Version Control

Abstract

Version Control follows Rebecca and Philip, and is set in a near-future. This future is described as having numerous technological advancements which allow, for instance, long-distance education (in which professors no longer need to teach classes in-person at all) or complete autonomous driving (through automated, self-driving cars), and it is predicted that more advancements will eventually erase privacy altogether. The protagonists Rebecca and Philip are introduced as a married couple who have lost their son, Sean, in a car accident. Their relationship is, however, far from a healthy one: Rebecca is a recovering alcoholic, and Philip is a scientist specialising in Physics who is much more devoted to his work than his love life. He is obsessively working on what he calls a Causality Violation Device, which is recurrently named a time machine by other scientists, much to Philip’s annoyance. Nevertheless, he leads a group of physicists in his laboratory, and the specifics behind Philip’s machine is what drives most of the novel. Eventually, Rebecca’s (and other character’s) constant déjà vus, and strange and uncanny feelings towards reality – such as the sense that people seem wrong and in the wrong place, or that events seem disconnected from one another – come to evince that Philip’s experiments with time travel might be impacting the present. It is explained that his machine does not allow one to travel back and forth in time, but that it subtly manipulates causality, altering the past so that certain outcomes are changed in the present or the future, hence Rebecca’s uneasiness. Version Control delves into the possibility of time travel in a rarer sort of way, and explores interpersonal relationships, and how personal tragedies can intersect with scientific breakthroughs.