I’ve just finished reading a book which dealt with characters having to take steps to change the far future following a message sent back through time. It was set in 1920’s rural England and didn’t hold all of the classic time travel decorations of vehicles to accomplish the jump and wild and advanced science. Instead, it was told on a much smaller scale with all of the action unfolding between at maximum three characters, and that size of story is something which appealed to me.
I’ve written books which encompass sweeping tales of good and evil, and massive scope for intrigue and peril, but stripping away so much of the superfluous information can lead us to a tighter and more accurate story.
The tale of changing the past to prevent some future catastrophe isn’t new. The idea of going back to kill Hitler before he got his head of steam going pops up a fair amount in books, film and TV, so much so that it tends to be as a throw away line to give quick explanation of what’s taking place at that point.
Dipping back into the past was embedded in Avengers Endgame and the scale was enormous. The Back to the Future films had the same idea but was more aimed in where our attention was focused but both these example had the characters seeing the time changes personally and then amending issues as they unfold.
But now consider that you don’t even get to see the problem yourself.
You’re told by the big booming voice from the future that to stop a terrible wrong in the far future you need to prevent a certain event now. You get a cursory overview as to the details but the rest is up to you. Could you trust that it’s for real? I suppose that would depend on the way things are presented to you but beyond the mechanics of time travel and the hard science of it all, the biggest hurdle to overcome would be the idea that just completing one miniscule task now could save lives in a thousand years.
It’s all too easy to just look at ourselves and what we do as being the tiniest speck in the grand tapestry of all of reality but even a single dropped stitch in that tapestry can have an effect.
I went to the beach today and had a wander about, getting some fresh air and I picked up and put down a few stones as I went. They just looked interesting and I wanted to have a look see. All good fun. But when I’d finished my assessment, I dropped them back on the beach, but in new positions. What’s to say that by me putting that stone where I did, I set in motion a cascade of events that means that in a thousand years it’s a fragment of that rock which results in the event which kills millions? If I hadn’t picked it up, no far off event?
We’ve all been told to see the big picture at some point but maybe we’ve been looking the wrong way? If any and all tiny events have the chance to warp the future, maybe we can see ourselves as being just that little bit more powerful, and by extension, that much more invested in the world around us.
Every action matters.
Stay safe all.
Owen Elgie 