June 25, 2025

This will be my final journal entry.

After decades of research and endless hopeful results that turned into dead ends, tonight, at last, I will fulfill my destiny.

Over the last five and a half decades, my entire professional life, I have been developing the technology for time travel. I have lost so many on this journey, but I’ve always known my perseverance would bear fruit.

When I was a youth, I visited a fair with my parents. I was drawn to the fortune-teller’s tent. As I gave her the requisite nickel, she grabbed my wrist and looked at the palm upon which the nickel lay. She let go as if my skin burned her. She spat and said, “You will do what you are destined to do and I will have to live with that knowledge. Get out!”

I was confused, hurt and more than a little angry at the time. But as I grew older, and found my calling, I remembered her words with delight: I would prevail.

Why does anyone want to go back in time? Perhaps to change a single, personal action one has lived to regret? A vigorous No, I reply. What a waste of such a precious gift! First, the change may but inflict a worse fate. But more importantly, to be able to twist the fabric of existence and slip into the stream of time in order to travel against the current - it cannot be for such an insignificant moment in the history of man. For never doubt, each life that walks upon the Earth is but a grain of sand on a beach…if that.

Perhaps one would wish to meet some great minds of history? That at least has some merit: to learn from those who spent their lives pondering questions that continue to baffle those who still take pleasure in intellectual gymnastics. Socrates? Plato? Aristotle? Da Vinci? Machiavelli? Russell? Or perhaps some well-known historical figure? One might discover if they were really as they have come to be viewed. Christ? Mohammed? Alexander the Great? Attila the Hun? Queen Elizabeth I? Louis XVI? George Washington? Benjamin Franklin? Abraham Lincoln? I do not deny the exhilaration one might feel gaining first hand knowledge of some historical personage, but the gift of time travel would be wasted in such a venture. Change would be limited, personal and, therefore, meaningless.

Chatting with a writer whose works have not yet been erased by the passage of time might be desired. Shakespeare? Cervantes? Tolstoy? Dostoyevsky? Joyce? Lewis? Tolkien? Dickens? Twain? Wells? Verne? Huxley? Orwell? Garcia-Marquez? How to choose? And really, why bother? Do they not all tickle the brain with the words they weave to tell the same stories, depict the same situations, describe the same feelings that have plagued humanity as long as stories have been told?

Or maybe one has a grand altruistic gesture in mind. Perhaps erase the existence of some murdering tyrant, despot, or prolific serial killer? Remove the scourge before it occurs? Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, King Leopold II. Elizabeth Bathory, Pedro Lopez, H.H Holmes, Dr. Harold Shipman. Alas, each is but an infinitesimal sliver of evil as viewed through the lens of time. What of all that has never been recorded but was? Or that will be.

This evening, I sent my assistants home revealing neither my breakthrough nor my intentions. If I am successful, it will not matter. I will be no more.

I have reviewed the algorithms multiple times to ensure there are no errors. I’ve programmed the portal with the chain of commands that will send me where I can have the greatest impact.

Before the egg. Before the chicken. Before the bang. I will intercept that which precedes all that is.

And I will suggest a rigorous and detailed review of the design blueprints for humanity, for the existing one is fatally flawed.

Shivering in the Boston air, I realized that Aaron Sorkin’s shitty Oscar would fade into oblivion. I pictured the gap that would inexplicably appear on his trophy shelf and I smiled. It’s the smile that I remember. It had been a long time since I had smiled.

This is a strange way to begin, I know. The Social Network cannot even exist for you, but I could not begin with the suicide. You must have patience.

I held that thought of Sorkin’s shelf as long as I could so I would stop visualizing what would have to be: shattered glass, a bloodstained hoodie. Murder repulses me; I want you to know that. I am, in my own eyes, a repulsive creature. I would have chosen another life. If events had taken literally any other course, I would have remained an underpaid, well-liked, and more-or-less happy teacher of physics.

The violence of it threatened my resolve that first time. I was capable: when I still thought I had infinite time, I used much of it to become an accomplished marksman. But in the minutes before the shot, it was still possible to return the rifle to my duffle, close the door of my machine and leave. I’ll admit I considered it.

If I returned to 2025, wrote a paper for a peer-reviewed journal and presented my time machine, I would have been hailed as the greatest mind of the 21st century. But in seeking fame and fortune, I would have been no different than him.

No, if I returned, it would have been to her, and it would have been to one of three times.

