The Argument of Constants
Mikael Aizen
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Douglas Adams meets Roger Zelazny. This novelette mixes absurd humor, parallel universes, and romantic drama while managing to ask life's ultimate question: What is a koala doing in a boot?The Argument of Constants won the 2010 Writers of the Future Contest Honorable Mention.The problem with Traveling is that to change the past, you have to know something. Something that changed your mind, convinced you. Was important enough to Travel for. If you could go back in time and make that thing that happened not happen...then you would have never known or cared in the first place. You would never have Traveled.This is The Traveler’s Hypocrisy. More accurately named “The License” because for Travelers, the Hypocrisy is License for depravity. A way to cheat morality and never be caught. License to murder, steal, destroy. Life without consequence. The Hypocrisy means that what is done is done--the past is written…
The Hypocrisy is a lie.When we travel, we change the past--and the future with it.
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