Space Mountain
Lacy Lalonde

I’m going to go back in time. That’s my plan. That’s how I’ll fix everything.  I’m going to go back and do it over again. But first I have to figure it out. I’ll go through it all, every detail. Every word. I’ll sit for days and hours and remember everything. The atmosphere and temperature, your clothes, my clothes, the sounds that deafened me after your words had deafened me. I’ll write it all down on dozens of blank paper that I’ll leave to be scattered about in my den by the window left open to air out the smoke from all the cigarettes I’ll have consumed. I’ll read these pages over and over and edit and add to them with more blank pages that I’ll number so as to coordinate with the original page that needed editing or adding to. I’ll scatter these ones myself.

When I feel that I've sufficiently remembered every detail, have decided on exactly what I want to do differently and have anticipated every reaction possible and subsequently decided on which words and actions I’ll take to every possible reaction you may have, when all the variants and variables and possibilities and chance happenings have been memorized and acted out to perfection, then I’ll begin the task of creating a time machine. Once I've understood all there is to understand about the notions of space and time and worm holes and closed time like curves and coordinate transformations and relativistic time and speed and all those things that Einstein and Hawking talked about so much and people found so fascinating and after I've obtained several PhDs on these subject matters to ensure that the knowledge I've gained has been tested and found solid, then I’ll begin to build a machine that allows me to travel through time.

I’ll study everything I can about rockets and UFOs because at this point I’ll know that I need to be able to go really really fast, faster than anything else, faster than even I can imagine now. I’ll learn about different materials like titanium and aluminum and reinforced carbon-carbon and ceramics and heat shields and gravity and liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. I’ll go to NASA and personally and meticulously examine the space shuttles and rockets they have on site. I’ll confer with all those who are conferrable on the matter of time machines and space rockets. Once built I’ll test my time machine over and over and then build better ones, constantly upgrading and when I feel like I've built the best one I could ever produce I’ll make dozens of replicas and begin to administer a grueling array of test simulations. I’ll drench them in lava from the closest volcano and freeze them in the iciest of temperatures and repeatedly test launch and shoot at them with high powered weapons to simulate obstructions like small asteroids and debris that I’d surely encounter on my travels through space-time.

 With my time machine created I’ll build one other replica and in this one I’ll place a monkey in the driver seat, a monkey that I've personally trained to steer a time machine, and I’ll hook it up to wires that will read his heart and blood and anxiety. I’ll send this monkey with my replica time machine, after a very lengthy and heartfelt goodbye, into the nearest wormhole once I've discovered one. I’ll study all the causes and effects the travel has on the monkey and adjust accordingly. After that I’ll launch myself into the wormhole and pray and hope that I break through at just the right moment in time in order to make a different decision for you, the one you said was the right one, the one you wanted me to pick. This time, or that time, I’ll ignore my worries and wants in order to make you happy, because in the end for me that’s what matters. 

 

About the author:
LacyLalonde  is an underpaid Maritimer who sometimes writes things.