I think I’ve got it figured out.
I came back here with the basic outline of an idea that I wanted to try and convince Molly and Samantha about. When I woke up this morning, I had no idea how I was going to sell it to them, but knew I had to try. I haven’t been completely forthcoming about all the traveling I’ve been doing, but I’m going to have to tell them.
I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been able to travel both backward and forward in time. My trips to the future are short, and as long as they’re within a couple weeks of the date I’m “tethered” to, they are not terribly uncomfortable. But, if I travel more than a year or so into the future, it becomes very difficult. Painful. There’s a barely sub-audible “screeching” that I can’t quite hear, but which tears around inside my head, and is so disconcerting that snapping back to the time from which I departed is a blessed relief.
Though I haven’t exactly gotten used to the discomfort, I’ve become increasingly able to stand it, and on a couple occasions, actually stay put in the future for a couple hours. Let me just say this:
The future is not pretty.
At least not the one I’ve been to. War and economic collapse have ravaged that future. Even in the U.S., times are very tough, more difficult than at any time in our country’s history. And that future, which is not necessarily the one we here are on track to suffer, is not far off. Not far off at all.
There are so many different theories about how time travel is possible, and what form it would take if it were to somehow occur. I’ve personally experienced two types of travel myself, three if you count traveling to the future. When I went back to the 70s, it was clearly a different timeline that I traveled. Nothing that happened there had any effect on today, here. But my trip to 1933 Indiana clearly had effect here, and it appears to be the same (or a very, very close – almost identical) timeline. My trips to the terrible future I’ve seen may well be one of a myriad of possible futures. I’ve traveled seven times to the future, and my destinations all seem to be the same timeline. But, I refuse to accept that that one is the only possible timeline for this world. I just think it happens to be the one I am locked into traveling to.
Don’t get me wrong. All life doesn’t end. Armageddon doesn’t seem to occur. Life still goes on, it’s just really, really dark and depressing, when compared to world we live in, even today. I think that if I wanted to, I could stay anchored here in 2009, but I don’t want to. I don’t want my family to stay here. I want us all to go back to the past from which I came. America in the late 1930s is an interesting time and place, we will know what to expect from life here, and most important, it’s a long way from the dark future I’ve seen.
My goal coming back here was to take Molly and Samantha back with me. I have seen some evidence that I am successful in that.
More, later.
