“You have to come with me, no questions, no questions.” The phan ordered, dragging our poor Christine through the streets until they reached the Opera House. The phan began the old pathway to the cellars that everyone knows, as Christine screamed for mercy. She merely shrugged her off as being crazy. Well she was, anyway, she had married Raoul, had she not?

“Please, I don’t want to go back here! Where’s Raoul! I want my husband! Don‘t be cruel to me! ” Christine cried, begging and pleading. The whole cellars were dark and dreary, and filled with dust and cobwebs. Even the phan had to admit this was harder than expected, especially with Christine protesting. What was her problem, anyway? The phan shrugged, not bothering to glance back. The girl was merely interfering with what must be done.

Finally reaching Erik’s lair, she noticed that it was nothing but a mess, and that if the mob hadn’t killed him, the destruction had. Oh well, there was nothing like a reunion, was there? Then Christine would see everything about her decision was wrong, wrong indeed.

She began bringing out the necessary things to bring back Erik from the dead, noticing that Christine had fainted out of terror. She shook her head and started the machines that only needed a drop of Dna to bring Erik back. Of course, she got that quite easily going back months before, and now everything was complete.

Raoul was polling along the lake, but she paid him no mind. He only got in the way 99.9% of the time to begin with.

Someone tapped her on the shoulder, and she prayed that it was Erik. How exciting it would be to know she could change the ending completely. Who cares that Raoul and Christine were happy and had children when Erik died alone?

“What on Zeus’s green earth do you think you’re doing?”

The phan whipped around to face her sister, and there was no doubt that if looks could kill, the phan would definitely be dead. . She just couldn’t stand to see a story end so terribly.

“Nothing, I was..”

“Breaking one of the rules. Now, I like fantasy just as much as the next person, but I think you’ve abused your privileges of using father’s Time Machine. You may have interrupted the future as we know it. You’ve changed their lifetimes completely. And don’t you dare bring Erik back from the dead, that’s disgusting! Haven‘t you ever seen “Night of the Living Dead”? We might have a masked zombie on our hands!”

The phan’s sister crossed her arms and went over to Christine, but decided she was much better off fainted on the floor than listening to their conversation. The phan’s sister shook her head sadly. This happened often to the phan. She’d become obsessed with some story and try to change it somehow. Surely her sister didn’t think that she could bring him permanently , did she? It was a miracle that the course of history wasn’t re-written entirely. She shuddered thinking of the incident where her sister tried to bring back Jack from the titanic film, only to realize that no Jack existed.

The phan grimaced as her sister shut down everyone of the machines, only hoping she had stopped it in time. The year 3056 had seen many new discoveries: but bringing someone temporarily from the dead was still a taboo thing to do. It had only been done to figure out the cause of some horrible disease, and even then the risk was huge. But shouldn’t broken hearts find their lovers? Her sister always had to ruin everything. So what if Jack didn’t exist? She had a smashing time before the boat sank.

“That’s it, I swear when we get home I’m telling father you can’t go into the laboratory anymore. Leave Erik in his grave, for heaven’s sake. And let Christine go home with Raoul. It ended that way for a reason!” She scolded, shaking her finger in her sister’s face.

“What about Erik? Doesn’t Erik deserved to be loved?”

The phan’s sister almost slapped the phan, but knew better. The only way you could talk to the phan, was by speaking slowly so that she understood everything. “Do you even pay attention? Christine loved him, in her own little way. But he knew that she had to make her choice and that she was happy and loved Raoul. You can’t bring people back from the dead, not for them to endure more suffering. Death is the only way he achieved peace. Besides, Raoul isn’t all that bad. “

The phan almost smelled victory for a moment. “But Raoul is a fop. He couldn’t ever love Christine in the same way.”

“How can you say that? His name isn’t Erik and he isn’t Erik, so no, he couldn’t love her in the same way. But he loves her, and Christine is in love with him. Leave well enough be. There is no point in forcing Erik and Christine together. If you’re that bent on it, write a story on it. Now, come on, we have to go before Raoul sees us and there’s more to explain. Unless you want me to tell father about that, too.”

The phan hung her head, grateful for her sister’s silence. She was definitely in trouble and she wasn’t so sure that her older sister would bail her out this time. Finally they entered their world, leaving the Victorian one behind.

Raoul reached the lair quickly and slapped the sides of Christine’s face gently until she awoke. “Are you alright?”, he asked, holding her in his comforting arms.

“I think so,” she whispered, “should we send the police for an investigation?”

He led her quickly back to the boat and began rowing her home. What else unusual things could happen on the way home? “No, I think if we told them that a questionable lady led you down here, they’d think we were mad, right?”

Christine chuckled, finally calming down after such a horrible evening. She’d never seen anything like it, and for her that was a difficult thing to say. She wondered what the person had wanted, then shuddered. Hopefully nothing to do with Erik. Erik deserved to rest in peace. “No doubt they would. Let’s go home, Raoul.”

Once the phan and her sister were home, the phan was in deep. Her sister could only smile at it, it was good that her sister didn’t end up in jail for it. Or worse yet, that her father’s reputation in the scientific community was ruined and he couldn’t work anymore. She went through her family history database, beginning on her homework project for her sociology class. She went through all the centuries until she stopped on one branch of the family tree in particular.

Christine (maiden name Daae) De Chagny b.1861 d.1929

She paused, reading all of the names, so many children, so many lives that would have been forever altered had her sister tried so hard to change the ending of the three lives. There would be no phan, and no sister, she thought discouragingly. Printing out the evidence she decided to show it to her sister and her father, as a reason never to let them use the time machine in such a way again.

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