…I demand it!
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Confessions Of A Time Traveler
Mistakes Will Happen
Yes, I know I was supposed to continue my series about various people I’ve met traveling through space & time. Sadly, shit happens, so I’m doing this filler entry about mistakes I’ve made in my travels.
Now, mistakes in the time travel biz generally fall into two categories: leaving anachronistic stuff behind when you leave, or saying the wrong thing to the wrong person/people.
An example of the former would be the time I left Swiss Army knife near a village in Iron Age Scotland. Now, you might not think a single knife could have a huge effect on the world, but this one had a bunch of gadgets on it and the person who found it took it to the head guy of the village.
Now, the village leader was no dummy, so he checked out the knife blades and such pretty closely. He called in the iron workers and showed it to them. They all agreed that having a couple of knife blades and a saw blade that you could easily fold up and carry was a damned good idea. Then they went off and made a few largish pocket knives.
Turns out, these were popular and made excellent trade items. Within a decade or so, pocket knives roughly the size of a hot dog bun were all over that part of the world. Eventually, after accidentally using the magnifying glass to start a fire, folks were shaping and polishing crystals to make them and stick them on new knives.
Having a portable toolbox that was way lighter that the separate items allowed many folks to travel and use those tools, or just hang out around the village and make stuff.
As we know, small discoveries lead to bigger ones and before you know it, somebody ends up with stuff that can change the world. In this case, it spun off a new timeline where the people of Scotland used advanced weapons (for the time) to slaughter the Romans and keep on heading south until they had conquered all of Britain and Ireland. From there, they moved toward Europe and Scandinavia and that’s why that Earth has such a huge population of redheads.
And why I had to shell out 95 bucks for a new knife.
The second kind of mistake was made when, in a 1772 late night discussion with several of our US Founding Fathers, I got off on a slight rant about all the troubles slavery would bring and how fucked up religion is. In my defense, Thomas Jefferson was quite liberal with his beer.
I took my leave the next day, but I had already spun off a new timeline where slavery was off the table for all of those I had spoken too, including Jefferson. When the Declaration of Independence was written, it declared that EVERYBODY was equal, including women (I must have mentioned women’s rights). There was also no mention of God. The South was all like “yeah, yeah, sure, whatever” and there was more arguing than in our timeline, but they all signed it and then everyone kicked British ass.
Now, when it came time for the Constitution to address including everyone (new 1st amendment), the Southern States said “Fuck that!”, but that only caused them to form what was a quasi Confederacy before the USA got going and it failed pretty fast because freed slaves from the north took to sneaking into the South and arming the hell out of slaves and Native Americans. Lots of slave owners died and by about 1810 slavery was a thing of the past in the USA. Racism, casual or otherwise, took a bit longer, but was stamped out pretty quickly because of how I badmouthed religion.
My ranting resulted in an amendment that was quite specific about the separation of Church and State. The world we find ourselves in in 2020 never came to exist.
Giving women equal rights had profound effects too, including increased education, many more great inventions, fewer wars and on and on.
All because Tom Jefferson was generous to a fellow redhead with his beer.
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