Arrogance is Death—Do I Agree?

When I first decided to write a story for the Crossed Spaces anthology, the idea of time travel came to mind immediately. I have long been a fan of Doctor Who, so time travel was something I’d seen done on TV, at least through that show, for most of my life.

However, unlike the Doctor, I didn’t use a box for my time travelling, instead a stream. I’m not sure how I came to that idea; perhaps I’ve read something similar somewhere, perhaps it’s just from the word ‘timestream’, which is often used in speculative fiction. But mine took the form of literal streams of light, all coming together to form a different time in the past of the location where the stream was generated. One wrong step and you could be sucked between zones. I still don’t know exactly what happens to the people who are sucked into the zone space, just that they’ve never come back. Maybe it will be the subject of a future novel set in that world.

The people in my short story have suffered a calamity in their world and they go to the past to gather things to help them rebuild their society. This brought to mind other reasons that they might go to the past of their world. Would they want to set it right? Could they stop the chain of events that led them to that point?

In Doctor Who, things are regularly altered in the past, often to make sure what we know as reality remains undisturbed. This is the theme behind a lot of time travel fiction. However, there is another school of thought. Can we change our future if we go into our past? Does it work that way? Avengers Endgame suggests that it doesn’t. They made it clear that if you change your past, you only end up creating different realities and they won’t affect yours. Which is correct? Could they both be? Hard to tell when, as far as we know, time travel isn’t possible.

So what do the characters in my story think about this? Have they even considered it? I kept all this in mind as I wrote. I won’t tell you what their conclusion was—you’ll have to read the story to discover that—but writing the conclusion was an interesting experience. At first, I could feel myself nodding my head along with Cannair, but when I reread it, I wasn’t sure she was right. Is the call they made the right one? Could there be another way? I’m not sure, and the story intrigues me more than I would have thought. Who do I agree with?

If you’ve read it, I’d be interested to know your thoughts. What do you think of their dilemma and the conclusion they reached? Do you agree with Alma or, like Cannair, do you think that any other choice is too arrogant and that arrogance is death?

Lynne Stringer is the author of the short story Arrogance is Death in the Crossed Spaces anthology. She writes primarily science fiction and is the author of several books set in the world of Verindon. Her latest book, The Verindon Alliance, was released in May 2020. The Verindon Conspiracy will be released in 2022. You can find out more on her website lynnestringer.com.