The Back-in-Time Survey Page Two

The Fantasy

Harry, your favorite uncle (the one who looks younger every time you see him), has offered you a gift: a one-time trip with him via his temporal transporter, which he calls TempTer. It's a nifty little machine that can send you and Harry back in time. All you have to do is wear the remote device, and TempTer (which remains here in the present -- or is that the future?), sends you anywhere on earth, automatically translates everything you hear into your native tongue and everything you say into the language others can understand, and brings you home when your time is up. When you return to the present, it will be only one minute later than when you left.

TempTer has a few limitations. First of all, it's enormously expensive to operate (Harry won't even tell you what powers it), so this is the only trip you'll be getting, at least for quite some time. While you can come home earlier than scheduled by using your remote, the trip can't last any longer than 4 hours. TempTer can't send you into the future, and although there is quite a wide range of years it can target, it can't send you any further into the past than the year 498 AD. Also, Harry has noticed some strange anomalies in the programming, and he won't bring you back to a time any later than 1698 AD, for fear he'll never get you home.

But 1200 years is plenty of time to choose a fantasy... isn't it?

 

The Questions

There are only two questions I'd like you to answer:

1. What one person would you like to meet on this, your only trip into the past?
2. Why?

That's it. If there are two or more people you'd like to meet, I'll let you bend the rules and meet all of them, as long as they lived at the same time and place. For example, you could meet King Henry II and his Queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, as long as you programmed TempTer to transport you to, say, the English royal palace before Eleanor left Henry to live in Poitou. You could even try to meet their sons Richard and John. However, your one-shot trip could not include Eleanor and Queen Elizabeth I (who lived centuries apart), or Henry and Emperor Isaac Comnenus (who never met).

Queen Elizabeth I

For the sake of discussion, we'll assume that you'll have no difficulty meeting and speaking with the person of your choice. After all, what's the use in traveling back 900 years to meet King Henry only to be thrown out of the palace by his guards? Furthermore, the person you meet doesn't have to be anyone famous or even truly known to people in our time. You could choose "one of the guards on duty at the Tower of London the night the princes were killed." But then, you'd have to know which night they were killed.

William Shakespeare

There are many other things I'd like to know about your choice, and you might want to address these questions in your response. For example, what date would you choose to meet this person? Would it be at the end of his life, or at some momentous occasion? What questions would you ask? What would you tell him? How would you approach him? Would you try to convince him you're from the future, and warn him against events that are yet to happen? What, if anything, would you bring with you from the future ?

Would you try to change history?

While you're answering questions, Uncle Harry would appreciate it if you'd tell us any other features you'd like TempTer to have that would make your visit to the past go more smoothly.

How to participate
Back to the first page

 

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The hourglass graphic was created by your guide. The Shakespeare graphic is public domain and was altered by your guide. Animated computer is courtesy of Mediabuilder. Queen Elizabeth graphic provided by www.PDImages.com.