Maybe We'll Get It Right This Time

[Tom Mazanec]

http://tmazanec1.xepher.net/maybe.html

[The Grey Badger]

Nice story! Try to get it published - it deserves it.

Pat

[Tom Mazanec]

For those who don't read uncommented links (per John's suggestion) here is the story:

I was born in 1958. Went to parochial schools, then got a Bachelor's Degree in Astronomy.
Realized that wasn't for me, went into Computer Science and got a second B.S.
Made a botch of my career, ended up working in a group home. I was happy. A few days
after the Bird Flu Pandemic hit Cleveland, I guess I died of it. Anyway, I went to bed
healthy and, I suppose, died in my sleep. It could kill that quickly. The world was
entering a depression at the time, and a couple years later
(those of us who lived that long tell me) a Third World War between
the Muslims and Chinese against the rest of the world starting in the Middle East.
A quarter of mankind died. Those of us who made it to nanojuve lived centuries but
died of accident or murder or disaster anyway. It is hard to describe what it was like...
I'll get to that later. I won't even try.

I woke up August 1, 1980. I was a little confused about what was going on at first.
A lot of us tried to replay our lives the second time around, what we call TL-2.
Afraid that changing something will bring about their deaths the next day. They failed,
of course. No one is a perfect actor with a perfect memory, and even random radioactive
emission changes the weather soon (the Butterfly Effect). Man, I never would have been
able to reach that Christmas party in 1989 in TL-2...twenty inches with four and five
foot drifts. Me, I didn't even try. I went into Library Science and became a librarian.
Got a job. I was happy. The Depression arrived a year earlier, World War Three started
in a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan...same lineup, same death toll.
No Bird Flu, so I lived to be an old man. In 2028 I felt a terrible pain in my chest.
Didn't want to be a bother, I was a he-man, thought it was just bad indigestion. Guess it
was a heart attack. Anyway, I collapsed and blacked out. Woke up August 1, 1980.

Went into Library Science again, but this time I invested in Microsoft
(they hit it big in both previous timelines). I hit it big. I took better care of myself,
and noted eventually that medical science was advancing a little faster this time.
I also noted a novelist who was writing about events that occurred in TL-1 and TL-2.
I got in touch with him and he interrogated me about details from the first two timelines.
This is how I found out there were others of us (42 that we know of this time around).
All born in the late Fifties. Some of us were "discovering" medical treatments earlier,
trying to extend the lives of all of us. This time I made it to when I got my
cereboid intamp, my "second brain" implant (I am so used to it that now I feel like I am
working with half a brain). I made it to the Singularity (I don't have the words to
define the words to define the words to describe what it was like) and eventually died,
though I was older than Methuselah this time around. Meanwhile, the Depression
occurred a couple years "late", World War Three started with a Second Korean War...
Chinese-Muslim Pact against the rest of the world, a couple billion died.

I woke up after I died. August 1, 1980. This time we formed the "Time Conspiracy",
figuring that the whole point of this was to prevent a major cataclysm in the early
21st Century. We pulled strings from the shadows, trying to change history.
Many of us became movers and shakers...it is hard not to succeed when you have so
much experience from three timelines to draw on. We kept our secret, though,
and worked behind the scene. The Depression was the latest but deepest of all,
the Third World War began with a Chinese coup and invasion of Taiwan,
this time nanotechnology was used and three quarters of the world's population died...
including me.

This is TL-5. We went public this time. We are currently a "fringe" society,
with no way to prove our bona fides. But that will change tomorrow. Every galaxy
has "billions and billions" of stars in it. About once a century, one of those stars
explodes. According to scientific knowledge, there are two kinds of stars that can become
such "supernovae". One is a red supergiant, another is a white dwarf orbiting close to a
giant star. We have made a public prediction that the star Sanduleak -69° 202a in the
LMC galaxy will be observed to go supernova on February 23, 1987 (that was my idea...that
Astronomy degree came in handy after all). Sanduleak -69° 202a is (or rather was,
millennia ago, since it is thousands of light years away) a blue supergiant.
Carl Sagan had a good time with one of us on the Johnny Carson Show last month.
But as he himself has said, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".
We expect the next time he speaks with us, he will be more...respectful.

Today is February 22, 1987. Maybe we'll get it right this time.

[John]

Dear Tom,

That's a really great story, but now you know what you have to do,
don't you? You have to turn it into a novel.

I'm curious to know what your character did in TL-3 and 4, and what
he plans to do in TL-5 to try to prevent the crisis.

The other thing is that you'll have a great opportunity to introduce
sex scenes and romantic subplots à la Groundhog day.

In TL-1, the guy gets really screwed by his wife in the divorce.

In TL-2, he marries someone else, but gets really screwed again in
the divorce.

In TL-3, he realizes that he knows a lot of women, because they were
his two wives' friends, and he knows a lot of their secrets. So
instead of getting married, he just has sex with a lot of his wives'
girlfriends. Along the way, he also gets involved with his two
wives, and brutally dumps both of them to get even.

In TL-4, he finally finds true love, and marries "the one." His
marriage is very happy, but it ends tragically when his wife gets
cancer and dies in the 1990s.

In TL-5, he marries that same girl, and vows to make sure that she
goes to see a doctor so that any problem can be nipped in the bud.
In the final scene, he and his wife face the future, and walk off
into the sunset.

Sincerely,

John

[damien]

Hey Tom, Good to see you.

The story sounds like a lot of fun. It could easily be novel length.

Good luck.

[John]

Dear Tom,

Is it OK with you if I put your story into an article on the main
part of the web site? (With proper attribution to you, of course)

Sincerely,

John

[The Grey Badger]

On the website - great. Published in Analog Science Fiction - for pay - even better. I second (or is it third?) the motion that you develop it and try to sell it. Not as a novel at first - start with short story and run it past your friends or a writer's group. Then develop it to whatever length seems right.

Looking forward to it either way.

[Barion]

Fun stuff. Reminds me of two great works: the movie Groundhog Day and the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Cause and Effect" where the Enterprise gets destroyed over and over again while in a causality loop. Of course, in these stories, the looping is short, maybe a day or so, not decades, and that is where it gets really intriguing.

I am also a writer, including science fiction, and any form of time travel is fun to read and write.

[mannfm11]

This would make a great fugative type serial on TV. Kind of a blend of the X files and the fugative or star trek or something of that sort.

[Barion]

Oh yeah, and kudos on the subtle Douglas Adams nod with the 42 mention...

...that was intentional, right?