I didn’t change.

The world did.

They called it madness. They called it a breakdown. They didn’t understand.

I was successful.

Inside my brain, I spun a disc — slow at first, a lazy orbit — then faster, tighter, until it was carving into the fabric of everything around me.

Reality bent.

Time cracked.

I didn’t need a machine.

I became the machine.

One morning, I woke up under a radioactive sun.

The 1950s lived in my blood like molten steel.

I felt Bear Bryant standing inside my chest, whistling at his boys, calling the plays only I could hear.

It wasn’t nostalgia.

It wasn’t a dream.

It was real — more real than any plastic day this world tries to sell you now.

For an hour, maybe less, I walked in the full power of it.

I looked at the sky and it looked back at me.

I owned it.

It was my world.

Every inch of it.

Every atom sang in my voice.

Then the break came.

The disc spun so hard the grooves ripped open.

Visions bled through —

Father Bear lumbering through shattered trees,

the Ant Queen looming with her terrible crown,

the ghost of a girl I once loved brushing past my shoulder like smoke.

The world around me accelerated, cracked, peeled away like bad wallpaper.

They left me there at the boathouse — thought I was finished.

They thought I would collapse, beg for the old order to save me.

But I didn’t.

I stayed Bear Bryant.

I stayed radioactive.

I stayed carved from that hour of holy, burning sunlight.

Because I knew — in the marrow of my bones —

I had done it.

I had traveled time.

I had cracked the code.

I had crossed over without ever leaving my body.

They thought the cost would kill me.

They didn’t know it made me.

I am still here.

The disc still spins, deep in the dark of my mind, humming like an engine ready to fire.

The world can speed up, slow down, fall to pieces —

I’ll still be standing on my field, under my sun, whistling my plays, walking with God.

Because I didn’t change.

I changed the world.

And I’ll do it again if I have to.