Your alternate ending

**tenngolfer** · May 29th, 2012

I tried to post part 3, but it did not show, so here it is again.

I open the envelope and pull out the second letter and a clear card that shines in rainbow colors as my fingertips touch it.
Jimla,
I can only start by saying I am sorry, so very very sorry. As I told you before we are only human, and as humans we make mistakes. Just like your mistake with JFK. In my time, we understand more of time and space then the scientists of your day, but we do not understand everything; and some of what we do not understand causes big mistakes. Although there is a science around attraction, love still is a baffling mystery now as it was in your day. The residue created has attached itself to you and Sadie, an energy that is even stronger when you are together than apart. Love and residue have their own energy, combined they are a power source. I should have let you save Sadie. She was meant to die at the hand of her husband, but the residue kept her alive for you to find her again. I now know you and Sadie could have been accepted by the timeline. And for the good she did in the current timeline, she has allowed one evil to live.
You were not there to occupy Sadie’s time, so she volunteered to supervise a busload of freshmen on a hike. She pulled a tick off of a boy named David Chandley. David would have once grown further and further ill from a tick bite, eventually passing away three years later. Without George Amberson, the residue altered string allowed Sadie to save David who later grows up to be a civil engineer with SSC Steel Corporation, a company bent on growing their steel empire. David would be assigned to check out an old building called the Kitchener Ironworks in the town of Derry, Maine for possibly re-opening. David disappeared in that building one hot summer day in the mid 80’s, never to be heard from again. While checking out the structural foundation of the basement, David found some unusual looking orbs, and took one for examination. Before he made it very far, he was struck from behind and fell into a very special bubble, similar to your rabbit hole, but into world very different from our own. The evil orb was protected from impeding destruction; later returning to our world to spread evil.
Even if you were able to go back and allow David’s fate, the orb is still residue that will be unchanged in a dimension that turns on a different set of gears than our own. Resetting your past, will not save the future. Yet you hold the key to the future, you are the Jimla; man, monster, and hero. Al unknowingly sought you out, in particular, because you were meant to travel through time. Kyle could not hear or feel Al’s presence in the past, but he knew you are the Jimla, something more than just Jake or George. The future needs saving, and you are the right man. I told you there were other bubbles, though I wanted to avoid the details. Now I must share with you the town of Derry, Maine is highly unusual for its bubble activity. The card you now hold is a computer that has been programmed to help you find the bubble you need, and the dimensional vortex David fell through. You are better off without the hat; the more complex communication part of the computer.The card will turn red as you near the vortex bubble, and will turn green when you find your time bubble to save Sadie, yes, to save Sadie. Once you return with Sadie take the card to the vortex and leave it. If the card stays within the short distance of the vortex for more than 2 minutes, and remains in the presence of the vortex, a 5 minute countdown will start followed by a large explosion to close the bubble. Hopefully, if you move fast, this will happen before the monster steps back through the vortex into our world.
Trust your feelings Jimla. More powerful than computers are those individuals gifted to see or feel the things most people cannot. Have you already figured out to trust your feelings above what you can see? The evil you will encounter feeds on those trusting in sight alone. The bubble you need to seek out is on the edge of the Ironworks. The card will help you, hold it, and think of a question, the answer will be there. To keep you from being tempted by the future, the computer has been limited. To save Sadie, you will have to move fast and you will need her help to defeat the evil. Apart from each other, the residue clinging to you or Sadie will smell like something “good on the grill” to the monster that haunts Derry. Together the power you generate, will give the monster concern, possibly even fear. Ask your Sadie of today to write her younger self a letter containing revelations only she can know, again this bubble will not give you as much time with Sadie while in the past, move fast. An evil has haunted Derry approximately every 27 years, until its death in 1985. There are never guarantees the progeny will stick to the same time line, but move fast.
Please forgive me, Jimla, I didn’t know.
Zach Lang

Mr. King allowed the readers of “11 22 63” to visit the world of “IT”. He gave us the timeline and location, and while searching for a way to let Sadie and Jake be together, it is just too tempting not to throw a plank across the void from one world to the other. Perhaps this was Mr. King’s intention all along. Both books are great works, worthy of sequels, and perhaps one that allows both to live. There are of course lots of ways to get there, here is one. I tried to leave opportunities by acknowledging Derry as a vortex, residue as energy, and a computer that could give handy information. Again, not a serious attempt to write, because I do not know what that is all about; and I’m sure I have made all sorts of logical, literary, and grammatical errors; I’m just trying to tie things together for my own pleasure.

**Izhitsa** · May 30th, 2012

Originally Posted by Ravel

...
But, I was just wondering: SK wanted to write the book in 1971. Let's assume that he would: Jake goes back to the past by only a couple of years. He could've discover what would happen if he'd change the past, but after he'd get back Sadie would be - more or less - at his age! This means that they could be together no matter what. I wonder if Stephen King planned to end it like that. Anyone knows?
...

Wasn't Jake supposed to get a lethal dose of radiation in the 'Kennedy lives' world?

**cjp240573** · June 19th, 2012

Originally Posted by jalexbrown

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...the past is obdurate.

This would have been a "I didnt see that one coming"... twists.

**The Walkin Dudemar** · July 23rd, 2012

Sadie survives and she and Jake go to the Rabbit Hole to begin their new lives in 2011. The Green Card Man tells them about the de-stabilization issue and also warns them that Sadie will not like what she finds in the future and that she should remain in 1963. Ignoring him, they approach the wall, hold hands and step through. Jake feels Sadie's hand seem to shrink a little, the skin seeming to loosen on her bones. They get through and he looks at her and sees that she is suddenly 83 years old.

