The following is an excerpt from a novel-in-progress.
One significant limitation of the time machine I’d discovered in the basement of the library was that, while I could travel to any moment in the past or future, I could not travel to any place. I was limited to the particular spot in the basement–or where that particular spot would be or had been.
Thus, I could not travel instantaneously to, say, ancient Rome. To get to ancient Rome, I’d have to travel to that approximate time period and then somehow get myself from the location where the library basement was in the southwest part of what would come to be called the North American continent, and then venture across land and sea, across the known world, to ancient Rome.
That is to say–it was possible, but very time consuming and difficult.
For this reason (and others) I decided not to try to visit really famous and well-known episodes from world history–the Battle of Waterloo, the voyage of Columbus, the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Instead, I would confine myself to this particular geographic location. My investigation of the past and future would thus be deep rather than wide.
Perhaps, at some future point, I wold venture to other locations, but this hyper-local time travel actually fit pretty well with my own sensibilities and interests. I was, after all, working on a history of Fullerton. So the limitations didn’t bother me.
Thus far, I’d visited the area that would become Fullerton in the Ice Age and had almost been trampled by a stampede of mastodons, and nearly frozen to death. From this experience, I’d learned to dress climate-appropriately.
I’d also visited the so-called “Mission Era” of local history and had almost been killed by an Indian hunter named William Wolfskill.
I had much to learn, and many dangers to avoid.
I had decided not to try to intervene or change history. I saw myself more as an observer and chronicler of what I witnessed. This decision was tested in the Mission Era when I’d witnessed Spanish soldiers whipping and enslaving Indians. I wanted to stop them. But, not fully understanding the consequences of such interventions, I chose to observer and report. Maybe I was a coward.
I spent a lot of time thinking about my goals, or purpose. What, exactly, was I trying to achieve? Was I a hero or a villain? I was just, I suppose, an ordinary man interested in local history and the lessons therein.
Traveling to the local past and future would allow me to focus on the less famous, but no less important, aspects of history: How did ordinary people live their lives? How did their choices, values, and beliefs affect the lives of their community?
Most people do not, after all, live at the center of great historical moments. Most people live on the periphery, but are nonetheless affected (in ways great and small) by the major shifts and moments of history.
I am too. This is not to say that the lives and choices of the masses of ordinary folks are unimportant. On the contrary, the attitudes, beliefs, and choices of regular people living in regular, ordinary times form the meaningful ether in which the forces of history play out.
My purpose, them, was to chronicle a hyper-local history of regular people in a regular town living regular lives, and to find meaning in this.
And given my ability to “see” the broad span of history, to see how the actions and choices of people in the past, their crimes and kindnesses, affected the lives of future generations they would never know.
