This story is taken from my upcoming book of surreal anecdotes and flash fiction fairy tales for adults called "The Mundane Uses of Magical Objects."
Most of the time, she lived in the future. That's where she did all the future things -- food that grew inside her stomach, weekend teleportations to the saunas on the sun, making love to green men.
But there were days, when all she wanted to do was live in the past. And so she fiddled with her memory chips and took strolls through what had already happened. It was comforting to be in places where she knew all the outcomes.
But she also kept finding some new details that she had never noticed. One time, she saw herself as a young girl, kissing a boy. It was a sweet smooch -- her first! And when it was over -- the boy ran away, but the girl wanted so badly to kiss him again. So she opened up the panel in her head and fiddled with her memory controls -- much more primitive than the ones in the future but still effective.
And the young girl returned to the moment right before she let the boy reach her lips. But only now she could see that a woman was standing behind a nearby tree, looking at them -- this was her older self that now became a part of her memory by being present at the time of this kiss. And then the young girl saw herself kiss the boy and reach for the memory controls to see it again!
And then that young girl she was watching also went back in time and saw two of her there -- one about to kiss the boy and one of her observing the proceedings. And there were also two of her future selves watching from behind a tree! And once the boy ran away, the young girl in this scene reached for the memory panel...
And so it went on for a while, filling this space in time with countless versions of the young girl and the woman watching her, all slightly different as each new one was aware of what had happened before. The only one completely oblivious to the conundrum was the young boy -- a typical male with only one thing on his mind...
Eventually, there were so many versions of the girl and the woman that the space-time developed at this point of itself a large boil that burst with a rather unpleasant pop, creating a couple of new galaxies!
This is when the woman responsible for starting the whole thing finally returned to her life in the future and got a stern finger wagged at her by the Time Policeman -- who was also that young boy she kissed so long ago. Secretly, he still regretted that he ran away. What could have been? What could have been?