Author : Travis Gregg

“So first things first,” the man began, “there is no such thing as time traveling. I’ll repeat it again for those of you who are a little slow on the uptake. There is no such thing as time traveling. The past is the past, you can’t go back.” The gristled orientation instructor had clearly done this a thousand times. He has his spiel down tight.

“What we do is put you into an alternate time stream. No matter what the boys in marketing say, and God knows I’ve told them enough times, this isn’t time travel. If you go back far enough and try and relive your life as a younger you, you won’t have the same kids, things won’t play out the same. I’d leave those lottery numbers and sports almanacs at home if and when you go. They’ll just be dead weight. I’d also strongly recommend that couples do not try the Hollywood movie idea of going back separately and trying to find each other. You will never ever ever find each other. Attraction is strongly based on proximity, but that’s neither here nor there.”

Some of the others in the orientation group had started murmuring to each other.

He continued, getting back on track, “This is a total cut from this reality and what you know of events. We get close, very very close to the Prime Reality, but every reality is different, most in imperceptible ways, but events compound and compound and it’ll be different. One way trip, no coming back.”

By this time the older couple on my left had made their way to the exit as had several others. Only about 40% of the group remained and it seemed most of those were staying because it would be rude to leave in the middle of the presentation.

I thought on it some, I was like the rest of them, hoping to redo specific mistakes. Everything different though, things won’t play out the same? I thought back on my life, the mistakes, all the things that went wrong, the bad luck even.

Sounds perfect.