To Change the End, Rewrite the Start

This story I relate to you is true, all of it, though I no longer trust (nor own) the tool which would prove its authenticity.

The other day, after our dispute, and in order to clear my head, I walked around campus, and found this odd little book lying in the grass. It was closed, but appeared to have been dropped accidentally, not placed purposefully. On its black cover, in a sprawling, lavish scrip it read, Time Journal, with only a single line on the opening page: To Change the End, Rewrite the Start. I flipped disinterestedly through the other pages, finding them unblemished. I thought it might be the project of a student majoring in English, or the journal of a creative mind. But whoever had begun this work, had left it blank.

I nearly began a search for its owner, but I'd just seen some movie about an “A to B” time loop, and the delphic inscription prompted a tenuous idea. Rewrite the beginning to alter the ending it should have said. And in a characteristically cautious maneuver, I wrote on the page opposing the instruction, And when I picked up the journal it appeared blank, without stain. I closed the covers and waited expectantly. After a minute, in which I stood foolishly, I disparaged my credulity: What had I expected? A rush of wind, a reversal of the sun's movement, a replay of five minutes earlier? Yet, here I stood, unaltered. Disgruntled, I prepared to toss aside this prank, but I glanced inside first. It was empty! Not a single word remained upon the book except the cover. Of course, Reader, you are undoubtedly unsurprised, for how else would I tell this story? Yet it is not a fiction contrived for suspense, but a fact. Though the page was unblotched, my mind was marked by the event.

After I recovered my composure, for I was holding a device not unlike a Time Machine, my first impulse, and I'll admit it exhibited my selfishness, was to rewrite our conversation earlier that day. I covertly carried the Journal back to our apartment, passed you in our reciprocal silence, and sat down at my worn desk. In haste, lest guilt clutch my consciousness, I scribbled, Though a conflict was souring, my spouse sincerely apologized for the errors committed.

With these words facing me, I breathed, waiting, again, for an apparent alteration to occur. Though I saw nothing of consequence, no bolt of lighting from the heavens, nor earthquake underfoot, I could suffer the suspense no longer and returned to the living room. There, you greeted me warmly, but shyly. While you spoke, I examined my memory and discovered two renditions of this morning's conversation. One, the original, a disaster of emotional reprisal and retaliation, which ceased with one's eyes as dry as a desert, and the other's as wet as an ocean. The second memory, the fabricated situation, absurd in my reality, but integral to yours, was you offering an earnest apology for ill-defined inflictions.

The rest of the day passed pleasantly, and my consciousness didn't disturb me. Hadn't I rescued us both from unnecessary pain? Why need we live amid discord, when I could erase it so effortlessly? But the next morning, I was astonished when we repeated the prior day's argument, replicating the dialogue, as if we were rehearsing a play morning after morning. Partway through, as we retread the same themes, I began to drifted thoughtlessly. In this dreamlike state a though passed through my mind: the conversation was not a cause, but a symptom, and the core issue lay much deeper in your personality, your history.

Over the next week I plunged deeper and deeper into your past. There were difficulties. Unlike those fictional adventurers equipped with a time machine, I could not travel to a location, and I could only trust to my observations of outward appearance and action. Yet, my abilities went deeper, as long as I employed investigative knowledge and creative solutions. I could alter personality defects with a flick of the wrist, altering the ideas of individuals. I reviewed the newest studies on genetics, collected samples of yours and altered them with my pen. But the result I desired eluded me, and by the end of the month, I had altered the history of others beyond you in the search to improve your condition: your parents.

Even after all this effort, I realized I was only tinkering around the edges. During those two months, it wasn't only you, but many others I found wanting. In fact, the country itself was a mess. I began an exhaustive study of every relevant topic, and began a process of historical revision. Early efforts focused on modern conflicts, but soon abandoned international issues for the source of deadly division in the United States.

I rewrote the life of John Wilkes Booth, the South Carolina Declaration of Secession, President Lincoln's speeches, Justice Taney's upbringing, yet none of these succeeded as I hoped. I couldn't avoid the country's reckoning with its past. So I expanded to a defense of western philosophy. I defended Constantinople from the Turks, Rome from Caesar, Athens from Sparta, Socrates from Athens. I did the best I could with the limited information I obtained. But while names, dates, and locations changed, the themes of humanity remained the same.

A year later, surrounded by torn books, and a Time Journal with only one line of space remaining, I broke. In desperation I wrote, Though outside influences or internal ideology might have favored the beginning of agriculture and the growth of cities, the mothers and fathers of Humanity forever forswore them in favor of hunting and gathering.

No sooner had I composed these words and lifted pen from paper, I found myself with you and a company of others, deep in the woods. With a quick self-survey I determined that I was fuller, more content, taller, and more physically fit than in any of my previous incarnations. Yet, the freezing rain which deluged my body at that moment terrified me. Though no longer did I clutch a pen in hand (or quill), the Time Journal lay by my side. In desperation I scrabbled at a nearby tree, breaking a sodden twig from a nearby branch and with shaking fingers, digging the dull point into the paper of the page, I managed to squeeze in the margin, At the beginning was Time, and everything followed from it as it should.

And then life as I had known it, reassembled itself. Except I can't be sure it is as unaltered as I knew it. I pass day after day awaiting some unexpected revelation, of an unambiguous transformation which I can recognize. Instead I am left to ponder and fret, whether the lady down the street always owned that red scarf, or whether that great work always ended, “gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.”

Title from They Might Be Giants “Electric Car”

Ending Quote from “The Time Machine” by H.G. Wells