Jake realizes non-living matter (including once-living matter like beef, of course) from the past can make the transition unchanged, and persons from the future can return there just fine, but for persons native to the past, time will rapidly catch up to them. The story ends with Jake attempting to decide if he should chance returning to 1963 with her in the hopes she will regain her youth and weighing the odds that he will cause the end of the world through de-stabilizing

**JellybeanJay** · July 23rd, 2012

I was actually quite satisfied with the ending even though

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Unregistered · July 23rd, 2012

Originally Posted by AnnaMarie

with about 100 pages left, I had an idea of how I'd like to see it end.

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YES! I thought of this as well. Then Jake meets Sadie in 2012. For him it would have been only a short time since he last saw her. For her, she'd have waited decades and when she finally sees him, he looks exactly as he did last she saw him decades ago. They end up together and live out her few remaining years.

This being said, I do love the book's ending.

**Matt Murdock** · August 1st, 2012

Beautiful thread folks. Nothing beats SK's ending but its been great reading yours, some of them are excellent.

I myself thought that some how Jake/ George would have caused or facilitated the assasination then realised that there was nothing really that he could do to change the past on such a grand scale. He and Sadie would accept it and they would both live happily ever after.

**Ira4632** · December 28th, 2012

Thought I would throw my two cents in for my first post and offer up an alternate ending. (Not that the original isn't great.)

Party lights hang over the street, yellow and red and green. Sadie stumbles over someone’s chair, but I’m ready for this and catch her easily by the arm.

“Sorry, clumsy,” she says.

“You always were, Sadie. One of your more endearing traits.”

Before she can ask about that, I slip my arm around her waist. She slips hers around mine, still looking up at me. The lights skate across her cheeks and shine in her eyes. We clasp hands, fingers folding together naturally, and for me the years fall away like a coat that’s too heavy and too tight. In that moment I make a decision: Sadie and I were meant to be together and knowing that she lived out her years in this timeline safely and successfully, yet alone, and never found another love like the one that we shared in that one long ago timeline, made me realize that I had to go back one last time and spend my remaining years with her, in her time. It was meant to be.

It was only changing large scale world events like stopping JFK from being killed that had caused the new future to disintegrate. That Al had re-sold 1958 meat hundreds of times in 2011, and that I had gone back and saved Harry’s family the first time and returned to a 2011 that wasn’t on the brink of collapse was proof of that. Surely I could go back one last time, and knowing now that Sadie, with Deke and Ellie’s help, had survived the crazed John Clayton’s attack in April 1963, I could arrange to come to Jodie and get hired as a teacher sometime after this and meet her and we could, and indeed would, fall in love again. I would steer clear of Lee Oswald and John Kennedy and trying to change any history beyond my own.
Was the time portal still there? Even though Al’s trailer was gone, something as dimension transcending as a rabbit hole to the past had to still exist, and even if it was hidden behind the drywall of the L.L. Bean Express, I knew that if it was there I would find it. I began to think beyond the uncertainty of how I would find the rabbit hole and began to allow myself the luxury of thinking of how I would spend the next five years after finding it before allowing myself to go to Jodie – I would become a real life J.D. Salinger, in his time, no less – writing novel after novel in seclusion, making as few alterations to reality as possible, until I safely made my way to Sadie again. I was no longer worried about the destiny of the world, I had my own destiny to fulfill.
Perhaps I would meet her on November 22, 1963, the day our President would again be killed. It would be a memorable day to (for me, again) meet your soulmate and although I knew, as I held the 80 year old Sadie in my arms, that in fact me and her younger incarnation were indeed soulmates and I would find my way back to her, it was confirmed to me that I would be successful by what elder Sadie said to me next, in a voice almost too low to be heard over the music. I did hear her, however—I always had. “I know who you are, George. Or should I say Jake?”

I looked deep into her eyes and froze as I wondered how she could possibly know that name, and before I could reply, she said, “You remind me so much of my late husband.”

“Your husband?” I ask. The ‘late’ part didn’t entirely register with me at the moment. She looked deep into my eyes. “Yes, my dear husband, the love of my life. You have his…aura. You… My God, you even look just like him.” She hesitated for a second and seemed to be deep in thought. “You look just like… him. Just like he looked the day I met him. The day the president was shot. We were married 39 years when he died in 2004. Two weeks shy of our fortieth wedding anniversary. He was a bit older than me.” I forced myself to not try to remember these details so specifically that I would know exactly when I would die, and assuming that this Jake she had married was in fact me, in the future yet also in the past, and assuming that nothing else turned out differently, it did seem that I would live a long and happy life.

My head was spinning as I tried to wrap my head around what elder Sadie was telling me and what it meant, even if she didn’t know it, although perhaps somehow, in some way, she did.

The music had stopped and I realized we were a spectacle – a 40 year old man and an 80 year old woman, deep in an intimate conversation – but I also realized neither her nor I cared.
“Thank you for the dance, Mr. Amberson, ghost of my late husband. Thank you for showing an old woman a little joy. It is getting late, and I must be getting home to bed.”

I bid her adieu as well. I had a long trip to get started on.

**The Nameless** · January 8th, 2013

I really liked the ending and only really would have liked if they all live happily ever after in 2011 as an alternative, but I would have liked there to have been one expansion, maybe a multiverse theory type of thing - every action causes a different reality to play out, because I really would have liked to know Bev and Richie's reaction to the Dunning family being saved because Jake/George basically admitted he had to stop their Dad.

**SLCer** · February 25th, 2013

It would've been fascinating, in a morbid kind of way, if Jake found an inability to return to the rabbit hole once he ventured to the 2011 reality he had created

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. Then he's forced to live in that reality knowing full well

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. Dark? Yes. Fitting? No. Interesting? It could be.