention of my subconscious mind.
    I hand him the clipboard. "Looks good," I say. "Keep up the good work."
    He nods and heads off around the cluttered lab table to join Betty on the other side. She is preparing to go into the holding chamber, also known as the clean room. As with everything in the company, it is multi-purpose.
    She must be going in to do some testing on the latest iteration of the beauty creme. I walk around and watch as she disappears into the decon chamber. Not long after, she comes out the side door into the middle chamber, then through to the testing room.
    There are stainless steel tables set up in the testing room. I don't know half of the equipment on them, but I recognize a tray of test tubes near the microscope unit. Those are the samples from Jeremiah Cartwright. Each has its own bar code and each is marked with a colored band. The last I knew, black is not a color we use. So why are these black?
    I clear my throat and call to Lau on the far side of the room. He prefers to work alone on the table in the corner. It is his private work station where everything is in precise order. "Lau. Can I speak to you a minute?"
    His head pops up and without a word pops back down. This is his standard first response; he doesn't like to be interrupted. It's mildly annoying, especially when I'm on a timetable, but he is quite possibly the most brilliant chemist in the world, so I'm inclined to give him latitude.
    "You know what Lau, maybe you shouldn't come look at this, it will just make you mad. We'll get this cleaned up." This tactic generally works because Lau has a place for everything in the lab and any time anything needs to be cleaned up inevitably someone will put something where it doesn't belong, and this drives him crazy.
    I hear his sigh from across the room, but he comes. His compulsion to supervise the cleanup is all-consuming. He steps up beside me and looks into the chamber. "What exactly am I supposed to be looking at?"
    "See those test tubes next to the microscope?"
    "Yes," he says, annoyed. "There's no clean up, is there."
    "No. But since you're up, maybe you can answer a question for me."
    "It would be my dying wish," he says sarcastically.
    "Why are the bands on the test tubes black?"
    This should be interesting. Will his answer be entire fantasy, or will it have some semblance of reality? An even larger question is, will I know the difference?
    Lau cocks his head. "Those shouldn't be black. They should be red." He reaches out and presses the microphone button below the metallic speaker embedded in the wall. "Betty?"
    Betty puts down the sample in her hands and turns our way.
    "Why are the labels on P227 black?"
    She slides the tray toward herself. "That’s