If anybody had come up to you, six months ago, and described to you the life you are living today, would you have believed it?
Of course not. Who would?
It is all quite frankly unbelievable — all of the worst dystopian movies ever made rolled into one.
I consider it proof — if proof you need — that we are, indeed, stuck in the wrong timeline of our own history.
That being the case, I decided that further research was needed. I prescribed myself a viewing of Parts II and III of “Back to the Future” — the trilogy of films starring Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, and a time machine made from a souped-up DeLorean.
The concepts of time travel and alternate history seem inextricably linked.
Ray Bradbury made this point vividly with his powerful short story, “A Sound of Thunder,” in which a travel-safari agency offers time travel to wealthy patrons. Clients can, for example, go all the way back to the late Cretaceous, to bag such big game as Tyrannosaurus Rex.
The safari guides stress that everyone must take extreme care to touch nothing and do nothing that might snowball over intervening time and change history. They’ve even engineered an antigravity path so that visitors need not touch any prehistoric flora or fauna.
However… in the story, one hapless customer loses his balance and stumbles off the path. He thinks no harm was done — but when they all return to the agency, they discover that things are subtly different: English is spelled and spoken differently, and it turns out that the pro-fascist presidential candidate, who had recently lost the election, is now the victor. What could have made the difference? They are horrified to discover a dead butterfly, stuck in the mud on the sole of the client’s boot.
I thought about this story a lot in 2017, after the three deaths that resulted from the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va. How far back must we go, and where, to seek the source of horrendous change?
In “Back to the Future II,” the film opens when Doc, Marty and Marty’s fiancée Jennifer take a jaunt from Hill Valley in 1985 to then-far-off 2015.
Director Robert Zemeckis’ idea of 2015 is charming: there are flying cars, of course, with floating highway signs and off-ramps; but also clothes that automatically fit you; restaurant holograms that are both menu and wait-staff; and hovering skateboards!
There is something off, however, about the 1985 to which they return.
They left a sweetly slumbering, middle-class suburb, only to return to houses sporting metal bars on every window; chalk outlines of bodies on the pavement, and packs of dogs roving streets that are lit by the smoldering wrecks of automobiles. Worse yet, Marty discovers that in this reality, his father has been dead for 12 years, and his mother is miserably married to the town bully.
“This can’t be happening!” exclaims Marty. “It’s like we’re in Hell!”
“No, it’s Hill Valley,” replies Doc, “although I can’t imagine Hell being much worse.”
Try adding a coronavirus to the mix, I think to myself, and for good measure, throw in a shortage of tests and protective equipment.
I found both sequels an effective diversion — until Doc and Marty reach a point where there seems no way out of their predicament.
That’s what I call the “Yegads!” point in a story — where I say to myself, well, I don’t see any way out of this, but there must be one. Then I relax because someone else is in charge.
But in this case, that’s when I had to hit “Stop,” and sob uncontrollably.
Because that’s when it hit me: that’s exactly what we don’t have, here in our timeline of 2020. Yes, we have a governor who is strong, and determined, and who doesn’t mind taking advice from folks, as long as they can help (excepting always Mayor De Blasio).
He thinks outside the box — who would have thought of “containing” New Rochelle, and making our own state sanitizer? I certainly didn’t. Most important, Gov. Cuomo is clearly doing his utmost to keep us safe.
But I cannot make myself believe that a single one of those things is true of our national leader. He gets childishly excited by the ratings for his press conferences — never mind that people are simply watching because they are in terror for their lives.
A reporter asks him, “What do you say to Americans who are watching you right now, who are scared?”
“I would say that you’re a terrible reporter,” answers our president, and “I think that’s a very nasty question.”
We are on the Titanic without any captain at all. We are stranded in a timeline more dystopian than anything Hollywood can come up with — and there is no solution.
All we can do is wash our hands. Like our president has already done, of us.
