Reestablishing the history of the world as you see fit? Who wouldn’t want to do that? You’ll recreate everything in your image. You’ll decide who lives and who dies. And none of that resting on the seventh day crap. Once you’ve finished, you can go back in time and rest on ALL the days! Squealing with glee, you mail away your order.

The doorbell rings immediately. It is the delivery man with your package. The best part about ordering time traveling devices is that once you’ve placed the order, the company can send the delivery man back in time to the exact moment that you ordered it.

Unable to contain yourself, you tear the box open. A sea of parts spills out and onto the floor. They sent you a broken device!

As anger bubbles up inside you, you catch sight of a label on the side of the box. “Much assembly required.” You have to assemble it yourself? Better get to work.

* * *

You’ve finally finished. And you only smashed your thumb with the hammer eight times. That’s a new record for you. You vow that in your reimagined world you will uninvent hammers.

Somehow, you’ve managed to have pieces left over. You silently praise yourself for this. You put the machine together so well that you didn’t even need all the parts they gave you. You are a paragon of assemblage.

Throwing the remaining parts into the trash (where they join the instruction manual), you pull the lever and prepare to remake history.

* * *

It is important to remember that, when assembling a doomsday device, there are no such things as “spare parts.” The bits you threw out were highly important to the machine’s inner workings. As such, while the world was still reimagined, it was not per your specifications.

You are not the ruler of the world. Nor are you a villain anymore. No, pulling that lever caused your heart to grow three sizes. In this new reality, you fight for the side of good. But you’re not a hero. Instead, you’re a sidekick, and all the other heroes make fun of you when you’re not around.

Try again, Loser!