Read Second Time Around for Free Online Page A

embark on a new adventure, to receive the gift of a second chance. Three explorers will travel back into their pasts, confronting a few of the what-if questions that plague us all, discovering the possibilities of chances not taken and choices ignored. They will visit what could have been, their minds fresh and unburdened by what has happened since that moment, each one free to explore a new choice.”
    Mac closed his eyes. “Think back. Remember that argument that cost you your job? Remember letting the love of your life slip away? You’ve often wondered what could have happened, haven’t you? How would your life have been different if, at one critical juncture, you would have said yes? Or no? Or said nothing. Now is your chance to find out.
    “Let me share with you in layman’s terms how this opportunity to travel to the past has come to be. First off, we must ask the question, what is reality? All I know of my world is what I experience from my own point of view, my own perceptions. We each interpret this moment, in this room, in a unique way. And within that part of the brain we’ve termed the ‘Loop,’ all the real and perceived moments of your life are interwoven into a unique perception of what was, what is, and what could be.
    “When you are asleep, your dreams are your reality. You know nothing of your waking life; you care nothing about your waking life. Likewise, when you concentrate on a memory, that seems to take on a reality, just for a moment. The science of time travel taps into this fascinating interweaving of dreams and memories.
    “Despite what you’ve been taught by science fiction movies, the past is an individual phenomenon, and there are as many timelines as there are people. A new timeline branches off every time you make a decision. Each of us spins off thousands of alternate streams of time every day. Quantum physics has taught us that those timelines have real existence.
    “What the technology behind the Time Lottery does is allow the traveler to hop over to one of those other time streams, into a timeline of his or her choice. The body stays here, acting like a kind of tether to the traveler while he’s off in the other reality. If he decides to stay in the new timeline—in his past—eventually his consciousness makes the switch permanently. The tether is severed and his body here dies. But in the other timeline, he has a real body and can live out a normal lifespan.
    “When we send a person back in time, we place their physical body into a carefully monitored, medically induced coma. Once we’ve done so, the mind—which went to sleep concentrating on the time and choice it wants to explore—will be free to choose the new timeline extracted from the Loop, that place where the memories of a lifetime are stored.”
    He glanced at Cheryl. She gave him a smile that spurred him on.
    “After a person has experienced his or her Alternity for seven days—a measure of seven days in the present, but an undetermined number of days in the past—TTC doctors will introduce a gentle electric burst to the Loop, and a strange phenomenon we call ‘Dual Consciousness’ will kick in. At this point, our time traveler will finally be able to see both lives— the past and the present. It’s like waking up from a dream and remembering it with total clarity, seeing both realities at the same time. At that point he or she will make a decision. Stay? Or come back? The choice will be up to each person.
    “Those who choose to stay in the past will continue on with life in their own Alternity. That will become their new reality. After they make their choice, the Dual Consciousness will quickly fade. And within a day, their body here in the present will die.”
    It was a frightening thought and he hurried on, not wanting the audience to wallow in it.
    “But please note, during the state of Dual Consciousness, the traveler can easily choose to leave the past behind and come back to this present time.