The Secret Manuscript (Complete)

A Special Note from the Author

If you've read to the end, then chances are you've had a few comments, questions, or concerns about the plot. While time travel is inherently complicated, it has remained a captivating plot device throughout literature, television, and movies. I love time travel and grew up with Back to the Future, Quantum Leap, The Time Machine, Lost, and so on. Once I became a writer, I wanted to try to write my own time travel story.

Anyone who spends any time thinking, or writing, about time travel will inevitably run into paradoxes. The reality is there are no simple ways to resolve these problems. At a certain point, I had Vanessa point out the absurdity to the two Bens. I did this as a tongue-in-cheek way to let the audience know that I was aware of the absurdity. But as it remains, I never satisfactorily resolved the issue.

A potential solution to the grandfather paradox is posed as the Ben from the future discusses the alternate world's hypothesis. However, later on young Ben cuts himself and it shows up as a scar on his older counterpart. Of course this isn't compatible with the alternate world's hypothesis, but it's a cool scene so I left it in. As with most science-fiction, the reader must suspend a certain amount of disbelief for the sake of the story. I ask you not to look too deeply for plot holes and just enjoy the story at face value.

So who wrote the manuscript?

This blurb was meant to inform readers not to think too hard about the plot, and this is one of those questions. Admittedly, there are some things that don't make sense. Perhaps in a sequel I can elaborate and tie up loose ends. As it remains, it's a bit confusing.

The manuscript was written by some other Ben and left for the the Ben in our story to discover. I tried to show this by having the Ben in the story writing the entire time. Then at the end, he leaves his manuscript to be discovered for the next Ben. This is meant to imply the manuscript he received was from the Ben before him.

However, any clever person would ask the obvious question, how did the original Ben - or the Ben that started this whole causal chain - remember details of his childhood when our Ben could not?

Again, you'd be thinking too deeply. I tried to show that despite a connection to the past, it is not a strict connection. In other words, certain events must be the same and others do not adhere to this strictness. This idea is called fatalism. This idea is basically what my book Destiny and Free Will endorses. If you're interested, check that book out.

A possible solution would be that the original Ben remembered details about his childhood, wrote them down, and lived an average life. Ben 2 discovered the manuscript and used it to his advantage and changed the course of history. All subsequent Ben's would more or less make similar choices and have a similar life.

But the Ben in our story challenged this. In the end, he steals the time travel device instead of leaving it for his successor.

I also make no attempt to state which Ben this is and how far away he is from original Ben. It's a very difficult question to answer. In the end, it doesn't really matter. Our Ben is just some Ben in the middle of a bunch of Bens. Make sense? Good :)

Thank you for reading.

Edward Mullen