If You Could Go Anywhere...

“If you could go anywhere in time, backwards or forwards, where would you go?”

The question came just as our waitress was walking away with our order and took me by surprise. I looked at the attractive dark-haired man across the table and thought about how to answer. Sure, it was a bit cliche, but not the worst ‘getting to know you’ question I’d ever heard.

“1933,” I settled on after a moment. I took a roll from the basket in the middle of the table tore off a piece to eat while I waited for him to ask me to elaborate.

But he just chuckled and shook his head, like he thought my answer was cute. “You can’t kill Hitler.”

I paused. “Excuse me?” Was this guy really about to defend Hitler?

He waved his hand dismissively and reached for a roll himself. “Everyone wants to kill Hitler. It’s the obvious answer. And I get it, really. It almost feels wrong to say anything else. But unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.” He gestured with his roll before taking a bite out of it.

“What doesn’t work that way? Time travel?”

He nodded. “Mhm.”

I sat back in my seat and crossed my arms. “And you’re the expert on time travel?”

He smiled, like there was some joke I didn’t get. “Something like that.”

I scoffed and looked away. Maybe ‘condescending nerd’ was better than ‘actual Nazi,’ but the bar was literally in Hell at that point. I turned back to him and leaned forward with my elbows on the table and my fingers interlaced under my chin. “Alright then, since you’re the expert, tell me why, in this completely hypothetical scenario you’ve just made up, I can’t go back in time and kill an evil dictator?”

“It’s a paradox. If you killed him in 1933, then why would you go back to 1933 to kill him?

“What if when I get there, it takes me longer to kill him than I thought it would? I’d still have a reason to go back and try and kill him sooner, and I wouldn’t realize that I already did until I was doing it.”

He nodded his head side to side with an impressed look on his face. “That… could work.”

I narrowed my eyes. “But?”

He sighed. “But… There’s other reasons trying to change the past is complicated. For example, if you try and do research ahead of time to prepare and end up doing the same thing you read about yourself doing, then whose idea was that?”

“Mine.”

“But you only got the idea from reading about yourself already having done it. That’s like trying to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.”

“What if you’re wrong about how time travel works? What if paradoxes are allowed?”

He gave me that laughing-at-a-joke-you’re-not-in-on smile again. “Alright, let’s say the universe allows for paradoxes; maybe the timeline corrects itself, or we create an entirely new timeline and the original is left unchanged. There’s still a larger issue to consider.”

I sighed. “And what is that?”

He either didn’t notice or didn’t care about my lack of enthusiasm. He had more than enough for the both of us. “The whole idea of going back in time to kill a man like Hitler hinges of the Great Man of History fallacy. That’s the idea-”

“That history is made by super special men who do great things all on their own, and the rest of us don’t matter.” I smiled sarcastically. “I know.” Honestly, I was surprised he knew what it was. He seemed like the kind of guy who worshiped ‘Great Men of History.’

“Right. Sorry.” He cleared his throat. “So you know what I’m getting at, right? We point to Hitler as as big bad super villain we can blame everything on. And don’t get me wrong; he was evil, but he wasn’t uniquely evil. He didn’t do all that stuff alone. He was elected into power. Without enough people who agreed with him, none of that would have happened.”

“But you think without him, it could have still happened?”

“Well, there’s no way of knowing for sure. Obviously things would be different. And maybe they would be better. But maybe they would be worse.”

“How could it possibly have been worse?”

“They could’ve won the war.”

I frowned, feeling a little queasy at that thought.

“I’m not say that’s what would have happened. I’m just saying it could have. That’s the problem with trying to change the past. You never know what the consequences will be.”

“The Butterfly Effect.”

He nodded. “Yes.”

I put my arms on the table and thought about that for a moment. “So why’d you ask, then?”

“Ask what?”

“What time period I’d like to travel to. Did you actually care what answer I gave you, or were you going to go on your little rant about paradoxes no matter what I said?”

He frowned. “I didn’t mean for it to come off as though I didn’t care about what you said. I was only answering questions you asked.”

“After you dismissed my answer based on your own assumptions.”

“You never said my assumption was wrong.”

“Well, I wasn’t just going to let you say that killing Hitler would be a bad thing without asking follow up questions. I didn’t want to risk wasting my time and energy on a Nazi.”

“I’m not-”

“I know. Because I asked follow up questions instead of just assuming the worst.”

His eyes scanned my face for a moment, and I saw it finally dawn on him where he’d fucked up. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

“Do you want me to ask now, or is it too late?”

