Time of Why

Jerry Seinfeld said that when you walk into a bookstore you have the fiction section and the non-fiction section. In other words, one group is telling the truth and one group is lying.

So, why lie about time travel?

I have always been fascinated with time travel. Who doesn’t have something in their life they would like to go back and change? I have made stupid mistakes I wish I could go undo. I have also done things that I really enjoyed and wish I could enjoy them again. Let alone “big” things like go back to Dallas in 1963 and prevent a presidential assassination—or just back to 1980 and somehow have the Astros win that one-game play-off they should have won anyway.

What if, though, I were to travel back in time and make things worse? This is the dilemma of Garison Fitch. He has traveled back in time and, when he returns to the future, the world has changed. Should he go back and try to change things back to normal?

Of course, in Garison’s world, the strange new world is the one you and I are used to. Garison grew up in the Soviet Americas, where the Republic of Texas existed just across the southern border and Japan ruled the western half of the continent. His decision is whether to live in this whacked-out world of the United States, or see if he can undo what he’s done.

Why write about this? Because I find it fascinating. What if I went back to 1986 and treated the girl I was dating then better? I’d like to not be known (at least to her) as a jerk, but what if in so doing I somehow messed up meeting my wife in ’88? I think I’d hate that. What if I could somehow prevent my wife from having a miscarriage in the summer of ’96? Well, then I wouldn’t have my youngest son. I know I’d hate that, even though I’m sure I’d love the other child.

And, of course, I wouldn’t know about any of these changes if the change were made.

It’s probably just as well that I can’t change the past. But it’s still fun to think about.