She was three years old in 2010. She wanted gas for her red plastic car. It was one of the Playskool ones a kid sits inside, with the big eyes where the headlights should be. Her flashing Keds ran it all around our driveway. She wore a Superman cape she had gotten for her birthday, and every two minutes she’d Flintstone the car to me, and she’d say, “Fill it up, daddy!” I would have gone back to that day, over and over, just to look on from the bushes.

She was twelve years old in 2019. She wanted a phone. I tried, halfheartedly, to convince her to get something cheaper, but she had her heart set on an iPhone, and I couldn’t tell her no: she was such a good kid, in every way. I signed the contract and handed her the phone, and her eyes lit up because she could talk to her friends like all the others kids did. I would have gone back to that day to snatch the iPhone from her hand, throw it to the ground and smash it with a rock until the chips and plastic were powder.

She was fourteen years old in 2021. She wanted to die. She followed the website’s instructions perfectly: she stood on the chair to loop the cord over the beam in her bedroom, tied precisely the right knot for the noose, kicked the chair aside and dangled until her pulse spent her last breath. I would have gone back to that day to come home one hour earlier and cut her down.

But that would not have solved anything. Not really.

Social media usage among teenagers spiked drastically about 2010. Between 2010 and 2014, rates of hospital admission for self-harm among 10 to 14-year-old girls doubled. Rates of depression and anxiety among girls shot up: a line graph depicting these rates bent upward so drastically that the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt described it as an “elbow.” In 2017, when British researchers asked 1,500 teen girls about social media, they consistently identified Instagram as the most damaging. Facebook employee Frances Haugen leaked internal documents in 2021 that show Zuckerberg’s company knew how much damage their apps caused. Facebook’s research found, and I quote, “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression… This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.”

Teens compare themselves to others. Teens rely on clicks and comments to bring them self-worth. Teens try to build themselves up by destroying others, like when Miranda Smith looked at my darling Jessie’s picture on Instagram and wrote an ugly slut like you would only get likes with a noose around your neck.

I carry the memorial card from her funeral, always, as a reminder. Jessie Marks, 2007-2021, and above that her beautiful, smiling, child’s face. You must understand how much I still love her. You must understand, too, that I have looked at that picture every day for many years, and I have never once been able to see her face without remembering those words. An ugly slut like you would only get likes with a noose around your neck.

Rage and pain remind me, as they must remind you, that to cut the rope would not be enough. They remind me that to murder Miranda Smith, as sweet as it would feel, would accomplish nothing. Neither action would save the others. You must understand these things. You must know it is all for Jessie, but it is not only for Jessie.

She was unborn in 2003, the time to which I travelled. Neither she nor I nor her mother ever set foot in Boston, or Cambridge, as I suppose the place is more properly called. But he did.

He was nineteen years old in 2003. He wanted fame, money, and popularity. He sat at a computer in his Harvard dormitory—Kirkland House—and devised a website on which male students would vote on which female peers were the hottest, and less than a year later, he would found Facebook. He would later buy Instagram, creating untold millions for his company and massive psychological damage for our children. But first, he would ask his friend for an algorithm to help his coding. His friend would write it on the Kirkland House window, and then Mark Zuckerberg would stand at the window to read it.

I had selected the SRS-A2 Covert, which offered vastly more range than necessary, but also great accuracy with a compact size. A standard length sniper rifle would be too difficult to conceal.

I did not know which window, not for certain. My methods at that time were not so methodical, and I had rushed my research. I am embarrassed to admit that I founded my plan on a movie: only when I knelt on the opposing roof, grinning like a fool about Aaron Sorkin’s missing Oscar, did I consider that he might have invented the writing on the window for dramatic purposes. I panicked. My binoculars shook as I scanned the wall of Kirkland House, whipping from point to point, searching for a marker scrawling on glass. There was nothing, nothing at all. I knew The Social Network was fiction, inventing some characters wholesale. How could I have been so stupid as to think Hollywood would pinpoint the location of a famous man on an infamous night?

I saw the marker.

I needed to be calm, unshaking, and I breathed as evenly as I could as I gripped the rifle. I watched the final writing through the scope. The penman stepped aside. The boy in the hoodie stepped forward. I saw the arrogant grin on his face, exhaled slowly as I had practiced on the range, and buried a .338 caliber bullet in his chest. Shouts and screams wafted through the night air as a young man bled to death on his dorm room floor.

