When Beth was nine years old, she met a strange woman with a familiar face. She said she came from the future—she was, in fact, Beth Wilder herself. She told the young Beth that her life had a purpose, that she had a mission—a destiny. She would have to train for it. She would have to make sacrifices. But she had a purpose. She gave her a notebook full of proof—events that would come to pass.
It was a brief encounter, but it changed Beth’s entire life. Her roadmap to the future was full of blank spots and mysteries, but there were names and dates, descriptions of events. Enough to get here where she needed to be. She knew that the Fracture was coming, and that she would be instrumental in stopping it. She knew she would meet Jack Joyce. She knew that one day, she would travel in time, and meet a nine-year old girl, and give her a notebook.
Beth is strong, bright and extremely driven; from a very young age, she’s had a sense of purpose most people can’t even imagine. She had been given an impossible task, but the person who gave it to her knew exactly what she was capable of. There’s no room for self-doubt or hesitation in her.
All this changes when Beth ends up at the End of Time. She believes in her own destiny and knows it cannot change. And yet, if time actually ends, then her destiny is to fail. This realization shakes her to her core, and while she’s too strong to shatter, for the first time in years, she knows doubt.
Once she meets her younger self, another key element in her life changes. Up until that point, she’s been fearless—secure in the knowledge that whatever happens, she will survive and be physically whole. How else could she ever meet her younger self? But once that point is passed, she becomes mortal. Before, she can stare into the barrel of a gun and know this was not the day she dies. After that event, her future is unwritten. Her immunity has been revoked.
But none of that goes in the notebook. She sets her younger self on the right path—the path of strength, dedication and achievement—and for all her fears and doubts, she knows her task hasn’t changed. She sacrifices everything she has with awareness and dedication no one else could truly understand, save perhaps Paul Serene, and she does so twice—first, when she sets herself on that path, knowing what it will lead to, and again when she finally faces Serene in William Joyce’s workshop on July 4, 2010.
Beth is portrayed by Courtney Hope.
