The Place of the Lost Things

Ever since The Time Traveler was printed, we have seen countless explorations of said idea, from the classic adventures of Marty McFly and Doc Brown in Back to the Future or the charming Midnight in Paris to darker takes such as Twelve Monkeys or The Butterfly Effect. Heck, even Marvel did it, and twice in the same year – first with Avengers: Endgame then with its cult series Legion. It’s just a fun, appealing idea that has created, well, a timeless genre, hasn’t it? After all, we all wonder what our lives would have been if we had made a different decision or lived in another time; and, at least for me, it's something that has always fascinated me.

However, if we stopped fantasizing about living in whatever time and place, we wish we could visit and actually thought about what said power could mean to human life… then we would realize that said chance would actually be the biggest power humankind could ever know, as well as its biggest threat to its existence. Why? Simply because throughout the history of time, we have seen how every creation made by humankind has found its way to jeopardize its existence. Every invention has always come with a dark side. We use music and images to torture or manipulate people, we use many of our scientific inventions to create viruses or weapons. We even use our beliefs as a justification to kill other people. So, if time travel was invented, what makes us believe that it won’t find its way to destroy human lives?

Moreover, even if time travel could allow us to solve every question, we ever had from the beginning of existence to the end of it all, then we would find ourselves facing existential crises such as how little we are, why humankind can’t save itself from suffering, and even how our purpose or meaning can be a curse. After all, if time travel was real, its very first rule would be that we can’t change our past. Whatever has happened, it needed to happen because that’s how we got here, and sure, that idea of destiny can sometimes be seen as a lovely thought… except for the millions of people who have suffered or lost their lives because that’s what the destiny wanted, wasn’t it?

Hence the title. Whatever happened to all those dreams or lives that couldn’t be fulfilled because faith didn’t want it so? That’s what this story is about, and it’s presented through the lives of three characters: Richard, a quantum physicist who lost his wife and went crazy trying to create a time machine to save her; Anjana, a time traveler whose work as a time guardian made her realize that the best way to prevent even more lives from suffering would be by preventing time traveling from ever happening; and Gideon, a time guardian whose purpose to stop and kill every time traveler has turned into a curse he can’t escape from. As these three characters come to interact through the most unexpected twists of faith, they’ll be confronted by all of the previous questions until it all leads to an epic fight through time that will settle once and for all if time traveling should exist, and how would this affect their lives. Welcome to madness. Welcome to The Place of the Lost Things.