You come across two roads diverged in a yellow wood. Carefully examining each trail, you find them to be relatively similar, path-wise, if not identical. The only discernible difference is that one is grassy and wants wear while the other looks slightly more trod upon.
-To take the road less traveled by, turn to page 103.
-To follow the other path, turn to page 19.
PAGE 19
You take two steps towards the unknown, but ultimately opt against it. Following the footsteps of other hikers, you walk unimpeded down the path. Birds chirp, a breeze brushes through your hair and seasonal foliage provides shade. Yet your mind continues to wander to the other road and all that it promised. Might have met an attractive fellow traveler. Perhaps you would have been more inspired by the wild, overgrown trees. Maybe even found a lucky penny. That road not taken now offers two things: 1) regret and 2) infinite potential.
-To make a u-turn, return to the fork, and choose again, turn to page 103.
-To put your head down, persevere, and march down your chosen path, turn to page 52.
PAGE 52
After navigating the woodland trail, you reach the end unscathed and successfully exit the forest. Yet even as you resume your normal life, the idea of that other road haunts you. Somewhere there is a version of you who took that path; someone who wanted to brave the unknown and conquer nature.
Your mind strays at work, using your legal pad to sketch landscapes of how you think that road might look. You read books about multiple timelines and “Sliding Doors” remains a fixture on your Netflix queue (although you never admit this to anyone for several reasons).
-To get in your car, travel back to the woods, find the fork in the road, take the other trail and glean some idea of what could have been, turn to page 103.
-To put the issue aside and get on with your life, turn to page 87.
PAGE 87
Finally listening to your therapist, you decide to let go of this fixation. Your obsessive reading about multiple universes does, however, arouse an interest in quantum mechanics. Theoretical physics becomes your new obsession, if not your calling. After countless years of dedication and study, you earn a PhD in theoretical physics with an emphasis on alternate dimensions.
While proud of your degree, you still harbor a curiosity about that fork in the road. Did that day define the rest of your life? In your off hours, using the school’s equipment and some creatively-obtained plutonium, you develop a makeshift time machine. If the machine works as planned, you will awaken in your younger self’s body, ready to make a different choice. You enter the machine, take a deep breath, and throw the switch.
-If the machine works, turn to page 103.
-If time travel is purely a theoretical concept with no practical applications, turn to page 99.
PAGE 99
Lights flash, gaskets turn, and the power in the physics department pulses...but you remain standing in the present. The machine was a dud. Rage burns in your eyes. You tighten your fists. And then you laugh.
Despite this failure, you are finally glad that this ordeal is over. You have conclusive evidence that we can’t revisit or change past events. It is time to let the issue die and put childish things away. Content with your career and academic accomplishments, you decide to live the life you’ve chosen.
THE END
PAGE 103
Inspired by rugged individualism, you take a deep breath and head down the road less traveled. Feeling like a true American Romantic, you think about getting “Manifest Destiny” tattooed somewhere on your body.
Taking two steps down the path, you step on an errant tree root and twist your ankle. In the ensuing fall, your leg snaps. It’s a compound fracture of your tibia. Writhing in pain, you call out for help, but due to the overgrown brush and generally unappetizing look of this trail, no one hears your cries
Perhaps the other road might have led to a different result. Maybe it held more promise. Hearing coyotes off in the distance, you say with a sigh that you took the road less traveled by. And that made all the difference.
THE END
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