“The Problem With Time Travel”

Author’s Note: This is a Take Ten to Write story and has not been proofread for errors. If I feel inspired or if there’s interest in the story, I’ll post a revised, edited, and extended version at a later date. Happy reading!

Prompt: “Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once.” — John Archibald Wheeler

I stare at Gorp.

“Time travel? You’re kidding, right?”

He shakes his head and proudly holds up his device so that I can see. “Wouldn’t it be awesome to go back in time and seeing what’s happening somewhere else in the world?”

I raise an eyebrow. “And why exactly would you want to do that?”

“Just think about it, Niv, if you knew about something bad that happened, you could just send your consciousness back into your body at that moment and go and fix it.”

“Yeah, but then there wouldn’t be any history,” I point out. “You’re saying that you just want to erase everything bad that happened?”

He shrugs. “Yeah, why not?”

I scoff and shake my head. “You realize that by erasing one problem, you’ll just end up creating twenty more, right?”

“Why would you assume that?” he asks, putting his device down and starting to press buttons on it. “It sounds to me like you’re doubting our race.”

“Yes, I am!” I exclaim. “It doesn’t matter if you can go back and fix all our past mistakes. If no one can remember what we did wrong, how can they avoid repeating those very same mistakes in the future? It’s an endless loop, Gorp. Don’t try to play god just because you’re some genius who was somehow able to make a time machine.”

He shakes his head. “You’re wrong, Niv,” he says, standing up. “I’ve already tried it. You don’t even know what I changed, because you didn’t travel back with me. But I did change something. And it hasn’t repeated itself yet. So, as far as I’m concerned, time travel is a success.”

Final Comments: Isn’t it fun when your story decides it doesn’t want to follow the plotline you had planned for it?

Overall Rating: 🙄