Copyright � 2026 by Shane
Tourtellotte
It’s hard to know how to close a book like this. So much more can be said about the perils and rewards of time travel, but the title promised you a handbook, not an encyclopedia. A writer giving you practical guidance should himself take it, which means I won’t stretch this volume past its natural bounds.
Still, I have a final lesson left to impart. It’s one I have partly taught already, but that needs expanding. It concerns you, and your attitude toward what your travels will bring you to discover, in the past or the future.
I have urged upon you a flexibility of mind, to contend with the cultures and mores of other eras. It’s a vital skill, but it won’t be limited to visiting different times. You’ll need that flexibility for dealing with the things you learn and discover, not just then, but when you’re back in the here and now.
You see, a revolution has begun. It isn’t the revolution of time travel, or not only that revolution, but something linked to it, running on parallel lines. It’s a quiet revolution so far, as deep underground as the time travel from which it springs. It won’t stay so.
The linear constraints of time have been breached. The way we know and view everything, past, present, and future, is going to change. It already is being changed, in quiet corners and still-veiled mindsets, and those shifts will only grow.
Some of that change will be in current attitudes toward other times. The past is seen by some as a lost golden age, by others as an unrelieved nightmare. The future is thought an eternal progress to sunlit uplands, or a plunge into irresistible dystopia. Many assert their views on both questions, some with knowledge as best they can interpret it and theories adjusted to what they can see. Others conceal, warp, or invent facts to fit their conclusions, replacing argument with hectoring bombast.
We time-travelers are in a unique position. We can get directly the knowledge those others infer, assume, or imagine. That knowledge won’t fulfill all our own assumptions, expectations, and desires. We must accept what was or will be, not what we wish had been or could have come to pass. We have to be flexible enough, and tough enough, to believe and absorb the evidence of our experiences.
This leads to how we view current-day authorities -- real, aspiring, and presumptive -- using history to their purposes. We can all name prominent people and groups whose attitude toward history involves challenging, denying, inverting, and burying it whenever doing so gets them a little more money, a little more power, or a little more pain inflicted on their enemies. I will not name names, because my list would not be the same as yours, and saying my list is right, or wrong, wouldn’t make yours any more wrong, or right.
What matters is that they can be confronted, and history restored to more of what it should be, on the most unimpeachable authority: the facts. Things you find and learn traveling in time are tools in that work. Use them well, and you will always be on the right side of an argument.
This does require some restraint and humility. Your experience in some past age is not the sole perspective on that age. You will have seen one sliver of what was happening at that place and time. It will not be everything -- but it will be something, and if you are thoughtful and honest about that experience, it will be truth.
Time travel can do so much. It can satiate our desires for wonder and awe. It can allow us to recover lost arts and humanities from extinction, and solve riddles long thought beyond answering. It can grant an avenue toward riches for the smart and hustling.
Best of all, with a little wisdom, it can even make the world of today a better place.
At the end of this handbook, you now stand at the beginning of all these adventures and opportunities. Let’s see what you can make of them.
Enjoy the trip.
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