Been There — Done That — Knew the Outcome

Been There — Done That — Knew the Outcome

Time travel has its laws. I mean, would you want to irrevocably change history? I think not. You know, you can play around the edges, but you should never change the biggies — never. I don’t care if you meet the president and you know he’s going to be assassinated at Ford’s Theatre. You can't tell him.

Now you might mouth the Gettysburg Address if you’re in the audience, and maybe you could get in line to shake Lincoln’s hand, but don’t mess with the bigger picture.

Have you ever considered the consequences of warning Abraham Lincoln? What if he lived? Would you be here in the present? The repercussions may start small, but I promise you, by the time your parents are doing the horizontal hokey pokey, the chances that Herm the sperm would meet your mother’s egg are infinitesimal.

Not only would you not be you, but think of all the great people in the modern world that would not have existed had I, or my creator, broken the rules — scary. Currently, she has summoned me from her books and the past to help explain the rules. How do I know this? Well, I am a time traveler, and here I am helping my creator to compete in a writing contest in 2026!

Let me introduce myself. I am Dr. Rebecca Harper. I’m a character in a book about time travel. My creator felt strongly that there are certain rules that you must obey when one travels back and forth from the present to the past.

Let’s go back to the beginning. I was born, or “created” as a character in a book, in 1949 in Montana. I married Jeff Harper while I was in vet school, and we have a daughter. When I graduated from vet school, I went to Nevada and met a couple who were selling their veterinary practice.

The practice was near Lake Tahoe and near the site where one of my favorite television shows was filmed. You remember Comstock? You know Pa, his Chinese cook, Gee Ling, and his three sons all living at the Cattle Creek Ranch? Okay, this may be fictional, but they exist in my creator’s mind and books.

I know, I thought it was all made up too, but the truth is stranger than fiction. I say that with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek. Well, they actually existed! The proof was lost when Virginia City burned and all documents were gone, but I swear it’s true. Who knows, maybe the second-rate follow-up program, Bonanza, had a true historical basis as well. I digress.

So, after a fateful accident, I found myself back in the 1840s at the Cattle Creek Ranch near Virginia City, Nevada. Yeah, except they weren’t four virile men. The boys were young and “Pa” was a hunky dark-haired dude. Be still my beating heart. Of course, I was married to the man of my dreams, and all I could think about is getting back to Jeff and my daughter, Lauren. Where was the portal?

That started a long journey across North America in search of a portal back to my time and family. And yes, I met Abraham Lincoln and many other famous people. I didn’t actually meet Mr. Lincoln in person, but I was at the Gettysburg Address, and as tempting as it was to warn him about his assassin, John Wilkes Booth, my creator thought it would be chancy. Would my creator be born, and then would I really be me?

What are the laws and implications of time travel? Mathematical chances and sperm physiology aside, let me tell you about a few famous people I met on my travels.

Here was my problem. I was a modern-day veterinarian living in the 1800s, and I had no x-ray machine, no penicillin, no Oreos, and no tampons. You can imagine how welcome I was in the veterinary community where it was a man’s world. After two years searching for the portal that brought me to the 1800s, I needed to find employment that suited a woman while I pursued a way back to the future.

I was accepted into medical school with the help of some doctors I met, and there I met Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell. She was the first woman to graduate from a proper medical school. She was a tough old bird, but she educated me on the advancement (cough-cough) in care of women. It wasn’t very advanced, but Dr. Blackwell was ahead of her time and taught me well in caring for young women. I even moonlighted as a horse doctor, which helped me pay my way through medical school.

I attended a lecture by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr a doctor who was vilified for teaching such things as hand washing between patients to prevent the transmission of disease. Knowing how important his lecture was, and how he was even booed at the lecture, I introduced myself and thanked him for his efforts to improve the practice of medicine.

He thanked me and introduced me to his friends and even his son, Oliver Jr., who would head the US Supreme Court in the future. I found out he not only practiced medicine, but he was a prolific author and poet. He invited me to dinner with some of his friends, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Ralph Waldo Emerson. I know! I really met them, and I was asked to dine with them.

