TT – ANSWERING THE WHY

Life happens fast. If you look away, it is gone before you know it.

So why am I out here, in the nowhere? My life is supposed to be elsewhere. But I no longer belong there. My other self is there, in my place.

I know the other Roger knows this. Which is why he not only abandoned time travel, but he erased it from his past. He knows he only has a limited number of days. And he wants to spend those days in his own future, with his loved ones, and all his hopes and dreams. And why shouldn’t he? Life is not only fast, it is all there is in this existence.

What goes on past this life can only be accessed by faith. Faith is that thing we all own, which we know and understand when we are quiet, and alone. Or not. But like Roger, I have faith.

Me? I’m out here alone and far away by choice. It is not only that I can no longer go home, but I am seeking my own future out here. I’ll know it when I find it. And then I will be content.

Besides, the other Roger is on limited time. I am not. I can afford to spend years, decades, even, looking for my safe haven, because of Stevo and the Nanocytes, which gave me a fresh start and an apparently long life.

In the process of doing all this, and gadding about the timelines, I have found ways to do some good, and to correct some mistakes. I have also discovered who it is that is trying to thwart me in finding my life again, on some personal tangent of a timeline.

I said that time travel is addictive, and it is, only because of the possabilities that present themselves when you enter a portal.

I randomize my departures lately. I’ve already gone to all the places I thought to go, only to find that there is nothing there. The places I used to love, I no longer recognize when I go back again. The saying is certainly true: You can’t go home again. So now I go randomly, either to the past or the future. It matters not the location on earth, either.

I’ve certainly gotten an education for myself, in the process. Once I landed in a boot camp. Instead of leaving, I accepted my temporary fate, and grew stronger and more capable in a fight. I learned weapons, and survival. It was hard, but I had all the time in the world.

That’s the other thing that is unique to time travel. You have time to stay and learn, and to do good and grow whenever you go, but you can come back the same day in time for dinner, from wherever and whenever it was you left. But you can only enjoy this when you know you have time.

Being old already, and having cancer and a bum ticker, is not the way to enjoy all this. Roger knew this, which is why he quit. Having been made young again, and healthy, I have the time to spend traveling through time, looking for my own personal future. Roger did not. And he was betraying the future he had by traveling away from it.

So this is why I time travel, and why he does not.

But will my future have the one I love in it? I don’t see how that is possible. I wish it were. I have gone to those other timelines, where Roger died from his cancer in 1995 or 1996. His widow was never there. Strange. You would think a person would grieve for a while and then perhaps meet and marry someone she knew; someone the family knew. Probably someone from church or the college where she taught. But no. In every instance of seeking her out in that situation, I found that she suddenly remarried a stranger, whom no one knew, and that they left the country, riding a train through Canada, on their way to Europe.

This all perplexed me no end. How could I find time to meet her and woo her, if she was already gone and married, right after Roger died? This was completely out of character for her. And I know her, better than anyone else does, except Roger.

So I abandoned those timelines too, out of sheer frustration.

And I drifted. I am still drifting.

But there is a method to my madness.

Think about it.

Where did all those stories Roger wrote come from?

Did he invent those timelines?

More important, did he create those people?

I don’t think so. He wrote about them. That’s all.

He has no more power than any other writer, to create stories.

He is not God, after all.

All he did was to somehow connect with their lives on those time lines and write about them in a most accurate way.

Which means that, unlike most fiction writers, his characters actually exist.

Which means I am left to find them all.

THIS is my WHY: The major reason I time travel. Not just to find my safe harbor.

To me, it is all intertwined. Their stories, and the fact that they are overcoming their enemies, is somehow connected to my future.

Already, I have found them living beyond the story Roger wrote about. I found them in their future, already having won, and gone on, from that grand event. And I am making them my allies.

There is hope for me. Does this mean that I will win also? I don’t know. Time and chance happen to all men. I may fail. But if I do, I will die trying.

After all, that is all anyone can ask of Life. And if there is retribution and reward after this life, I intend to make this life the best one I can; leaving the world a better place than I found it. For some reason, I have been relegated (bannished?) to travel through time, having no home of my own. I will play the hand that is dealt to me. No regrets. I may still come up with winning cards . Who knows?

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