The Ministry of Time

by Kaliane Bradley

I suddenly saw how much of a facade was the elegant, highly efficient government professional—behind which was someone who, maybe, had too many texts from a wayward sibling that she hadn’t dealt with, someone who was giving up on dating for the fifth time in as many years, someone who had to smother her impatience when Drunk Elephant–shopping beauty evangelists tried to explain the miracle moisture properties of cocoa butter to her.

There’s something vengeful about agreeing on an interpretation. Set your narrative as canon and in a tiny way you have pried your death out of time, as long as the narrative is recalled by someone else. I certainly understood better why people became writers, and why jealous lovers force so many false confessions, and why the British history curriculum looks the way that it does.

“If the Royal Navy had a weed ration in the Age of Sail, your Arctic journey would have ended up in Rio de Janeiro.”

With my hand over the archives, I had control over the system. It didn’t matter that it was only the filing system. It was control, and that was what I wanted.

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.