Felix reappeared in his own apartment, in his own time. Got it in one. Swish.

He could already hear his drippy faucet. It sang a beautiful song of homecoming.

He closed his eyes and let the sound wash over him. As he did so a slow realization seized him by the guts: his past self was probably still out there. Probably on his way home, in fact. He didn't know what the rules were but that seemed likely considering how he ended up traveling through time originally.

Felix remembered that his future self pushed him into some kind of... time hole? That's what started all this. He supposed he was his future self now. He wasn't sure if it was such a good idea to push his past self into any kind of time hole. That's what created this whole mess in the first place.

Then again, if he didn't there'd be two of him. That could be awkward. And expensive. He really didn't want to deal with anything like that. He just got back from a seemingly endless bender of that. It was probably better to make a clean break. Push the poor sucker into the hole and let him deal with the aliens and the bullshit.

Another benefit of this plan was that Felix wasn't really so mad at his future self anymore.

Suddenly there was a noise that reminded Felix of time travel. He was immediately disturbed that there was such a noise. It was quickly followed by another Felix materializing into the sparely appointed apartment. He had an eye-patch and a leather jacket.

"Oh, right," said Felix. "Right, right, right. The other ones."

"Felix!" yelled the other Felix, running over to Felix, "You can't push Felix into the time vortex?"

"Oh is that what it's called?" asked Felix. "I've been calling it a time hole. I knew that was probably not what they're called."

"Listen to me!" said eye-patch Felix, grabbing Felix and shaking him. "If you push yourself into that time vortex you're going to destroy all of human civilization! The fall of humankind! Tribes of monster-truck driving mutant cannibal jackasses wearing gas masks for no reason fighting one another in an endless horizon of ruined highways!"

"That does sound grim," admitted Felix.

"You can't send me, by which I mean you, by which I mean him, back!" insisted eye-patch Felix. 

"Yeah yeah," said Felix. "I get it. I won't push him."

There was another time noise, and a new Felix appeared wearing a fancy suit.

"Hold on a minute," said rich Felix walking over. "There's a way to work all this out so that everyone wins."

"You're saying you have another way to prevent the Heavy Metal Monster Truck Apocalypse?" asked eye-patch Felix, releasing Felix.

"Oh yes," said rich Felix with a flashy grin. "I have a plan that will not only avert the apocalypse, but it'll make us all richer than God."

"I definitely prefer this guy," said Felix.

As if on cue another Felix, this one dressed in strange clothes that looked like some half-insane robot's attempt at business casual, appeared in a puff of time.

"Don't do it!" he screamed, immediately grabbing Felix and shaking him. "I'm you from a few minutes in the future. This plan doesn't work! The apocalypse gets worse. I don't have time to get into the whole story but sharks are in the mix now and it's just a hundred times worse than even the dark future me said."

"Don't do this guy's plan, or don't push the past me in the time vortex?" asked Felix.

"This is getting confusing, I can't keep track of anything," said eye-patch Felix.

"Don't listen to him," said rich Felix, "I know what I'm doing."

"Do you want us to push him in or not?" asked Felix. "I forget."

"No, no," said rich Felix. "I have this whole other thing. You see-"

And another Felix appeared. He was dressed almost the same as the last guy except he looked like he had been wearing his clothes non-stop for about a week. There were visible armpit stains.

"Eew," observed Felix.

"Don't listen to any of these idiots, Felix," said the new Felix. "Just push him. This is getting ridiculous. I'm sick of dealing with all of this. Just send him back. The future is the future's problem. Maybe don't build so many monster trucks guys the world won't end. Trust me, it's not worth any of this, just push the bastard in the vortex."

"No, don't push him," said 5-minutes-in-the-future Felix.

"Or so you don't want us to push him," said Felix, pointing at 5-minutes Felix. "We should take a vote."

"This is too important to vote on," said eye-patch Felix.

"You can abstain," said Felix.

"I vote don't push," said eye-patch Felix.

"I'm hearing a lot of support for don't push," said Felix. "I'm going to go get a pen."

Felix grabbed a pen off the top of a stack of papers, and one of the papers to use as scrap. He scribbled down two columns and added two lines beside 'push'.

