This is the first story I wrote featuring “Alternitech,” the company where explorers hunt parallel timelines for subtle differences that might be profitable in this world. (“Rough Draft” appears earlier in this collection.)
The tiniest of circumstances, the most trivial of decisions, can have ripple-effect consequences for our lives—but then, we’d never know it, would we?
If you had just stomped on the brakes half a second sooner, you would have avoided the fender-bender that gave you whiplash which cost thousands of dollars in insurance. If you hadn’t chosen that particular moment to run to the grocery store, you would have gotten the phone call that you’d won the radio station’s grand prize contest. If you had chosen to stay home and read instead of going off to the coffee shop, you might not have bumped into the person who would turn out to be the love of your life.…
Who can say?
Back in high school, I read Ray Bradbury’s classic short story, “A Sound of Thunder,” in which he portrays time and destiny as an easily unraveled web, where the untimely death of a mere butterfly back in the age of dinosaurs is enough to alter all of human history.
Think of all the possible variations on our world there could be, the multiple parallel universes with only the smallest of differences. It would be worth exploring.
The original title for this story was “Time in a Bottle,” but the Jim Croce estate would not let me use it. Apparently, Croce’s widow doesn’t like science fiction. Oh well, I like my title better.