My Sad Time Machine

When I was in college back in the 70s, something bad happened.

I was at the University of Pittsburgh’s Johnstown Campus, surrounded by wooded hills.  One day I met a pretty girl named Carol, who seemed taken with me.  We had a lovely conversation, and it crossed my mind that I should ask her out, but I didn’t have the nerve.  Shortly afterward I went home for Christmas, had a nice holiday, and was ready to return to Johnstown.  I almost flew back, but my dad decided to drive me instead.  And that’s when the bad thing happened.

The plane I didn’t take crashed, killing most of the people on board.  One of the dead was Carol.

Recently, it was reported that fifty years had passed since the disaster.  This grim anniversary – if that’s the word – made national news.  Morbid headlines are nothing new, but this one was especially painful, because the story still haunts me.

If I’d taken that flight, I could have spent it with Carol.  We could have picked up where we left off, gotten to know each other.  Romance might have blossomed.  I might have finally asked her out, and she might have said yes.  But our happy reunion would be cut short, when that plane crash killed us both.

Now, after half a century, I’m reminded of that terrible event all over again.  But this time, I decide to do what I often do with problems I find troubling: I want to write about it.  The passing years have given me distance from the disaster, perhaps, a greater understanding of what was truly lost when Flight 316 smashed into the ground, depriving Carol of fifty years of life, perhaps more.  I wish I had a time machine, so I could go back and change that, set everything right again.

And it occurs to me that, in a weird way, I do.

In my imagination, I could board that doomed flight.  I could go back in time to warn the pilot.  He wouldn’t believe me – who would? – but in the final moments, as that failed landing drew frighteningly close, I could fight to convince him of impending disaster.  All very suspenseful, the stuff of great fiction.

I start writing.  The words burst out of me in a white heat, the story telling itself while I just sit back (it seems) and watch.  It’s called “Terminal Velocity,” and it’s one the most intense stories I’ve written.  It’s the opposite of writer’s block, a story I can’t not write, physically tiring to set down on the page.  In my story, the Terry-like character time-travels back and manages to avert the crash.  But there’s a twist: he can’t stay in this new and improved universe because, sadly, it’s not his own.

In the end, he’s pulled back into the world where he started, the world where Carol’s still gone – with the cold consolation that he’s saved another Carol, in a world where some other version of him gets to renew their acquaintance, so romance can bloom.  It’s a perfect metaphor for my own experience in writing this story, saving her in a world I’ll never know, left to live without her after “saving” her elsewhere.

That’s when my character realizes the time machine can never be used again – this was unique, a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  Not unlike the writing of this story, something that emerged from my subconscious, burst onto the page, and now stands complete and unassailable, a wish-fulfillment fantasy, setting right an event that can never be corrected outside the printed page.

It’s my way of saying goodbye, I guess, putting a spin on the mourning process, saying Here’s what I wanted to happenafter so many years.  Circling that long-ago event, imagining otherwise, playing it out in my mind – a tragedy that can never be reversed, not in real life, only in the alternate world of science fiction.

The story concludes on a sentimental note:  So long, Carol. It was nice seeing you again, one last time.

If only in my imagination.