His death might horrify you. You might remonstrate, He was 19, he had done nothing to deserve death. But he would have.

In my time machine, I read the prayer on the back of Jessie’s memorial card. Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. I flipped the card to the front and studied her face, tried to love her without remembering the words, but they remained lodged in my brain. Only the dates had changed: Jessie Marks, 2007-2022.

December, January, February. Zuckerberg’s blood had bought my daughter three more months.

Back in the future, I tried to understand how that could be. I had not missed: a certain Harvard sophomore had been murdered in his dorm room in October 2003. He had not created Facemash that night, nor Facebook after. Those domains and Instagram’s all remained unregistered. Without Facebook to blaze the trail, Instagram remained a figment in a future that wasn’t.

But in February 2004, a man named Jack Flanagan had launched FaceSpace, which grew to a billion dollar valuation. In 2011, FaceSpace purchased its upstart rival, E-gram. In February 2022, my daughter killed herself.

The second time was smoother. Flanagan spent spring break 2003 in Mexico, where an accident befell him while windsurfing. The Pacific hid both his unrecovered body and the two .338 caliber bullet holes in his wetsuit. His death bought a month-and-a-half: Jessie did not hang herself until mid-March.

I recognized the problem after eliminating Jim Baines, Marsha Robards, Deepak Singh and thus FaceHub, eTree, and ConnectMe. That trio, collectively, moved Jessie’s date of death only three weeks. The internet had been primed for social media. Zuckerberg had moved first, but he had not been the only. Many, many others would follow. Eventually, I even had to kill the Winklevoss twins. I tried killing Jonathan Abrams, too, back in 2001, but his murder did not move the needle at all. No one gave a shit about Friendster. It was Facebook that began the boom, or if not Facebook, each pale ghost that filled its void.

You will be tempted to stop. You will kill young men and women by the dozen, enough that you become good at it. Efficient. You will admire and loathe yourself in equal measure, and with blood on your hands and shoes, you will sit in your machine hurtling through the years, crying and wondering why. Then, you will take a picture of a 14-year-old girl from your pocket. You will feel her love and you will smile, fleetingly, before you remember. An ugly slut like you would only get likes with a noose around your neck.

As a creature who lives in its intervals, I have lost the ability to reckon time. I believe that in what you would call the last month, I have murdered 23 people. Jessie lives until age 17. Each new death wins only hours.

It’s funny, almost, to remember when I believed a single bullet could be the remedy. I thought Zuckerberg would fall and before his blood could stain the carpet, Jessie’s date of death would leap to 2080, 2090 on the card. I will never live to see that change. In the mirror every morning I see deeper wrinkles, more gray hair, less hair. Time travel breaks down the human body. I feel pain in my joints and chest, and I know that my remaining years will not complete my task. I will fail.

Listen. I began work on the time machine in December 2021, a month after Jessie’s original death. Building it took me four years. With careful notes such as I am providing, that time can be reduced, but you absolutely must begin around-the-clock work by February 2023. Begin any later and you surrender all hope; I’ve calculated. Jessie might seem fine if I can press on long enough. Without social media to poison her mind she will be happy, I know it, and you will think she will be OK. You will cherish her, love her, think it impossible that the apple of your eye could kill herself. If I murder enough people in my final years, maybe she will not, but it was Jessie’s suicide that prompted me to build the machine. Because I have forestalled her death, this message will have to be your prompt. You, man that I was, must understand: you must leave her to save her. Jessie carries that seed of destruction. If you do not do this work, if you do not return to 2003 to shoot a man named Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard University, Jessie will die at age 14 and the horror will return.

You will fear the consequences. Social media might seem new in your world, but it will not remain a harmless curiosity and it must be stopped. I know my actions have caused… alterations. With Facebook and its successors gone, some friends whom I will not name did not marry, did not have children. Other things have happened or failed to happen. I admit there are costs, but you must weigh them against the coming horror. You do not know what social media will do, to all of us, but especially to children. Jessie.

I leave you this recording, notes on the time machine’s construction, and the memorial card from Jessie’s funeral. I do not need it anymore, and if it cannot spur you to action, nothing will. Check it, daily. If I work very hard and live longer than I think, the year of death might change again.

I am also giving you a list of names, locations, dates and times. I have provided a photograph with each name; there are 1,417. If you use my research, if you do the work well and kill these first fourteen hundred quickly, you can build on what I have done. Every hour, every minute is worth more killing to spare a child’s pain.

