Getting Back On The Horse
Angel never owned a horse but certainly knew the expression–if he had a horse, he would get back on it. Even when thrown. Angel saw mistakes as reasons to get back on the horse—to try again. Any time he erred, he got back on the horse to try a new approach. Most times it worked, although improving on past mistakes often led to creating new ones. He knew life was complicated.
After long consideration, Angel built, in his second bedroom, a time machine. The best way to deal with mistakes? Go back in time and avoid them. In his first use Angel set the machine back five years–the evening of his first date with his future wife. Angel did not go, never met her, and went on to look for someone else. That worked just fine.
Second, Angel thought about his career. Being a chartered accountant paid well but, in hindsight, was excruciatingly boring. Angel went back in time and instead of enrolling in accounting courses became a police officer. He was very good at it, catching people in their own mistakes, ensuring they paid.
He never told anyone about his time machine. He had told one person–she then tried to create her own machine. Angel had to go back and send her in the wrong direction. He never used his machine to harm, to go into the past and hurt someone. There was no one he considered an enemy. His changes were all about himself. Societal changes, influencing or even eliminating bad people–not Angel’s horse.
Eventually, Angel came to realize he was selfish–clearly always had been. He used his time machine one last time, to travel back to when he was thirteen and still idealistic, less focussed on himself. He grew up well and, in his thirties, tired of always getting back on the horse, invented a dimensional displacement device, using it to enter alternate dimensions as a way of avoiding mistakes.
Angel realized he could not ever stop making mistakes. And, oddly, not only did he continually discover in other dimensions new mistakes he could make, no other dimension had horses.