My veterinary skills helped me become a darling of the, dare-I-say, “in crowd.” I saved the life of a mare belonging to John Rockerfeller and he even came to my graduation ball. Ever conscious of the rules to time travel, I did not get involved in their personal lives, and at that stage, I was still seeking a way back to the future and my family. No one suspected my past, or should I say future. Yes, time travel can be confusing.

So, skip ahead a few years, and here I was working as a surgeon on a battlefield in the Civil War. There I met Ulysses S. Grant. Well, I saw him at a distance. I was pulled away from a Civil War M.A.S.H.-like unit to see his horse, Cincinnati, for a possible bowed tendon. Fortunately, it wasn’t bowed. I saw him at a distance, and he tipped his hat in my direction.

I met Clara Barton when I contracted dysentery near Gettysburg. I even told her she would be famous one day, but she scoffed at the idea and refused to let me hydrate myself, as it would only lead to more vomiting and diarrhea. I survived, and she became famous for establishing the Red Cross.

I already mentioned Abraham Lincoln. I did not shout, “don’t go the theater, Mr. Lincoln.” I carry the burden of guilt to this day.

I eventually moved to Baltimore and took a job in a hospital as a surgeon. As a woman, the job pickings were slim, and I was lucky to meet the top surgeon who heard I had expertise as a horse healer. To my knowledge, there were no bona fide women veterinarians back then. I saved his horse and was offered the job. By then I’d given up on finding a way back to my time and family. How long do you think I would have lasted in society, it I declared I was from the future? Loony bin here I come. Not going there — no way, no how.

After several years working at the hospital, I attended a 4th of July picnic and received the shock of my life. During an intermission from the traditional post-Civil War patriotic music, I heard someone whistling a tune that shocked me out of my possible inebriated stupor. I Want to Hold Your Hand from the Beatles! I shot up and tried to find the source. And that started a long period where I rather pathetically tried to hum or whistle modern 1900s tunes to seek other time travelers. There had to be more of us. Maybe they would know of a portal? It would be years before I found one, but that’s another story. Safe to say, no one knew my true origins except Sam Buchanan the patriarch of the Comstock series, and that had not ended well — read the book.

This is probably the only time I ever crossed the line of what is allowed in time travel, and you know I mean the actual time travel and not the crazy made up stories. I was traveling back from Baltimore to Virginia City on a stage. Although he was still not well known, I realized one of my stagecoach companions was Samuel Clemons. He used Mark Twain only as his nom de plume. He was just plain Sam on our long trip.

He introduced himself, and I was the only one to recognize him. I was so excited. He asked me where I was going. I explained I had been summoned to Virginia City to take over the medical practice. He mentioned he’d work on the Virginia City newspaper and asked if I know the Buchanans. I remember a Comstock episode I’d watched as a child and said yes. We had a pleasant talk about his time in Nevada.

I asked Sam where he was going, and he replied, “San Francisco.”

I couldn’t help myself. Summoning all my courage and resisting the will to laugh, I said, “Ah, the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” It was a quote from Mark Twain that I’d remembered since I was a child.

He laughed and said it was “pretty funny.” He opened his small book he kept in his breast pocket, and wrote something — three guesses. Yep, it was I who gave him the idea, and my idea was from his famous quotes which I read when I studied him in the future. Well, let’s be honest. I only exist because my creator, Elizabeth Woolsey, was born in San Francisco and knew first-hand the quote was a statement of fact.

Let’s skip ahead to now. I’m a regular time traveler. I know my portal and I obey the laws of time travel. I’ve met others with different portals. It seems they go back and forth from different times, and time moves the same in the future, or past for that matter, as it does where a traveler begins their journey, kinda like parallel universes. But here is the important rule. Don’t mess with important historical dates, or you might find you no longer exist. Well, that’s what Elizabeth says.