And somehow, the entire story has that flavor. Not a copy, not a ripoff, but a perverse sense of british ‘well, you can’t have it perfectly, but maybe you can have some of it.’ charm, which both Who and Ringo share.

He gets to see his younger son grow up, and re-establishes a relationship with his older son. For a lot of us, part of the tragedy of Lennon’s death is that it came just at a point where he was finding balance and peace in his personal life.

Also, someone else above made the same point about Jackson I was going to make. Dying at that point preserves him as “eccentric genius,” and completely erases the PR and personal disasters that came later.

I liked the time travel aspect of it personally and feel it’s crucial to the entire story, because it gives that small amount of hope that Ringo might make it work *the next time*, and you get this version of Ringo that is *meddling*, because once you start to try and change things for the better you can’t just accept the things that go wrong anyway – an element that makes most good time travel stories *Good* is that the protagonist(s) are made into temporal Ahab, who can’t really live with the new present merely being better – it’s got to be perfect, because they know they can make it perfect the next time.

Though, for one thing, I think you’re underestimating how badly people would like to hear new Beatles albums. Forget Michael Jackson and Jeff Lynne in exchange for four-and-a-half albums, you tell a lot of people on the internet they could get *one* album but their grandmother dies, they’d think, “Well, Granny’s had a good long life, hasn’t she?”

For another thing, okay, Ringo doesn’t accomplish a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, no, and mucks it up a bit besides. I saw what you were doing with Jackson and Lynne (well, Jackson was like “Huh…” and Lynne was like “Ohhh…”) but, as noted, if nothing else John Lennon lives another twenty years, and Roy Orbison dies later as well. I think the appealing thing about this story is that Ringo’s plan KIND OF works (it would have to; if it didn’t, he wouldn’t try it again, would he?) And like you suggested, that roll-up-your-sleeves determinism does sit somewhere on the border of hopelessly tragic and upliftingly inspirational.

I think the story works, even stripped of the time-travel element, *because* it’s not all hunky dory, and that the good stuff still comes with the bad, because most Beatles alternative history *does* end up with the four of them living to be a hundred and eight after McCartney eradicates world hunger and Lennon konks the 9/11 hijackers on the head with a guitar. Any alternate-universe comeback scenarios I’ve ever envisioned (though admittedly not nearly as detailed as yours) usually involve the release of one new album that’s not very good and another breakup the following year, because I’ve the sneaky suspicion that how it really would have gone down.

PS – Does George Martin still produce the Universe B albums? Jeff Lynne presumably still works with them to some extent to be involved in the crash. I know Lennon had a few good things to say about ELO, but I can’t imagine he’d take well to Lynne’s meticulous production approach (”For God’s sakes, enough of this 2/4 snare thing! Let Ringo be Ringo!”)

Of course, I took it that John got shot not because That’s The Way Things Are, but because John had the kind of outspoken, confrontational public personality that somebody’s eventually going to take a shot at.

When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you. So give it something to look at: yell, laugh, wave your arms, throw rocks, spit in its eye and piss all over it. Show that damn abyss who’s boss. –Friedrich Nietzsche (paraphrased)

The ending works particularly well: all of a sudden, it forces us to go back in the loop (the start of the story) and realize just where it was Ringo was acting so funny. His insisting on the SNL appearance, getting John out of New York for Dec. 1980, the depression Ringo gets over Michael Jackson’s death (the moment he probably realizes this alternate timeline is reacting against his manipulations: plus, was Ringo attempting to get his fellow Beatles to mentor Michael, help him get past his father’s abuse, so he could avoid his descent into his own Hell?), all the other points where the regular flow of history (the rise of Dubya, 9/11 still happening and the war in Iraq stirring John’s ire) imposes itself on the revised timeline… and then the final set, the last few days where Ringo-B prepares himself for the Leap… and the realization that Ringo, poor soul, is making another heroic attempt to save us all…

Beautiful story. Seriously should submit it to a publication that would run it (New Yorker comes to mind).

Sure, but he gets an extra twenty years.