Fan Takeover: Teen Natalie Comic and IDON Alternate Ending
Today we have a brand new one-page comic by Th3go, depicting a scene that very well could have taken place in I Dream of Natalie. I think teen Nat looks really cute, here. 🙂
Also, for those who thought the end of I Dream of Natalie might be a bit too dark, here’s an alternate ending:
— — — I DREAM OF NATALIE ALTERNATE ENDING — — —
It Was Inevitable
I was born to love you with every single beat of my heart
I Was Born to Love You  Queen
WKRP, Cincinnati, outside the studio
“Seriously, Jean?!”
“I’ll fix it! I’ll fix it! I’ll fix it!” [ POOF! ]
“And don’t forget me this time!”
Natalie took a deep breath to calm herself, her anger still simmering but contained. In the control room, Jean was spinning records, the music piped into the hall.
Then it dawned on her, what she had just commanded her genie to do. “Oh God! David!” She punched the speed dial on her phone. “What have I…” [ POOF! ]
Lakeland, Florida
David Ross entered the apartment, juggling his keys, grocery bags filling both arms. His phone chirruped once and went silent. Dropping his keys and COVID mask into the candy dish occupying a chess table by the door he checked the phone’s memory, Natalie?
He set the bags on the kitchen counter and returned to the living room. He paused, glancing at the van Gogh and Mondrian lithographs, at the bookcase filled with magazines and flowering plants, and at a metal framed picture on the shelf. A crew cut swimmer and his pony-tailed girlfriend. Both smiling, both obviously happy. Two words penned in marker. “Love you.”
There was an empty space on the top shelf. Something was missing, something felt off.
“Daddy, why is mommy crying?” A little girl, 5 years old, thick brown hair done up in a ponytail with a green scrunch and holding a winged unicorn. She had glitter in her hair, on her face, on her hands, a veritable explosion of glitter.
David turned, just in time to avoid being knocked on his backside by the collision with his wife. She was weeping as she smothered his face with kisses then reached to pull her daughter into the embrace and hugged them both so tight David thought something would break. Eventually she let up, holding them both at arm’s length as her tears slowly subsided.
“Natalia sweetie. Let’s get cleaned up for dinner.”
Little Natalia scampered off to wash her face and hands leaving David alone with his suddenly crazy wife, a confused expression on his face. “After dinner,” she said, wiping her eyes, “we have to talk. I have something I need to tell you, something I really, really need you to believe.”
“All right. After dinner.” He gave her a kiss and followed their daughter into the bathroom.
Natalie turned to look at an empty spot on the shelf, the spot once occupied by that accursed bottle. It had vanished. Perhaps Jeanie had finally done something unselfish for a change. Perhaps Fate or some genie Lord had intervened to prevent a horrible wrong. It really didn’t matter.
Natalie turned away. It was May 29th, and they were having kibble burgers.
The alternate story gave a proper end to a wonderful love story. Were Natalie found her happiness.
I’m glad you liked it. 🙂
The original ending was based loosely on the belief by many that Jeanie going back to fix things would erase Natalie’s existence in this timeline. I couldn’t leave it that way and wrote this one also, leaving it up to the readers to choose which one they preferred. There was a third possible ending that could have followed that poof, but even I can draw a blank page and it wouldn’t have been interesting at all.
@Shadowrnnr: If Jeanie going back would erase something, it wouldn’t be just Natalie. It would be whole universe. All those years with Natalie living as Natalie would never happen for anyone.
This version actually makes more sense than the “original” one. The version where everything will disappear is more likely, but … not my favourite.
I do like this one better 🙂
The first story was good but I like this ending better. Never kill off a major character. You can never tell when you have to bring him back.
It’s a question of whether there are many (effectively infinite) timelines or just one.
If there’s just one, and time travel is possible, then any change in the past completely wipes out the future that lead to the time travel. It may be small changes or large, but none of the people in that new history (with the possible exception of the time travelers and anyone inside a “reality lock”) will remember anything about the old history. So, if Jeanie took Natalie Back to the Future, David left behind could not have married her. Little Natalia would probably not exist, and if she did she wouldn’t remember Natalie as her mother.
But, consider: At some level of reality, at one point in, call it “hypertime”, the history that Jeanie and Neil came from existed. They went back and made changes. Then Jeanie panicked and we had the WKRP history. Jeanie went back again, made another couple of changes, and we had the Monster Jean history. Jean went back again and made another change (did it only take one try? For her sake I hope so…) and now it’s “close enough”.
All of these histories did exist at some point in “hypertime”. At those points, each had a past that went back to the beginnings of time. Why would they not have a future that continues past the point when a time traveller went back and made changes? Just because they were no longer accessible to Jeannie doesn’t mean they aren’t still around, somewhere in hypertime…
And if you want a reason to believe they still exist: Conservation of mass/energy. ^_^
Which brings us to the many-worlds model. Call it hypertime, call it serial time, call it Paratime (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07K4R1YCL/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i3)…
But while I think Natalie in the WKRP timeline did continue past that *poof*, I don’t think the bottle would disappear from that timeline. From the point of view of the inhabitants of that timeline, that bottle had a history that went back beyond the point when Natalie bought it in the antique store. Before that Rouyaa lived in it and came to America with it and watched Andy reaching for the stars, even if Haji had Guano strip those memories from her. But Sid had still made I Dream of Jeannie… So why would that bottle, once again genie-less, suddenly disappear from the timeline? Perhaps it was moved to somewhere else to await a new victim…
Parallel universes, maybe? Instead of travelling through their own time they were jumping parallel time tracks?
Still leaves Jean a loser though. Personally I like the “This timeline gets erased” angle better, but Natalie having a happy family despite everything is nice.
Oh, this looks as if it may be of interest to this audience. I thought I should share:
On Youtube, the trailer for Three Thousand Years of Longing, featuring Tilda Swinton (formerly the Archangel Gabriel pursuing Constantine) as the bottle’s current owner. The genie is played by…well, see for yourself:
watch?v=TWGvntl9itE
@Robert: I’ve attempted to make a genie-related post which has fallen into moderation, possibly because of an inadequately munged link. Would you check the queue, please?
Weird that your comment ended up getting flagged… Not sure why that would happen.
It should be visible now, though.
It is, thank you. You could delete this request thread, if you wished, it having served its purpose.
While this is a nice ending, and I’m usually a sucker for happy endings, of the two I prefer the first one. It offers more drama.
Although the ending I actually really prefer is the third, where the complete timeline is erased and never happened.