“Go ahead. I’ve had a lot of time to think about my answer. I may as well give it to you.”

“Alright… Is it still the same answer then? 1933?”

I nodded. “Some time before May 6th. I’m not sure how long it would take, but obviously, I wouldn’t want to be in Nazi Germany for any longer than I have to be.”

“So I was right about that part.”

I rolled my eyes. “Well, I wasn’t planning on taking a trip to see the Dust Bowl.”

“What happened on May 6th?”

I looked at him. “The Institut für Sexualwissenschaft was raided, and somewhere between twelve and twenty-five thousand books were burned, along with countless artifacts and documents related to the research they were doing.”

“Research… about sex?”

“About sexuality and gender.” I raised an eyebrow at him. “Why? Is there something wrong with that?”

“No, it’s just not quite what I was expecting.”

“It’s the same kind of research I do. I don’t put it on my dating profile; I’m sure you can imagine the kinds of messages I’d get if I did. But it’s my Library of Alexandria. The research they were doing was revolutionary. I know we’ve surpassed it by now, but I think sometimes about how much further along we’d be if it hadn’t been destroyed, you know?”

“I can understand that. But I’m afraid-”

I put my hand up. “That time travel doesn’t work like that.”

He nodded.

“Yes, I’ve thought about that. I know I can’t actually change anything, but I think it would still be worth it to see it and to try and salvage as much as possible. It doesn’t deserve to be lost to history.”

“So do you have a plan then?”

“I was thinking…” I took a breath. “We bring all that stuff back to the present with us, or we hide it somewhere no one will find before now. Then nothing between then and now has actually changed, but the future could be.”

“Clever.”

Satisfied, I sat back in my chair and crossed my arms. “So does that mean I’ve passed your test then?” I rolled my eyes.

He smiled and nodded. “Yes, I think it’s safe to say you did. With flying colors, I might add.”

I frowned. He sounded worryingly serious. “Please don’t tell me this was actually some kind of test.”

“Alright, I won’t tell you.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out something round and gold-colored, and set it on the table without a word.

“What is this my prize?”

“Something like that.”

I furrowed my brow and reached to pick it up. It was a pocket watch. A real pocket watch. It was odd, though. It had too many hands. Four hands of varying lengths were contained within a circle in the middle. It almost looked like a second clock had had been set on top of the first, except the smaller one only had ten dashes around the edge instead of twelve. There were another four hands that extended past the inner circle. Other than the extra hand, this clock was relatively normal, and I could read the time fairly easily. I didn’t pull out my phone to check that it was accurate, but it seemed close enough. The extra hand, which was the shortest of the four and not moving, was about halfway between the three and the four.

“I can show you how it works, if you’d like.”

I’d briefly considered asking him, but since he offered, I was suddenly determined to figure it out on my own. I looked at the inner clock. One hand was about a quarter of the way from zero (or ten?) to one, one was at two, one a little more than halfway from two to three, and one was about a quarter of the way from six to seven. If I arranged the numbers from where the shortest hand was to the longest, I got 2026.

I looked up. “Am I reading this wrong, or do you have a watch that tells you what year it is? Is that something you have to check frequently?”

He laughed. “You’d be surprised. And people tend to look at you funny when you ask them.”

“Of course they do. How do you forget what year it is?” You get a pass for about a week in January, and then after that you should have it figured out.

He just shrugged.

I shook my head and looked back down at the watch. If I had the time and the year, and the last hand was at three, then that had to be the month. March. About halfway to April. I let out a surprised laugh when I realized, “You have the month and the year, but not the day?”

“It’s a bit tricky, that, with not every month having the same number of days. But people tend to be bit more forgiving about getting that one wrong, so it hasn’t been too much of a problem.”

There were eight tiny knobs around the outside of the watch and nothing to indicate which one was connected to which hand. I picked one at random and turned it. (Obviously, I planned on putting it back.)

“What are you-”

The hour hand moved backward.

My stomach lurched, and my brain went fuzzy. I felt like I was going to throw up. As I put my hands on the table to steady myself, I let go of the watch and heard it thud against the suddenly empty wooden table. It was snatched away instantly, and I looked up to find my date looking very annoyed with me. Mostly to avoid his gaze, I looked around the restaurant instead, finding it much brighter and much less crowded than it had been before.

Seeing a sudden movement out of the corner of my eye, I turned my head and found our waitress standing there looking at us, one hand over her heart and the other carrying a stack of menus.

