The Mending

Part I: Rectification

Hindsight is 20/20. This is not about remorse or regret. That’s something else entirely—something I’m not falling prey to. No, this is about recognizing a mistake.

I moved into that compromising living situation in September, but I was screwed into paying October rent at my old place. Being in Kansas City in October allowed me to be promoted in karate, which was the last “good” thing to happen to me there. Also, that allowed me to work at my job for exactly one year, thus looking fairly decent on my resume. I should have taken the October rent as a sign.

I had no way of knowing I’d be laid off in December. Looking back on all my frustrations and feelings of desolation throughout November, I can now say that the few oases of good times since October were eclipsed by the harsh reality.

The point was driven home when someone who barely even understood the situation said that it wasn’t a very good deal. I got to thinking, and then I made an appraisal of the “free rent” savings vs. how much I actually ended up doing for it.

I truly realized that it was a “mistake” to move here. Do I “regret” it? Again, no.

I found myself pacing around my room with this revelation. It. Was. A. Mistake. I should have moved in with my brother in October. I should have. I should have. Mistake. October.

I tore through my notebook of equations and found the page with all the magic marker underlines. It was ready. It was really ready.

I cautiously tiptoed down to my brother’s basement, making sure the coast was clear.

Then a great sense of confidence and triumph filled me as I walked to the back room and pulled the canvas cover off my time machine.

It was ready. And what better way to test it? You see, I had a lot of spare time this winter, being unemployed. Now my hard work was about to pay off.

I ran my hand across the cool brass finish of the time machine—cannibalized from a beat-up old recliner, a mini-fridge, and a pair of amber lava lamps. Hey, you work with what you have. Several elliptical brass rails outlined the seat, which would start spinning as the protective field charged. An assortment of levers and knobs was nestled in a semicircle in front of the recliner. I rigged the primary activation to commence with the lever to turn the chair into reclining position—because if you’re going to screw with quantum physics, you might as well be comfortable doing it. The mini-fridge, for example, serves two purposes: auxiliary power source and a place to hold beer.

I also put cardboard fins on the back, just for aesthetics. And, for inspiration, I taped a picture of Guy Pearce next to the chronometer.

I climbed inside and adjusted my destination to read:
August 25, 2007.

Yes. Yes, I could catch myself before answering the ad on Craigslist to check out the house in Overland Park. If I never saw the ad on Craigslist, I would never have an option to agonize over. I would leave Kansas City and never question “what if.” It was a perfect plan.

I pulled the lever and kicked my feet up. I reached down for a bottle of Killian’s, took a gulp, belched, and enjoyed the ride.

I didn’t waste any time frolicking in the past, either. Not because I knew better than to stray from my sole objective, but because… well, it was just as boring then as it is now. August in Kansas City… I don’t know, I just lacked the imagination to go out and do anything. Besides, it was too hot. So instead, I kept my head down and stayed on course.

It might have been easier just to go back and talk to the August Me to inform him/me of future events, but then he’d/I’d know that I invented a time machine and might try to do the same thing for more frivolous usage. It was better to avoid questions and avoid myself in the past. Also, because I suspected he’d/I’d be kind of a dick to talk to, and I didn’t want to deal with his/my attitude. I read Calvin and Hobbes, after all. You can’t convince other versions of yourself to do what you want them to. Selfish bastards. All of ‘em.

Anyway, I had a better plan… a more… thorough plan.

I had assembled a list of predictions that would convince a certain Craigslist moderator to sabotage Craigslist in its entirety… and, in return, I would loan my time machine to help him rectify a minor but poor life decision as well. Everyone has things they’d like to change, after all. Who could resist?

You know, it’s really complicated how and why and who. Long story short, I had gone back in time to destroy Craigslist.

And then I went to San Francisco, to Craig Newmark’s home… and I beat him to death with a shovel. I’m not sure how that helped my plan, but it seemed like the right thing to do.

Okay, the whole plan was extreme… but necessary. Right?

So I returned to my time machine, set it for the present, and warped back to my brother’s basement, where the timeline would correct itself before my very eyes. The safeguard I installed allowed the time machine to cross the quantum rift of reality into a world where it had never actually been built. Because come on, you’d be a fool not to install that feature.

So I put the recliner back into upright position, grabbed another beer from the mini-fridge, and breathed a sigh of relief and satisfaction before dismounting into a universe in which I never moved to that basement in Overland Park…

Into a world without Craigslist…


Part II: Repercussions

The first thing I did after returning to the present was go online to find that, sure enough, Craigslist was no more. Then I went on Facebook and various blogs to catch up on things.

Fortunately, I keep a detailed online journal of everything that pisses me off in life. Indeed, my chronic pessimism suddenly came in very handy. By reading the past few months of my alternate-timeline blog posts, I ascertained that things weren’t all roses (not that it’s any surprise). Apparently I had a job that was every bit as worthless as my previous one in Kansas City. I had also moved into my own place—a crappy apartment in the Earth City neighborhood—shortly after getting the crappy job in December. Okay, I thought, so it’s the same crap in a different city. Hey, at least it’s a paycheck. And at least I finally managed to maintain a decent routine of keeping up with my music in my free time (strangely, though, my compositional accomplishments in this alternate timeline were all tuba pieces… somehow Amanda Plocher had a much more prominent sphere of influence).

So, reviewing my lifestyle, I decided that I was fairly satisfied with the way things turned out instead. I had a slew of about nine consecutive blog posts concerning how my coworkers were conspiring jerks, but few personal problems apart from that (at least, not that I had blogged about).

