One Prompt: One Do-over
What is your canon-divergence time-travel AU fix-it?
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Prompt: The Fates have informed you that in exactly 24 hours, you will be sent back in time to midnight of your 18th birthday1. You will keep your memories of this life, and you will be allowed to take one thing with you, but it must be something you can hold in one hand (so no stuffing a backpack!). What do you take with you?
I adore time-travel fix-it fanfic, it is one of my favorite tropes. I’ve seen it used to fix wonky story arcs (Supernatural, Teen Wolf, Star Wars) and heartbreaking tragedy (Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, Merlin, Game of Thrones (Brienne/Jamie fans unite!)). Whether the set up is ridiculous or sublime, all you have to do is say “time-travel fix-it” and I am slamming the YES button.
I simply love the idea that a character gets the chance to go back and fix whatever went wrong, or find a way to save the people they care about if they don’t have the power to change a fixed-time event (volcanoes, heart attacks, etc.).
I’m sure I’m not the only person who has day-dreamed about what we’d do differently if we went back in time to have our own do-over. Would we marry that person, take that job, turn down that opportunity? Is there a life we can save, or an accident we can prevent? It can get depressing, fast, but in the right frame of mind it is an earnest exploration of personal motivations and priorities.
Or, it can just a fun “what if?” fantasy.
This prompt is from a good friend, and I loved it immediately because it has a bit of everything in it which makes it more interesting than a run-of-the-mill unstructured daydream:
Time to prepare, but not a lot of time;
A specific time/date to land instead of some random day in the past;
The ability to bring something with you, but only something small.
Remember, you get twenty-four hours ahead of the quantum leap to prepare! You could bring your guinea pig, if you want, or maybe some valuables.
The friend who posed this challenge to me said she would bring with her a flashdrive containing all of her writing and immediately put it in a safe deposit box. Given we are near in age, it would mean she would take back in time something that she would not be able to actually use for twenty years, but she wanted the security of knowing her words were waiting for her.
Are you going to scrounge for a gold bar to change your fortunes, or are you going to grab a notebook and write down important dates, contact information, historical events? Will your choice be practical or sentimental? Will it be something that will serve as a warning for yourself to do better/be better? Or… ?
The Treasure I Would Bring
My answer is a little depressing, because on my 18th birthday (August 15, 1987), both of my parents were already dying. I knew they were not healthy, but at the time I honestly expected Poppa to die first, and not for a while. Mother’s health was always fragile, but we had no idea that the cancer which would eventually kill her had already taken root.
While I could possibly take some steps to extend their lives, it would not have gained me much. They were both hostile to medical intervention in general, but even if I convinced them to seek the help they needed, it’s doubtful either of them would have made it much longer than they did…maybe five extra years, at most.
No, the only things I could focus on changing would be the quality of their lives in those years, and the quality of my life once they were gone.
I would definitely choose to do college differently, and while that would result in my not making some treasured friendships, it would mean I could stay home with my parents and straighten out their finances for all of our sakes. Which I would, because upon waking up that morning, the first thing I would do lock away all of mother’s financial ledgers, checkbooks, and credit cards. I’d put both of my parents on allowances and focus on paying off the credit card debt Mother always lied about and the mortgage Mother kept having refinanced (she was a shopaholic, among so many other issues).
Oh my god, the absolute shit fest that would be! Mother would be brutal about it, and Poppa would probably just drink more heavily to escape the backlash. I know it would be at least a year of psychological warefare, mano a mano, all the way down. That said, mother was a bipolar narcissist but she was also physically unhealthy and unused to being challenged, especially not by someone as savvy as I am now. I would win.
So yeah, life would be hell for a while, but what I know now about finances, budgeting, investing, and money management is easily 1000% more than they both knew collectively. (They were solidly middle class due to Poppa’s military retirement, but they always lived paycheck-to-paycheck and in heavy debt, secure in their boomer perspective of “things always get better.”)
But! If I could turn that around, not only would I dramatically improve their quality of lives, I’d have money to do things with like build up a nest egg/safety net and invest.
So if that’s my plan, what would I bring with me?
An A-5 sized Leuchtturm1917 notebook. A very full notebook.
In those 24 hours I’m given, I’d look up the histories of the big companies that were coming down in the line (since the year would be 1987, I’d have plenty of businesses on that list). I’d write down the date of big days for the stock market, good and bad (after all, bad days are good for buying cheap). I’d look at cultural trends, especially in fiction and movies.
Being familiar with the area we lived in back then, I’d look at current property values and development, so I could plan to invest in property I know for a fact would become very expensive later. In fact, I’d probably get my realtor license right quick, even before starting college. You betcha I’d be flipping properties in downtown Orlando. No shame.
Hell I’m not sure I’d even go to college, although that would be another major fight. Mother had plans for me!
(And I had no plans at all.)
I’d be ready and waiting for the internet. I’d be feeding ideas and contacts to activists, and trying to build networks to push back against the GOP’s attempts to take over our country. Maybe if I got rich enough, fast enough, I’d launch my own think tank and lobbying group to protect the internet before most people even knew what it was, and kneecap all the psychotic tech bros before they could become billionaires.
Look, someone was going to create some version of Amazon/Facebook/Twitter/et al at some point; my goal would be to buy get politicians in place to enforce anti-monopoly laws while putting privacy laws in place and securing the internet as a public utility. A GIRL HAS DREAMS, OKAY???
Sadly, what I could not do is anything to prevent tragedies like the Oklahoma City Bombing or 9/11. Maybe I’d try to find a way to derail Columbine, which would be fairly easy with an anonymous phone call or two. But there is little I could do for those large-scale tragedies that would 1) not be ignored and/or 2) get me arrested and on a watch-list. And while I’d keep my notebook in a safe deposit box just in case, writing down incriminating information about mass murders would just be dumb.
Not sure what I could do about the 2000 presidential coup but maybe by then I’d be in a place to do something? Maybe?
The 1990s were pivotal years for the internet and and while I really loved being a club kid, I’d do things a LOT differently the second time around…
Codicil: In the USA, the age of 18 is when you are legally an adult. Sure, you can’t drink alcohol until you are 21 (seriously, wtf) but you can live independently if you so choose and the police won’t drag you home for running away (they will however arrest and try you as an adult if you get on the wrong side of the law, or an angry cop). If your country has a different age for the “age of majority” then use that one.
And, buy Bitcoin in 2013.... I love your plans!