Time travel belongs not to the realm of realistic possibility but rather to fiction, and within that world it is part of a genre

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问题    Time travel belongs not to the realm of realistic possibility but rather to fiction, and within that world it is part of a genre involving dreams about the realization of desires, like a magic spirit in a bottle, or a pact with the devil, or, in the present case, a proposal by the editor of a magazine. In literature, if these desires come to pass, they almost always lead to regret, or to hell. I think I know how to avoid such unfortunate ends.
   I would start by asking this powerful figure if she were willing to transport me far, far back in time. Once I received an affirmative response, I would strike a deal. 【F1】I would propose exchanging this trip spanning a thousand years for the same amount of time, only divided into small trips to the immediate past. Bound by her word, which is unbreakable, she’d have no choice but to grant me my request.
   【F2】With this simple trick, I would change a worthless opportunity to see a historical spectacle that would be of no use to me at all for a practical power that can make my life easier. These small jumps will be more useful than any other thing I could possibly have. 【F3】They will allow me to go back each time I’ve made an error, and fix it; or when I’ve said something I regret, and not say it; or when I haven’t found an adequate answer to a question, and show off with one that I hatched after some further thought. I will be in a position to overcome what Rousseau called l’esprit de l’escalier, the ingenious phrase that occurs to us when we’re leaving the house where we should have uttered it
   Rousseau had good reasons to assign a name to that all too common circumstance. The original anecdote that gave rise to the expression can be found in his "Confessions." At dinner with important guests, a woman asked him, either out of spite or ignorance, if he had children. Everyone knew that he had five, and that he had put them up for adoption. In the anxious silence that followed, Rousseau managed only to stumble in the negative, and he spent the rest of the night being upset about it. 【F4】But when he left, repairing down those fateful stairs, the perfect response struck him: "Ma’am, that is not a question to ask a bachelor." (I suspect that Rousseau wrote the eight hundred pages of his "Confessions" just to deliver that phrase, and thus to find peace.) 【F5】If only he could have availed himself of the time-travel device that I’ll be getting, he’d have gone back and had some relief.
【F1】

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答案我会提议把这跨越千年的时光之旅划分为多次短途旅行,回到刚刚过去的某些时刻。

解析 ①本句为主谓宾结构的简单句。②spanning a thousand years是现在分词短语作后置定语,修饰this trip,说明这个时光旅行时间长达一千年。exchange A for B表示“以A换成B”。此处的A指跨越一千年的时光旅行(this trip spanning a thousand years),B指同等时间的多次旅行(the same amount of time)。③only divided into…immediate past是过去分词短语,修饰the same amount of time,即这些时间被分割成多次短途旅行;to the immediate past表示trips的目的:这些多次的时光之旅能穿越到不久的过去。
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