The Ministry of Time

by Kaliane Bradley

“I am delighted to discover that, even in the future, the English have not lost the art of ironic understatement,”

“You can send dioramas through the ether,” he said, “and you’ve used it to show people at their most wretched.” “No one’s forcing you to watch EastEnders.” “Any child or unmarried woman of virtue might engage the machine and be faced with lurid examples of criminal behavior.” “No one’s making you watch Midsomer Murders either.” “Or deformed monstrosities against the will of God—” “What?” “Sesame Street,”

Never tell a workplace or a lover anything that might cause them to terminate your relationship until you’re ready to leave.

An underrated symptom of inherited trauma is how socially awkward it is to live with.

Someone on the Wellness team taught the expats the term “quality of life” and somehow, grumbling about his inability to hunt and the paucity of countryside to hunt in, he parlayed the term into an air rifle.

Today my overgrown son told a man on an e-scooter he was riding a coward’s vehicle. Today my overgrown son tore off his headphones and gave me a blow-by-blow account of the opening of Tutankhamun’s tomb because he’d been listening to a podcast about ancient Egypt. Today my overgrown son put metal in the microwave, deliberately, even though I had told him not to do that, because he wanted to see what would happen.

“History is not a series of causes and effects which may be changed like switching trains on a track. It is a narrative agreement about what has happened and what is happening.

Ideas are frictional, factional entities which wilt when pinned to flowcharts. Ideas have to cause problems before they cause solutions.

This was one of my first lessons in how you make the future: moment by moment, you seal the doors of possibility behind you.

can’t hurt-proof your relationships. You have to accept you will cause harm to yourself and others. But you can also fuck up, really badly, and not learn anything from it except that you fucked up. It’s the same with oppression. You don’t gain any special knowledge from being marginalized. But you do gain something from stepping outside your hurt and examining the scaffolding of your oppression.

People liked him and so they imagined that he agreed with them—all likable people know how to be a flattering mirror—and he could make himself a perfect man of wax

This, I learned, was how the Ministry received the power of time-travel. Not through invention but through the fine British tradition of finders keepers.

“Belief has very little to do with rationale. Why demand a map for uncharted territory?”

Everything that has ever been could have been prevented, and none of it was. The only thing you can mend is the future. Believe me when I say that time-travel taught me that.

“So you’re the famous housemate,” said one. “We’ve heard so much about you.” “Was any of it good?” he asked. “Not a word.” “Oh, I am relieved. I wouldn’t want her telling lies on my account.” I flexed my shoulder blades, forcing the tension out. He was an anachronism, a puzzle, a piss-take, a problem, but he was, above all things, a charming man. In every century, they make themselves at home.

I know how much you’ve longed for your future to lean down and cup your face, to whisper “Don’t worry, it gets better.” The truth is, it won’t get better if you keep making the same mistakes. It can get better, but you must allow yourself to imagine a world in which you are better.

Forgiveness, which takes you back to the person you were and lets you reset them. Hope, which exists in a future in which you are new. Forgiveness and hope are miracles. They let you change your life. They are time-travel.