The problem with edits of the timeline is that they have consequences. I mean, it’s basic science fiction and fantasy. The election of a certain orange porcine political candidate had antecedent events. It also has events that have flowed from it. A simple erasure leaves a gaping hole in the space-time continuum. As much as many would like to erase that event down to the amino, peptide, and simple sugars level ( and savour the moment!), it most likely would not be possible.
Folks. We are into the deep voodoo and hoo-doo of space-time theorists and science fiction writers here. Some would maintain that spacetime is self-healing, that the future antecedent events are smoothed over by spacetime seeking to heal itself. Others have theorized that the ruptured timeline dangles like a lost participle, forever incomplete. One of my favorites is that changes like these cause splits in the timeline as an essential means of maintaining conservation of energy. In that case, two almost identical lines might exist in parallel, separated only by what happens to an orange porcine politician. It almost boggles the imagination.
Unfortunately, further complications are hypothetically possible if you unanchor the flow of time from its, shall we say, Procrustean bed. All the other events surrounding it are now loose and in flux. Unpredictable changes might occur. Your high school gym teacher that you abhorred might become the Supreme Leader. Damn! Gymnastics every morning! Or your Ex might be elected to high office and use influence to have you fired and deported to some obscure country no one ever heard of, and didn’t exist before the timeline split.
I am sorry to say, but it’s another one of those ” Choose, but choose wisely” situations.
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that was my dilemma too
Spacetime is not a simple thing!
I don’t mind the thought exercise because it could never happen, so I can choose to ignore the consequences like what bad things might happen if we erase Hitler, let’s say. If it’s all make believe, then I can make believe it would be great to somehow change an event in time to make the Orange One homeless and live in a cardboard box on the street, starving, cold, and getting spit on for the rest of his life. That’s a nice fantasy.
I like that fantasy too!
I thought about this prompt for about 20 seconds this morning then decided reality as I experience it (incompletely, fragmentally, elusive and illusive) is weird enough. And who knows what time we actually live in? PKD’s novel, “Time out of joint” explores that illusion. The illusion of living in a different era is not (IMO) science fiction — it’s real. I am living in “Mosey time” where a man on a horse will tip his c’boy hat to me and vote repug because his dad and granddad did. No better reason. I sometimes feel that I came from the future but that I made this little time-travel jaunt on purpose, tired of the future. I wasn’t tired of the future — I was unable to shoulder the price tag in the future’s diminished dollar value. I had to move back here to the early 1970s.
If I didn’t own the house and still had a part-time job, I’d be looking to slip into the’70’s as well. New England has become very expensive.
I would have had a hard time moving here NOW. My house was $74 k when I bought it.
I don’t know if I should be optimistic but perhaps having seen what a single choice led to may make many of careful and cautious and choose wisely?