A Wandering Mind: A collection of short stories & poems.

Time Traveling

This was particularly a challenging assignment and my first experience writing a scene for a play. I hope you enjoy!

Scene
Workshop overlooking the side of a mountain in the woods.
Time
Night full moon

Adam enters the room. Jason is standing, examining the machine in front of him.

Adam: What's your biggest regret?

Jason turns slightly, still rubbing his chin in contemplation.

Jason: What do you mean? 

Adam crosses the room, picks up a stack of papers, turning to elaborate.

Adam: If you could go back in time, what would you change? 

Jason drops his arm, walking across the room to the window.

Jason: I regret a lot, bridges I burned, things I have done, trusting the wrong people. 

(Jason looked at the floor.)
 
Jason: What happens if we change the past?

Adam: I do not know. Everything has happened in the way it did. There is no way to predict the outcomes if we change them.  

(Jason turned his head to Adam.)

Jason: The people I love. What happens to them if I take a different path?

Adam: Again, you won't know them if you take a different path. Their lives will not have you there to affect them.

Jason: So my kids, (voice drifts off in thought) 

Adam: Oh they will still be born, there's just no way I can guarantee you will still adopt them.  

Jason: So, my choice is to go back and take the path I wish I had, not suffering the way I have, but, my kids, my kids won't know me. Also, there is no way of knowing if their lives will be better off without me.  

Adam: Basically

(Jason stares out the window into the night sky, lost with the internal struggle.)

Jason: Nothing. 

Adam: What do you mean nothing?

Jason: If you can not guarantee my kids will have a good life, that they will be safe, happy, loved, and have a good life, then I regret nothing.

Adam: You will keep all this crap you went through. The longing inside for what could have been. The pain you carry. The depression you stuff down. Just to make sure your kids have a good life.  

Jason: Yes. If I have to go through all of that again to ensure they have the best chance, then yes.  

(Jason walks across the room and picks up a hammer from the table.)

Adam: What are you doing?

(Jason lifts the hammer smashing the machine.)

(Adam runs across the room, grabbing Jason's arms, trying desperately to restrain them.)

Adam: STOP! STOP!

Jason: I CAN’T! What if someone else goes back and changes something? What if my kids end up dead, hurt, or they are never born? I can not risk it! This machine has to go.

Adam: You CAN NOT make this decision for the entire world. Time travel could make things so much better.

Jason: Yes, but it could also make things so much worse. So we change one thing in the past, causing someone else to come along with a new longing, so they go back to change that. It keeps going on, forever and ever. We are stuck in an infinite loop of reliving everything, people appearing, then disappearing from our lives, from reality itself. When does it stop? Who decides it is enough? Who decides what to change?  

(Adam looks into Jason's eyes as the struggle for the hammer lessons. Adam now holds the hammer, he brings it above his head, smashing the machine.)

The scene fades to black.