Story a Day

We thought it would be great having a time machine. But there was one major downside.

I don’t mean like the butterfly effect. That’s a big exaggeration, as far as I can tell. I mean, when we got back from the first trip, people were wearing pants and shirts instead of unitards. But whatever. You expect reality to change just a little, when you start visiting the past. We could deal.

And so far there haven’t been any problems with people meeting themselves, or sleeping with their grandparents, or preventing their own births, et cetera. “All that stuff is very Shakespearean,” Connor liked to say. “It makes good drama, but it doesn’t happen in real life.”

The problem is that time machine has bugs.

Imagine driving through the desert on a road trip, listening to your favorite song on the car speakers. Suddenly, your car battery dies. You roll to the shoulder, and you stop. You think you passed a mechanic a few miles back. But still you panic. Your heart beats faster and you ask questions. Is there enough water to get to fuel? Is there enough money to get home? What if there isn’t?

Now imagine that, instead of Death Valley, you are stranded in 400 A.D. You don’t have antibodies for the viruses, and you don’t speak any languages.

Connor and I shipped the machine UPS to Rome. We wanted to talk to early Christians. We flew there, picked it up, climbed inside, and set the time. Then we climbed out.

It was broken.

image: Leo Reynolds on flickr