One may inspire girls for generations. The other might be a hit for a few weeks or even a top-ten-grossing film in any given year, quickly buried by the sands of time and the hype of the next potential blockbuster. People won’t remember Alice Carter.
When Harper, Nick, Grayson and Mike arrive in London after the crash, they decide to go to Harper’s apartment where she finds an old diary and also her novel, Alice Carter. Harper’s dream was to publish her novel and then become a fiction writer instead of a biographical writer. When she ends up in the future, not only she discovers that her future-self continued to write biographies, but she also chose to give up on her dream of publishing Alice. Her argument was that the Alice book will not be as important as her biographies and thus it would be wiser to give it up and focus her attention on something that will influence generations to come. For Harper, who never thought about abandoning her project, her future-self’s decision seems strange and also scares her because it made her realize that the things she thinks are important become irrelevant and useless in the future.
Her past is my future.
After Harper reads her diary, she remains shocked by what her future-self did. What is more, Harper becomes depressed after she finishes reading the diary, thinking that no matter what she does, that will be her future as well. For Harper, her future-self’s future will become her reality if she manages to return to her time and the realization that her plans will never succeed affects her more than the crash and all the events that happened from that point on.
Then . . . history repeats itself. Possibly. Or maybe not. Is the future already written? I suppose it comes down to that question.
When Harper thinks about what side to take, she thinks about the way she perceives the future. When she discovered her old diary and also the novel Alice, Harper began to think that no matter what she does, she will have the same future, a future where she gives up the things in which she believes. Her ideas change however and she starts to thinks that no matter what the future is then, she will always have a choice in her time and that her life is not controlled by the decisions her future-self took. Based on this, Harper decides to side with Sabrina and Yul to try and return into her own time.
