Journal of the Traveler

This is Adam, 11 years ago (you might recall a more recent photo here).  Our relationship has had its ups and downs.  We were friends, then I hated him, then we were best friends, practically inseparable.  And that was just high school.  In my life, Adam has been a bane and a savior, but he's been there for a long time.  11 or so years, in fact.

A little while ago, Adam had a dream that he was 14 again, on his first day of high school.  The only difference was that he knew everything then that he knows now.  He was being given a gigantic UNDO button.

"Haven't you ever wished you could do it all again," he asked me, "knowing what you know now?"

"God, no," I responded, "Knowing that it's over and done with is enough for me."

"All I could think about was the things I could do differently.  The possibilities."  He went on.  "What about 9/11?  We started high school in 1999, two years before the attacks happened.  What if you could prevent them?"

I thought about it.  "I hate time travel stories."

Fortunately, Adam doesn't.  And rather than spend the day musing about it, he decided to turn the odd and troubling dream into a short story, told entirely through electronic modes of communication, many of which were only in their infancy in 1999.  Blogs, e-mail, text messages, and wikipedia entries are only a few of the methods he chose, and they work very well.

I urge you to check out his story, Journal of the Traveler.  I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did.  I unloaded a ton of suggestions on him after reading it, so perhaps it will continue to evolve.  I'll be sure to let you know if it does!