Microstory 1192: Frank Delaney

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Frank Delaney’s life was full of heartbreak and death in any reality. Though he was not salmon himself, he was always somehow involved with them. There was one timeline where his mother died when he was sixteen, so he changed his last name to Williams, in honor of her. His father lived long enough to be proud of him for this, but then he died too. Frank went on to become a famous model-turned-actor, but apparently that was too much of a happy ending. In the following timeline, everything started to play out as it had before, but a mentally unstable time traveler altered the past, which ultimately led to Frank’s untimely death as well. There was a timeline where both his parents survived into old age, but he spent a not insignificant amount of his adulthood battling a pirate serial killer, and other nefarious individuals. His first wife died in a later timeline, while he died with her in the timeline after that, and this was something he knew was going to happen. When the current version of Frank Delaney was a child, he encountered a boy in the park who introduced himself as Zeferino Preston. Zeferino claimed that Frank’s death was part of destiny; that it was inevitable. Someone had gone back in time, and changed history. This historical event had nothing to do with Frank personally, but due to the butterfly effect, a series of other events were leading to his demise, and there was nothing he could do about it. Most children would either disbelieve the prediction, or be scared out of their minds about it. All evidence suggested Zeferino was intending for him to live the rest of his short life in paranoia, but that’s not what happened. Frank just learned to make the best out of every situation. He still didn’t know exactly when death would come. He met, and fell in love with, his wife, just as he was scheduled to. And when his time came, he accepted his death. He just wished Zeferino had been clearer about the nature of the incident. His wife died as well, and this spawned even greater changes to the timeline, which few could have predicted.