I think about such things as when first introductions are made. I think about why I would even talk in detail to him about anything.
I think about how I have to be careful because I could shape the future just by focusing my gaze too much on a person. What if I go back to 1937, for instance and Princess Elizabeth and Philip are in the same room as I am in among a group of people who know I am a time traveler. I couldn't go to sleep for hours one night a week to two or more ago thinking about all that.
I think about how I don't want to tell people in the 1930's, for instance, about World War 2, because I worry that if I tell them about it, since I am a time traveler, then what I tell them is what becomes guaranteed to happen. And so while that outcome might still happen, which I won't know because I will be traveling backwards in time, I can at least think to myself about how I know that I did not cause World War 2, for instance, just because I talked about it to people in the past and before it happened.
So all that leaves me wondering about just what the hell I am doing - and why - as I travel backwards through time to time periods before 1959.
For all those people who met me in their past - where my future is the past - this must be a fascinating time to watch all this unfold.
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: 9/9/2006 7:39 PM
But on that day, that meeting, that I think was staged, was just a drop of water to a man dying of thirst. All it did was remind me that I needed water. I was hours away from dying of thirst and suddenly I remembered that I needed water. From then on, I wasn’t walking in despair, I was walking in defiance. I was defying those that were herding me over the edge. I continued walking because that was my plan, and part of the reason I went on that 25 mile walk was to see if something new would develop. It was just a shot in the dark. I was down to instinct, blind instinct. Just basic emotions at that point. Blind hope.
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: 9/9/2006 8:17 PM
And for that one person who was probably there to remind me, or rather to trigger some vague memory in my subconscious, of what I have to live for, there were probably a hundred, or maybe even a thousand, people out there during that time for absolutely no good purpose. They were zombies. They had absolutely no good intentions. They would not have given me the time of day if that would have saved my life. I hope you all rot in hell. But since there is no hell, I hope you rot on Earth. You are a waste of good oxygen.
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 9 September 2006 excerpt ends]
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0500411h.html
Title: The Croquet Player (1937)
Author: H. G. Wells
Dr. Finchatton regarded the bay of Les Noupets in silence for a few moments.
"Out of it all came a suggestion. I doubt if it will seem even remotely sane to you--in this clear air. But it was the suggestion that this haunting something was something remote, archaic, bestial. . . ."
He nodded his head in doubtful confirmation of what he was saying.
"You see . . . It's bad enough to be haunted by Georgian ghosts, Stuart ghosts, Elizabethan ghosts, ghosts in armour and ghosts in chains. Yet anyhow, one has a sort of fellow-feeling for them. They aren't just spirits of cruelty, suspicion, and ape-like malice. But the souls of a tribe of cave men might be. . . . Grisly ghosts. . . . What do you think?"
"One may be as possible as the other," I said.
"Yes. And yet, if cave men, why not apes? Suppose all our ancestors rose against us! Reptiles, fish, amœbæ! The idea was so fantastic that, as I drove away from Cross in Slackness, I tried to laugh."
Dr. Finchatton stopped short and looked at me.
"I couldn't laugh," he said.
"I don't think I could have done," I said. "It's a frightful idea. I'd rather be haunted by a man than an ape any day."
"I drove back home more saturated with terror than I came. I was beginning to see visions now everywhere. There was an old man bending down in a ditch doing something to a fallen sheep and he became a hunched, bent, and heavy-jawed savage. I did not dare look to see what he was doing and, when he called something to me--maybe only a good-day-to-you--I pretended not to hear. Whenever a clump of bushes came near the road, my heart sank and I slackened pace and, as soon as I was past, I jammed down the accelerator.
"I got drunk, Sir, for the first time in my life that night. You see, it was either getting drunk or running away. Maybe I'm still a young doctor, but that's my code. A doctor who quits his practice without notice is as bad as a sentinel who bolts. So you see, I had to get drunk.
"Before I went to bed I found I was funking opening the front door to look out. So with a convulsive effort I flung it open wide. . . .
"There crouched the marshes under the moonlight and the long low mists seemed to have stayed their drifting at the slam of the door against the wall. As if they paused to listen. And over it all was something, a malignant presence such as I had never apprehended before.
"Nevertheless I stuck to my doorstep. I did not retreat. I attempted even a drunken speech.
"I forget what I said. Maybe I myself went far enough back to the Stone Age to make mere inarticulate sounds. But the purport was defiance--of every evil legacy the past has left for man."