Save them. Save her.

Leonard Wright and Drew Schmidt sat in the back of their “America in the Twentieth Century” history class. Their teacher, Mr. Tucker, was droning on about the Gulf War while PowerPoint slides flashed on the front wall. It was nearing the end of the school year, so enthusiasm was in short supply for both teacher and students.

“This is so boring,” Drew leaned over and muttered to Leo.

Leo turned and donned a depressingly bored face.

“I know,” Leo commiserated.

“When are we ever going to need this stuff?” Drew complained.

The constant tenor of Mr. Tucker’s monotonous voice ceased abruptly.

“Esteemed professors Wright and Schmidt,” Mr. Tucker’s crisp reproach jerked the boys’ attention back to the lesson. “Would you care to share your insights on the geopolitical state of the early nineteen nineties?”

“Sorry, Mr. Tucker. We will respectfully defer to your expertise in the area,” Drew responded, earning some snorts and giggles from classmates. The affirming laughter of their classmates was much more valuable to them than any possible knowledge to be gained from class. Besides, they could just Google all of that later anyway. Regardless, Mr. Tucker asked for them to stay behind after the final bell rang.

“So you don’t think this is the most thrilling class in the world, I get it,” Mr. Tucker said as he was rummaging around in a cabinet behind his desk. “But I wish you two would take history more seriously. Learning history is not just about memorizing dates; it’s about expanding your sense of humanity. And…”

Mr. Tucker trailed off with the promise of more while he shifted his focus to his hunt in the cabinet. He found what he was looking for and resumed speaking just before the fuses on the boys’ attention spans had run out.

“Ah! Here we go.”

Mr. Tucker produced a small box and two bicycle helmets from the cabinet. He set the box on the table and handed the helmets to Leo and Drew, who accepted them with hesitant confusion. Mr. Tucker began opening the small box.

“What is this? Do you want us to wear these?” Drew asked with a chuckle.

“We might not be the smartest kids,” Leo said, raising his spherical helmet for emphasis, “but this is kind of offensive.”

From the small box, Mr. Tucker had removed what looked like some kind of control device and set it on his desk.

“Shut up and put them on,” the teacher instructed.

The boys obeyed slowly, shrugging to one another, while Mr. Tucker adjusted a dial on the controller. Satisfied with the inputted settings, he looked at Leo and Drew seriously.

“Okay, buckle up. Safety first.”

Buckles were clicked and secured.

“Now, on the right side of your helmets you will find a switch. Press that.”

Switches were located and pressed. Tiny lights on the two helmets started glowing green to match a light that had been illuminated on the control unit.

“This is set to nineteen ninety-one. As soon as I hit this switch here you will be transported back to that time. Listen carefully: in order to get back you must—“

“Yeah right!” Drew blurted doubtfully and slapped the control switch.

The boys were engulfed by a bright flash, a swirl of blue and yellow, and driving, electronic sound effects.

They opened their eyes and found themselves smack dab in the center of some bustling city. People rushed all around them, car horns blared in the battle of lane privileges, and they spotted a billboard advertising the upcoming release of the movie “Hot Shots!” Then they looked at each other.

“Okay, so I guess it’s the nineties now?” Drew speculated.

“I just saw someone change the disc in their portable CD player. I can’t live here. We need to figure out how to get back,” Leo whined.

Drew grabbed Leo’s shoulder and gave him an expression similar to a traveling salesman with a life-changing product.

“Wait a minute, don’t you see? We’re from the future. We can bet on stuff and get rich.”

Leo agreed a little uncertainly, but they went in search of a sports bar. Luckily, they weren’t carded on entry otherwise their futuristic birth dates would have seemed like unusual attempts at fake ID’s. On the TV was game one of the NBA Finals between the Lakers and the Bulls. Drew assured Leo that the Bulls won everything in the nineties. “Jordan in the finals? Forget about it,” were his exact words. However, he had forgotten about how the Bulls lost the first game of that series. He proceeded to lose his next three bets, not to mention all of their money.

“Don’t worry about it kid, you can just travel back to a time when you had some money,” a bearded man laughed while counting the cash he had collected from Drew.

“Hey, if you’re from the future,” another bar patron chimed in, “who’s the next president?”

“Uhh,” the two boys racked their brains in unison.

“Who is it right now?” Leo asked.

“Bush.”

