Al Templeton (Novel)

Al Templeton was the owner of Al's Diner, a restaurant that sold his speciality, "The Fatburger". He discovered the time portal, or "rabbit hole" as he called it, in his diner's pantry.

He was a close friend of Jake Epping, who was his most loyal customer as of 2011. Using five years of his own fieldwork (1958-1963) detailing the events relating to the assassination, Al developed a plan to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Description
Al called Jake and asked him to come to his diner at the end of the 2011 school year. Jake, who had seen Al just twenty-four hours prior, was shocked to see that Al had aged significantly and was seriously ill with lung cancer, due to his cigarette addiction.

Al introduces Jake to time travel by showing him the "rabbit hole" and instructs him how to use it to travel back to 1958. Al explains he had been using it for ages to obtain (relative to 2011 prices) high quality beef for cheap which he used in his Fatburgers.

Al eventually realised he could change the past and became obsessed with the idea of preventing the assassination of Kennedy, believing that it would prevent many of the major social and political disasters of the late twentieth century - including the assassination of Martin Luther King and the Vietnam War.

Assuming he would not be able to carry out this task completely alone, Al created a book of detailed notes regarding the movements, lifestyle, and social interactions of Lee Harvey Oswald in the past. Within it he also logged historical dates of importance, along with sports statistics for generating finance, using information from the present (2011). The "Book of Al" was Jake Epping's most important tool in the operation.

Al also first tested the effects of changing the past on smaller events, such as saving a girl from being paralyzed in a hunting accident. He told Jake about several effects of time travel that he discovered. The past refuses to be changed - throwing obstacles in your way to prevent you from changing events. Each time you return to the present and re-enter the portal, you reset what you changed. Two minutes pass in the present no matter how long you spend in the past. He told Jake about the mysterious "Yellow Card Man" and how the portal seems to affect him.

Al appreciated how the butterfly effect could create huge distortions in the timeline, but he was still largely unaware that what he was doing would have drastic effects upon history.

Al motivates Jake into carrying out the mission by committing suicide.

Appearances
11/22/63 (Novel)