On His Majesties Secret Request

I squandered a fairly unique experience of my own making because I wanted it all.

I had realised some time ago, after completing my sixth novel, The Juicy Beaks, that I wasn't much of a writer. I think it was this sentence that did it for me:

The Juicy Beaks break down upon the havoc-stricken town of Ontario in lulling flights of loving round the coast to coast with flappings sounding meek and murk, and marble milling in the dirt.

So with the knowledge that no prize or positive review awaited me over the hill, I took it upon myself to invest my efforts — hitherto used to bash out prose — on developing a time machine, that, as well as ignoring physics, would allow me to claim the great works of fiction as my own. Of course later I'd expand my ambition to include the canons of great pre-20th Century composers and various other milestones of medium, but for the moment I was satisfied with being the most prolific and diverse writer the world had ever seen.

It took me a few months to create a working time machine, and a further two weeks to plot out my course through history, after which I set out with a sack of manuscripts and various inconspicuous garb for each stop of my journey. Anyway, Ben has chronicled my outcome elsewhere, so I won't go into details. Suffice to say (again), I messed up, and deeply regret it, for I could have seen more of our future instead of fiddling around with the already well-documented past. And with comprehensive knowledge of everything that will happen to me and beyond, I could have lived a nicely predictable existence with calm on my side and a justifiable belief in destiny. I could have made a mint being a fortune-teller, too — though I already would have known that.

But alas, I was finally brought in by the inanely named Rigid-History Police, and forced to hand over my creation to a person of my choosing: Ben. And it is with deep earnestness that I advise him to learn from the greed-induced mistakes I made, and use the time machine to benefit personkind or, when that fails, keep busy exploring the unknowns of unseen corners.