“Oh, it’s the other Bush. His son,” Drew answered proudly.

“Or is it Jimmy Carter?” Leo guessed.

The two other men at the bar erupted in laughter.

“Jimmy Carter! Whoo, man I needed a good laugh,” the bearded fellow said when the humor subsided. “So what’s the future like, then? Obviously money and school aren’t important.”

The boys thought for a moment, fumbling for a concise description.

“Everybody just posts video of themselves and argues about stuff on the Internet,” Leo said.

“I’m not really sold on this Internet thing, but whatever you say, kid.”

The man with the beard that had won all of Drew’s money ordered another round of drinks for the time travelers before he left.

As Leo and Drew sat at the bar sipping their beers, the possibility of them being stuck in the past began to loom over them. Their disinterest in school gave them very little advantage for what was to come, and left them powerless to prevent any upcoming tragedy. Who’s to say any of their warnings would be heeded anyway? They were destined to remember the future as it repeated the past in real time just like everyone else. A childhood of digesting disaster after disaster, balanced by an onslaught of six-second attempts at stardom left them ill-equipped to comprehend the true severity of their situation. They dealt with it to the extent of their emotional capabilities: evasion by the means of cynical humor.

“This is the worst day of my life, and I haven’t even been born yet,” Leo started.

“Mr. Tucker is so fired.”

I sit and stare down at the blank screen before me. My mind filled with all the moments in history that I could go back and change. The most devasting of wars, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, mass shootings, the list seems endless. Then I debate what to change, what aspect of each of these should go differently.

Suddenly it dawns on me, I cannot change any aspect of history, because if I do, I am altering a part that we might need. Yes, each event this world has experienced has happened for a reason and it is not up to me to change that. What if I made things worse, a more heinous catastrophe happened than the one I chose to alter. What if other things didn’t happen because of my choice. No, if the events should not have taken place, then I have to believe that God would have intervened.

So, back to square one. Then I realize there is one thing I can go back and change that would only affect this one person. To change, adjust, alter just one aspect of this person’s life and it would directly affect no one other than them. Friends and family would live their lives as they did. The world would continue to progress and change, as it has. The only effects of this alteration would be to this one individual.

I take my opportunity to go back to September 2008, the day my wonderful older sister and best friend received a terminal medical diagnosis. I would take this chance to go back and change the results of the tests and labs she received just after Labor Day that year. A diagnosis that she should never have received. At the young age of just 54 years old my sister, who never smoked a day in her life, was told she had Stage 4 Lung Cancer that had metastasized to other major organs.

Changing the prognosis, the results, the diagnosis would allow her to see her golden years, work towards her life’s goals and follow her dreams. She would see her 55th birthday and all the others that followed.

Yes, this is the right choice to make, to give a loving, outgoing, smart person back her life.

QUANTICO, VA. OCT 27, 2022 - Under the Freedom of Information Act, the FBI today released copies of several documents which had been thought lost. These documents were part of Nicolai Tesla’s personal effects, and the papers themselves have been returned to his family and the Tesla Museum in Belgrade, Serbia. Among these documents was an odd communication, written on pages of lined school paper. These pages are, as far as experts can tell, a practical joke. Here is a transcript:

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July 12, 1988

My name is Jerryde Willams, but if my plan works it may not matter. Hell, I might even create a paradox that means I won’t exist, but that’s a chance I have to take. The alternatives are just too dangerous.

Let me start at the beginning. I have worked in the FBI’s document offices for the last 25 years, and it wasn’t long after I was hired I found the box of papers.

As a probationary employee, I was often tasked with shit jobs, and the transfer of old financial documents was par for the course. I was working in the archive catacombs below HQ, loading document boxes onto a dolly; it was my job to haul these boxes up to the microfiche room, where the documents inside them would be photographed before they were sent to the burn room for incineration. It was manual labor, and I'd spent weeks shlepping boxes up from the sub-basement.

The last box in the set that day was a little different than the others. The archive tape sealing the other boxes was a dull and faded yellow, but on this one it was darker, almost brown. I turned the box around, and saw the label on the side.

.........[ N. TESLA 10/28/1945 ]........

I was intrigued. Setting the box back on the shelf, I hid it behind some budget boxes from the 1930’s. Little did I know just how fateful that decision would be.

After work, I made my way back down to the storage room where I had been working, and opened the box. Technically, I was breaking the law, but no one cared too much about protecting these old budget and accounting documents, and the security guards never even came down here. I split the tape seal, and inside I found manila file folders, aged and slightly brittle. Some had labels, penned in a spidery script.