Meanwhile, most of my friends in Kansas City got along just fine without me. I never got to meet the pikey in this alternate timeline, though. Having never been convinced that I ever existed, the pikey lost interest in the blog, which caused the blog comments to gradually become rather dull. Sometime in November, the Captain actually married a German chick named Hilda and began to write a screenplay which cast her as the heroine. Herr Vogler spent the times he had originally set aside to hang out with me by instead composing the score for a trilogy of slasher flicks about a gay cowboy seeking revenge on a group of cannibal hicks in West Virginia. Shoulda turned that project down, Brad. If only I had been around.

The absence of Craigslist adversely affected the economy in a way I couldn’t have predicted. Without the corporate-free ease of Craigslist, people had to rely on other means to post job openings, buy used tricycles, discuss World of Warcraft in an open forum, find bassists for their Christian metal bands, write haiku, and look for casual sexual encounters. Somehow the recession was even worse than it had been in my timeline. And apparently the bar scene in America was plunged into chaos, what with all the seedy types who could no longer place personal ads to get laid at 3:00 in the afternoon. Sexual miscreants were everywhere now, and Chris Hansen was a national hero of sorts.

Somehow, in the months since the destruction of Craigslist, several other butterfly effects manifested. I’m not sure how this worked out, but Eliot Spitzer announced his candidacy for the presidency, taking the Democratic party vote in an unprecedented landslide at the primaries. Macaulay Culkin bought out MSNBC, gas shot up to $4.29 a gallon, Canada began a new and menacing nuclear arms program, and the writers’ strike lasted only a week, after which they made a fourth Look Who’s Talking movie.

Who knew Craigslist would be so important?

The timeline was in chaos.

It took me a whole day to piece together this information. I felt a knot in my stomach as I realized that none of this should have happened. I was responsible for it. All of it.

I hurried back to my time machine, threw off the cover, hopped in, and reset the dials…


Part III: Restoration

I went back to the day before, when I first used the time machine. I appeared next to myself just before that me got into the other time machine. I immediately shouted, “Don’t do it!”

You should have seen the look on my face.

I grabbed the notebook from my hand and started shredding it while explaining why I couldn’t be allowed to go back in time. The other me was paralyzed with rage after I ruined all my hard work. I was never so thankful that I didn’t keep a copy of my work, because now the calculations were destroyed.

But the time machine still worked, and it would have to be destroyed.

But the yesterday me wouldn’t allow that to happen without a fight, being fixated on altering the universe. I got in a big argument about how this time, with the knowledge of what would happen, I could take extra precautions, like maybe not beating Craig Newmark to death with a shovel. I insisted that it wouldn’t be enough, but I wouldn’t listen to reason.

Not me, the other me. Anyway…

Day-ago me said I could just keep going back and fine-tuning things until the universe was shaped into something more manageable. What a greedy idiot. I can’t have it all, I tried to explain. But, like most people, I was convinced that hope wasn’t lost until I tried for myself, rather than listen to me. And then I did something I didn’t expect: I jumped into my time’s time machine, rather than the one from yesterday. It threw me for a second, trying to figure out the ramifications of that action, and while I hesitated, I got away. I cursed myself and hopped into the yesterday time machine and followed myself back to August.

If I were me, where would I go first?

Thus began a very confusing game of leapfrog. I continued the argument every time I caught up with myself, but I only became more standoffish, which was in turn pissing me off. It almost came to blows, but I didn’t really see the point. Nor did I.

Finally, I got fed up with myself and said it was a stupid plan anyway, because resorting to a hacker who happens to be a site moderator with extra access just seemed like lazy writing. So I returned to yesterday and let myself go do whatever it was I was going to do, because I remembered that I didn’t have to bother intervening with myself if I could just go back to a few minutes before my encounter and disable the time machine. After all, I was in my time machine, not mine. It made sense.

So there I was, yesterday, alone in the basement. I was nowhere to be seen. Perfect. Now was my chance.

So I dismantled the time machine and waited for the timeline to revert to the way it should have been. Nothing happened.

That’s when I remembered that I still had the stupid notebook of equations. That only meant that I would build another one in a few months and do it all over again! Holy crap, you have a lot of time on your hands when you’re unemployed!

So I scooted the time machine I came in on behind the water heater and waited. Sure enough, in a few moments, two of me were arguing, each with my own time machine. Now there were three of me. What a mess.

If I didn’t see it for myself, I wouldn’t have believed it.

So while I was arguing the finer points of quantum physics with myself, I sneaked up from behind me and me. As soon as the other me tore up the notes, I knew I was free to step in… but how was I supposed to dismantle the original time machine with me standing right there?! Not to mention me! Wait a second, I thought, I was on my side! I mean, that me was. Not the first me.

So I stepped in. The yesterday me was completely dumbfounded at this point, but the other me was quick enough to figure out what probably transpired in my immediate future. I quickly used my appearance as a diversion and tackled myself. Then I jumped in as well. The three of me grappled for a little while, but it was two against one. One I was subdued, I told myself to go ahead and dismantle the time machine.

So I did. It’s all very confusing, especially since my memory of the whole ordeal is fading now that the timeline has reverted to pre-time travel, but I made sure to destroy my chances of time travel until long after I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t worth it at all.

I guess the lesson is to just accept the consequences of your decisions in life, to make a better present instead of a better past. Yeah, mistakes will be made sometimes, but regrets are corrosive. Put it behind you, because a lot of things are beyond your control anyway. Just keep going forward.

I’m never doing that again.