“I am so sorry,” She said as she quickly approached us. “I didn’t see you two there. I hope you haven’t been waiting for long.”

I just stared at her, my brain still trying to catch up with what was going on.

Apparently, my date didn’t have the same problem. He gave her a charming smile and spoke easily. “Oh, don’t worry. We’ve only been here a minute, and it’s our fault for being so quiet. The sign did say to seat ourselves, right?”

She smiled politely and nodded. “Yes, you’re fine. I just usually hear people come in. Let me just go put these away, and then I’ll bring you some waters to get you started.”

His chair scraped loudly against the hard floor as he got up. “Actually, before you go through the trouble, I think we’ve gotten our plans a bit mixed up.” He looked at me. “Do you remember, did John and Carolyn say we were getting dinner before or after the show?”

I gave him a tight smile. “I think you’re the only person in the world who hears dinner and thinks lunch. Obviously, it was after, which I tried to tell you…”

“I’m… just gonna take care of these and then come back.” The waitress took a couple steps back before turning around and speed walking to the kitchen.

Normally I’d feel bad for making the other woman uncomfortable, but right now, my head hurt too much for me to care about much of anything. I got up and headed to the door.

I paused when I got outside and saw the sun was still up. I’d noticed in the restaurant as well, but it didn’t really hit me until now that this was real.

I felt a hand on my arm, and suddenly I was being pulled further away from the door. “What the Hell did you do that for?”

I flinched and yanked my arm from his grip. “I didn’t know it would do anything!”

“No? So when someone hands you a pocket watch, your first thought is to set back the time a few hours for no reason?”

“Actually, my first thought was ‘who the Hell carries a pocket watch?’”

“Plenty of people do where I’m from.”

“And where’s that? The nineteenth century?”

“Twenty-third, actually.” He straightened his jacket.

I stared at him.

“What?”

I shook my head slowly. “You are not from the twenty-third century.”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “Do you actually think I got a time machine from two hundred years in the past?”

”Honestly? That’s more believable than the humans surviving another two hundred years.” I narrowed my eyes. “You are human, right?”

“Yes, I’m human.” He frowned. “And I didn’t realize you were so cynical. Of course humans survive another two hundred years, much longer than that, in fact.”

“On Earth?”

“Yes, on Earth. Believe it or not, repairing the harm we’ve cause on this planet is significantly easier than finding a new one.”

“I know that. Do you want to go tell the government that?”

“I can’t change the twenty-first century any more than you can change the twentieth. What I can do is tell you that there is hope. It won’t be easy, but humans are resilient. We figure it out eventually.”

“Why would you bother going back in time if you can’t change anything?”

“When you travel, do you try to change every place you visit?”

“If I see someone who needs help, I try to help them.”

“As do I. But when it comes to interfering with the timeline, one must be careful. And I think you understand that. I wasn’t kidding when I said your plan was clever. If you’re interested, I would be happy to help you save some books.”

“Is that the real reason you asked? To see if I was qualified to time travel with you?”

He nodded his head to the side. “More or less. I’ve been hoping to find someone who might accompany me for a bit. It does get a bit lonely.”

I laughed and put my hands on my head. “Oh my god…”

“You can say no, obviously. But at the very least, let me take you back to finish our dinner.”

I grimaced at the memory of my brief experience traveling through time. “I… think I’d rather just wait it out. It’s only a few hours, right?”

“Yes. But… Are you sure? I know it can be unpleasant the first few times, especially if you’re not expecting it, but I promise it does get better.”

“I’m gonna have to take your word for that.” I took a step back. “It was one thing when it was hypothetical, but I’m not…” I shook my head. “I don’t even do regular travel. I’ve never left the country. I’ve barely left the state. I’m not the kind of person you’re looking for.”

“You could be. If you want.”

“Well, I don’t. Besides…” I gave him a small smile. “My therapist says I need to focus more on the present.”

“Right…”

Unable to stand the disappointed look on his face, I turned to go.

“Well, if you change your mind-”

I held up my phone. “I know how to reach you.” But I didn’t think I would, and I doubted he would was planning on sticking around for long. He’d find someone else, or he’d just get tired of this decade and move on to a different one.

When I reached the end of the block, I stopped at the crosswalk and pulled up his contact on my phone with the intention of deleting it. But I hesitated. My thumb just hovered over the screen.

The light changed.

I sighed and put my phone back in my pocket.