Cars fly and avocados stay ripe forever (can youimagine?)
but in a time travel error, Tom ends up inour2016.
Will he stay in our present dystopia or make his way back to paradise?
EW is excited to exclusively reveal the trailer forAll Our Wrong Todays,above.
To read Chapters 1-5, headhere.
Early on, the variations arent that signif icant.
July 11, 1965, was the pivot of history even if nobody knew it yet.
He was compelled to write, but with little faith that writing might change anything.
This was probably great for Vonnegut personally but less so for his novels, which became increasingly homiletic.
I wont summarizeCats Cradlefor you.
Its short and much better written than this book, so just go read it.
Its weary, cheeky, and wise,which are my three favorite qualities in people and art.
When you invent the car, you also invent the car accident.
When you invent the plane, you also invent the plane crash.
When you invent nuclear f ission, you also invent the nuclear meltdown.
When you invent ice-nine, you also invent unintentionally freezing the planet solid.
Every person you meet introduces the accident of that person to you.
What can go right and what can go wrong.
There is no intimacy without consequence.
Which brings me back to Penelope Weschler and the accident of us.
Of all of us.
7
Penelope Weschler was supposed to be an astronaut.
In early-age evaluation matrices, she indicated the necessary mental aptitude, physical capability, and unwavering ambition.
Even as a child, Penelope immediately knew this was the correct path for her and wanted nothing else.
She trained nonstop, both in and out of school.
Not to walk on the moon.
Anybody could walk on the moon.
Anybody could go for a monthlong orbital cruise.
Penelope would cross the next frontierdeep-space exploration.
It wasnt just the studying, the training, the constant testing.
Or, really, antisocial.
They want you capable of caring about other people.
Its a sliding psychological scaleself-assured loners whose parents never divorced are good, shark-eyed sociopaths less so.
And she was utterly kick-ass.
Top of her cohort across all categories.
Universally recognized as a natural mission leader.
Shed be a pioneer.
And that was worth not having close friends or romantic relationships or a loyal dog.
Everything was going according to plan.
Until the first time she went to space.
The launch was flawless.
Until she passed through the top layer of Earths atmosphere and her mind went completely blank.
Theres a small subset of people whose cognitive functions get scrambled in outer space.
No ones even sure why it happens.
But Penelope was one of that subset.
Somehow this fact eluded the years of rigorous screening.
She doesnt know who she is.
She doesnt know where she is.
She doesnt know what to do.
But she cant remember anything.
Im sorry, she said, but Im not really sure where I am right now.
They had to abort the mission, at no small expense, because her unpredictable presence endangered everyone.
Just like that, Penelope, the best of the best of the best, became a threat.
Her eyes burned with tears.
Shed planned to spend decades off planet.
The same brain that made her the perfect astronaut made it impossible for her to do the job.
This wouldve crushed most people.
But Penelope wasnt most people.
If she couldnt be an astronaut, shed be a chrononaut.
A lot of people take their own vehicles to work but, seriously, three-dimensional traffic sucks.
I prefer to catch a transit capsule on one of the layered tracks that run through the city.
I get to work twelve minutes late, which is typical for me.
Because my boss is my father.
The sign outside the building says THE CHRONONAUT INSTITUTE.
Theyre way too busy rolling their eyes at me.
One thing I should make clear just because I work at a lab, that doesnt make me smart.
Where I come from, everybody works at a lab.
All the banal functions of daily life are taken care of by technology.
There are no grocery stores or gas stations or fast-food joints.
Places like bookstores and caf.s stillexist, but theyre specialized niche businesses aimed at nostalgia fetishists.
you’re free to go to an actual restaurant and have a chef prepare your meal by hand.
Most of us now work in labs imagining, designing, and building the next cool innovation in entertainment.
Its the only thing you really need in a world where almost nothing is asked of you.
Other than paying for that entertainment.
The newer and shinier and wilder it is, the more it costs.
Time travel is not an investment draw.
Excerpt from ALL OUR WRONG TODAYS by Elan Mastai.
Copyright 2017 by Elan Mastai.
