7 Myths of Time Travel.

I've started playing with a story idea. I already have the title. The problem is, I have no idea what the story is about. I think the protagonist is a high school junior, but I don't know if it's about "how do I graduate and get a boyfriend while time-traveling," or if the fate of the multiverse is at stake. We'll have to see. But here's a bit of her talking:

MYTH: You can't change the past

Listen. It's been like a century since Einstein proved that time was another dimension, just exactly like space. Simply because most people have a hard time seeing and moving around in it doesn't mean it's some mystical immutable force. I can see from my porch to Mrs. McGruder's house, where her annoying little dog is barking at me. I can also walk over there with a bucket of water and drop the dog into it. I changed something in space. I can also go back to this morning, and lock the little dog in the garage, which will mean I can't dump it in the bucket this afternoon--at least not without getting it out of the garage.

Now, when I come back to my porch after dunking the mutt in the bucket, the dog is still wet. When I come back to this afternoon, the dog is still locked in the garage.

But here's the weird part. I remember along a different path than regular people. I remember my past: I remember traveling through time. Everyone else remembers their own past, which is when I lock the dog in the garage, and they have no idea that anything different had ever happened.

I think there's two kinds of time. Like, time is the fourth dimension, right? So maybe there's a fifth dimension, and maybe I go through that the way people go through regular time: can't stop or back-up, can't see where you're going. When I was a kid, I called it "me-time," because it's the time that I remember. Regular time, the fourth dimension, I called "zax-time." You know, after the Dr. Seuss characters that can only walk one direction? Except that Zax walk forward, seeing where they're going, and people in zax-time walk backward, they can only see where they've been.

I can't change me-time. But zax-time? No problem.