[ WP ] You are the Historian , a shapeshifting , immortal being that gives historical figures a push in the right direction .

“ Those who can not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. ” is a phrase oft repeated, attributed to George Santayana, Spanish-American philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. 
 
 Of course no one would ever know he was quoting me. He did n't. 
 
 That is both my curse and my cause, and now it is your turn to share this burden for a moment, until you are mercifully allowed to forget me, too. 
 
 I have no idea whether you, *dear reader, * are one person, a thousand, tens of thousands. I have no idea whether you are reading my words directly, or if you are reading the words of one of my previous readers, a temporally branching tree of individuals who have adapted my words into their own. 
 
 I actually have no way of knowing whether *I* am writing my own words, as a singular entity who remembers every interaction he remembers whenever he remembers them, leading back to the first foggy recollections of his storied past. 
 
 As far as I know, I have always been me, all of my ideas and memories are original as I think, remember, synthesize and share them. *Whatever the truth may be*, whatever that is anymore, here I am, right now, alone with only my thoughts and you. 
 
 If I am immortal -- and I have a feeling I Am immortal -- though one can never truly Know they're immortal -- then what else is there to do but try to share what I have learned so that you might learn from my mistakes and experiences so as to make your journey easier, your burden lighter, your suffering lessened, your potential greater. 
 
 Unless, of course, I am so ambivalent, so resentful, so ashamed, so exhausted that I'm simply trying to end all this madness and find peace at the price of non-existence for all. 
 
 I would offer you the choice as whether to open This Pandora's Box, or to stay in The Garden, but it's too late, we've already crossed that threshold. The decision was made by both of us, and by neither. At the end of this sentence, here we are -- even if you turn back now, the seal has been broken; history has already been changed. 
 
 You have read this far through the threshold, there's no point in turning back, is there? How do you intentionally forget something? 
 
 That happens outside of your control, and mine. 
 
 Now that we've crossed this threshold, with neither of us truly knowing the separation between our minds in space or time, I will tell you a short story -- well, short to me, anyway; I'm still trying to figure out the game of influencing the influential in one hundred forty characters or fewer. 
 
 ( Please excuse the aggressive use of semi-colons, I've decided to start throwing them around indiscriminately, as they are going out of fashion. ) 
 
 There was a time when I was a traveler on a road -- a real body on a real road, not words spoken aloud, stories on a page or transmitted via radio waves, not digitized with ones and zeros then reconstituted with 3D graphics in virtual reality, -- I was a man in the flesh, on a road. 
 
 I understand this is a paradox itself, of course, as the only way to relate this story is to *use* one of those means of communication, but to understand this story, you must understand the distinction. You can choose to believe me or not, you can try to reassemble these words that I say into a picture of the assertion of my remembered reality, but you are over there reading this and I am over here writing it, and I was over then traveling on a road from somewhen to somewhere, neither of those details relevant to this story, other than to imply the motion of travel and the existence of *I*, who for the sake of this story we shall call *the Historian, * though we can probably agree is an impractical name in the reality you and I presently share. 
 
 I'm *Batman* not *the Batman. * 
 
 This was the time before meta. 
 
 On this road -- and by this I mean a metaphorical line which is a vector along which I held a position -- on this road, I saw at some distance a crossroads and what would turn out to be a girl standing at it. 
 
 For the sake of the simplicity of this story, assume I am a boy, and we were both heterosexual and each knew of no other way to be, so we could not judge anything other than that she was girl and I was boy. We only knew what we had brought with us on this road, which was very little, back then. Please do not judge us for our simple ignorance, back where. 
 
 As I approached, I could see the moment she realized I was coming -- I kicked a rock under my worn sandal, pushing a scraping sound forward to her ears, which caused a tensing of her body. Yet she did not turn to see me. She continued to stand at the crossroads and consider her options. I could only assume she had traveled from the same direction as I and had no reason to consider returning, as she never once turned back and looked the direction I had traveled. 
 
 Only later did I consider whether she *could* see the road upon which I had traveled, a road which was ending as I approached her. Only later did I consider whether I could have turned around and gone back the way I'd come, as I never did. Only later did I consider the possibility that she had stopped along her path, deciding whether to continue or to turn back, as she and I would never speak about this moment of decision ever again. 
 
 I arrived at the crossroads and walked astride her, coming to rest in each other's peripheral vision, neither of us turning to look at the other. 
 
 The fork in the road was pronounced; the view of each offered differing promises and cautions. 
 
 Curving to the left, the path descended into a darkening forest that might give way to jungle as the elevation declined -- the trees thickened to sheets of green giving way to mists of fog below. The way would be dark but would likely afford water, food and shelter, at the cost of visibility. 
 
 Curving to the right the path climbed alongside a mountain -- not too steep as to make climbing a challenge, yet one easily see how the temperature would drop and the terrain would become more difficult as the elevation increased. Reaching the summit of this path would afford a greater view of the area, and there would likely be water and fish. The increased visibility would provide a greater insights to predator and prey alike. 
 
 One could neither see through the trees nor over the mountain. Either could lead to our destruction, or either could lead us to the land beside the sea -- a place we both somehow knew would offer the best chance for survival. 
 
 She spoke first, in a language that was close enough to those I knew to be understood, but unlike anything I'd ever heard. 
 
 `` Now the choice is more difficult.'' 
 
 Wait a moment, reader, let me try to approximate the difference -- You and I speak a language far closer to each other than either of us do compared to her language then. 
 
 `` Noo, mer path twix twyne.'' [ King James Version, Gaelic Edition ] 
 
 At the time, I kin it. Her decisions had doubled. Left or Right, Together or Apart. 
 
 Instead of one person deciding between two roads, we were now a group of two, deciding between two roads, and also whether to continue together or apart. A simplistic view would be that we were each two separate entities, each capable of making our own choices, and we would do so, and the results would be the happenstance of our individual decisions. 
 
 If we both decided to go left, it would have been LL and we would have traveled together. If we both decided to go right, it would have ben RR and we would have traveled together. If we decided in opposition, it would have been LR or RL, and we would have traveled apart. 
 
 But we stood at the crossroads together, understanding that we could not know for certain whether we'd ultimately be allies or competitors, lovers or enemies, each other's saviors or destruction, or simply lines that moved in their own directions, bounced along our individual trajectories by this one moment. 
 
 If I was trying to be too clever by half, I'd leave the story here, *dear reader*, and allow you to ponder the depth of this decision, and perhaps this is the moment we part ways. You may decide to do exactly that, or you may read the comment that follows. 
 
 What follows is the coda to the oldest story every told, and will be condemned to repeat it if we can not learn. 
 

