Last night, I started reading The Time Machine, published first in 1895, and was struck with H.G. Wells’ audacious choice to forgo proper names, referring to his characters as “the Time Traveller,” “the Psychologist,” “the Editor,” and so on. With difficulty, I tried imagining picking up a modern novel that made choices like that. There may be many who feel the choice an archaic one, removing too much of the necessary personality and detail from the story’s characters, turning them into nothing more than stereotypes. A fair argument. But I find it a bit exciting. Perhaps, it’s because it makes the story feel more like a fairy tale filled with impossible things.
Corbett Buchly 
Coincidentally, I also picked up this book and began reading it on July 22nd. This is an impressive coincidence if we are within the same time dimension. Or maybe a future bar conversation with you inspired me to build a time machine and purposefully travel back to start the book on the same day as you just for giggles.
If the 4th dimension is time, the 5th dimension might be related to parallel actions.
So, in order to not confuse your previous timestream, when you traveled back in time, you jumped to a parallel universe in which that bar conversation had never been had (even though you realized it would)?