"We should all have a chance to make our cases first," said rich Felix, putting his arm around Felix. "Campaign a little. Then we can vote."

"Don't listen to his lies!" insisted 5-minutes Felix.

There was a burst of light, followed by an eerie stillness. A new Felix appeared, wearing the clothes he had been when this all began. Except they were backwards.

"Everyone, you have to push the present Felix in into the time vortex," said this newest Felix.

"A vote for push," said Felix, noting this on the scrap paper.

"Listen," said the new Felix, "the time vortex is a crack across a region of space/time. It's being caused by the paradox loop of you pushing your past self, by which I mean my past self, back in time. If you don't close the loop you'll destroy all of existence."

"Wait I thought you said the paradox loop was causing the crack," said Felix.

"Yes," said the other Felix, "but if you don't close it it'll be worse."

"But if I do close it that fixes everything?" asked Felix.

"No," said the other Felix. "It just delays it."

"That's depressing," said eye-patch Felix.

"Well who died and put this jerk in charge?" asked rich Felix. "He's just us, you know? We don't know anything about time or vortexes. Why should we trust what he has to say about any of this? He's probably just trying to avert the apocalypse."

"I'm not lying," said the backwards-clothes Felix. "We have to close the loop and preserve existence. We all live there."

"I think he's right," said Felix.

"Ugh," said rich Felix, throwing his hands up in defeat. "Fine. Whatever. We'll not end existence."

Everyone suddenly stopped talking and turned towards the door. There was the sound of keys turning in a lock.

Felix motioned for everyone to hide, and they quickly leapt behind the sparse furniture. Felix made his way to the kitchen.

Felix decided to get milk, because his future self had milk the first time and also he wanted milk.

While he was rummaging around the fridge Felix heard a shocked and not particularly masculine noise. He was briefly startled.

Felix turned around and came face to face with himself.

"Don't worry," said Felix. "I'm your long lost brother!" he laughed.

"Ha ha! Not really. I'm actually you from the future."

Past Felix was in the awkward position of not having a more rational explanation. This would have to be one unusual case of swamp gas.

"Well what are you doing here, then?" he asked. He had no idea why but his brain was on autopilot.

"I was waiting for you," explained Felix "There's a bunch of us. I arrived first and got hungry, and then I remembered that I was drinking milk back when I was you and I met me for the first time."

Past Felix actually understood most of that.

"You said 'a bunch of us', a bunch of who?" asked Past Felix.

"A bunch of your future selves," said Felix "Or possible future selves. I don't really completely understand all the math and everything. Basically I came back to this point in time to try to prevent you from travelling back in time-"

"I'm going to travel back in time?" asked Past Felix.

"Well, obviously," said Felix "I'm you from the future and I'm here in the past. That's only logical. But this is a separate, additional instance of time travel that you're about to undergo. Originally I came back here to stop you, but then that was going to bring about a dark future of some kind so a different future us came to stop me from doing that, and another version of us said that it was a bad idea, and then another version showed up to stop him I guess? It just kept going on and now there are six of us."

It didn't seem like a good idea to admit he was going to push him into the time vortex. That's exactly the kind of thing he would object to.

"Six?" asked Past Felix.

"Yeah, you want to meet them?" asked Felix, before yelling "Hey everyone, he knows what's up you can come out now."

Five other Felixes, who had apparently been in the living room, came into the kitchen. Unlike the first Future Felix, many of these Felixes were quite different. One was wearing a leather jacket, an eye-patch, and was lighting up a cigarette. Another was wearing an expensive suit. A few were wearing strange clothes that Felix would never buy, and one was wearing them backwards.

"Hi," said the Felix wearing the backwards clothes. He waved.

"So we've been talking," said Felix "And we've decided that you should travel back in time after all. The future of the space/time continuum is more important than the fate of any given timeline. It's all very self-sacrificing; we're being noble as hell."

"Well I hate to disappoint all of you," said Past Felix "But I don't have any immediate plans to travel back in time. I wouldn't even know how even if I did. So I won't be doing any time travelling."

"I disagree," said Felix, and gave Past Felix a light shove.

Past Felix stumbled backwards and fell into the tear in the fabric of space/time he failed to notice opening up directly behind him. He felt a tremendous sensation of vertigo and then nothing.