Opening one at random, I found pages of hand-written notes and patent-worthy diagrams. I knew almost immediately that I wanted to study these papers in more depth, so that night I began smuggling documents out of the building, knowing it would cost me my job, and possibly my freedom, were I discovered.

It took careful execution; I limited my haul each time to no more than a single folder, or twenty or so loose pages. I got very good at hiding those thin bundles in the back of my pants. Security was pretty lax in those days, and no one ever thought to pat down my ass.

It took me months to complete my larceny, and I finished by tearing up the box itself, and taking the pieces out the same way.

I think it was when I examined the third or fourth set of documents that I realized some of the pages were copies; I recognized the telltale dark mimeograph fluid lines. It actually made me feel better. I wasn’t stealing state secrets or anything, since some of them had been copied, and besides, none of them had been stamped with a security designation.

It was soon after that I found some pages that made me wonder if they were all merely hoaxes. The first was a patent diagram for what was labeled a “Crystalline Mechanism for the Focusing and Controlled Release of High Intensity Electrical Energy.” I remembered reading rumors Tesla had been working on the development of a death ray for the military, and that his notes and research had never been found after his death. If what I was reading was real, then the conspiracy theorists were right; this secret research had been found and copies had been made.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I broke out in a sweat. If these documents were authentic, the powers that be would likely do whatever it took to keep them hidden, including making me disappear.

Secrecy became my mantra. I knew I should destroy the papers, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

I had been reviewing Tesla's notes and diagrams for a couple weeks when I found a folder that would change everything. It contained a lengthy research paper titled simply TEMPORAL DISPLACEMENT. I sat down and began reading around 7:00 p.m. and when I looked up, thoughts whirling and eyes burning, I realized it was almost 5:00 a.m. The mathematics involved were beyond me, and the electronic and magnetic components were extremely sophisticated and complex, but the descriptions were laid out in a matter-of-fact way that begged for exploration and experimentation.

In order to learn more about the necessary subjects, I enrolled in night school, being careful never to complete any courses of study resulting in degrees or leaving an educational trail. I spent over twenty years learning and studying, and then almost four years gathering components. It took me several months and countless tries, but eventually I was able to open a portal into history, one which allowed me to traverse back and forth.

That was last week.

I started focusing the window around in history, careful to observe only. I was well aware of the proverbial butterfly-effect, and the potential for paradox was mentioned several times in Tesla’s papers. That was when I began to consider the implications of the time machine itself. With dawning horror I realized it was very possible that another copy of the research existed. There was no way I wanted this technology in the hands of anyone with an agenda who might change history irreparably.

So I developed my plan.

I am going to open a portal in Tesla’s hotel room on the day of his death. When I see him become unconscious, I will step in and remove the box containing the plans for the time machine. I intend to destroy all of the documents before they can be found by the government agents who will take possession of his papers.

I know this will create a paradox since I did find that box, but like I said, it’s a risk I am willing to take. If you are reading this note and you aren’t me, then I hope you will at least show it to me, and let me know it worked.

———————————————-

Ed. Note: No record of anyone, living or dead, by the name of Jerryde Willams has been found. The FBI denies ever having employed anyone by this name. They also deny that archived documents have ever been stored in sub-basements of any FBI building. We do know that there are several boxes of Tesla’s research still unaccounted for, but time travel machines seem very much beyond the scope of what even his genius could have developed.

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© 2023 - dustygrein

Through a fortuitous portal found in my rented apartment on Sloane Gardens above the Royal Court Theatre facing Sloane Square, a back-lit gossamer plane of wall luminesced thirteen minutes before sunset each day during the winter month of February.

This was my recent discovery, only after I had lived in this furnished flat a few years. I uncovered, behind a chest of drawers and huge mirror, a 2x3 meter fizz of wall, its real purpose undiscoverable until one were to put their hand through it. And of course, having the desire to rearrange the furniture of this furnished apartment, there was I, curious and unafraid to do just that.

Which I did. But I'm jumping ahead.

How long this mahogany husk had sat against the wall, hiding its magic gateway, is unknown. I myself didn't even bother moving it until an overwhelming desire to rearrange the furniture overtook me. Such motivation was embarrassingly corny compared to my usual ones. Nevertheless, when I finally did move it, a reverse shadow--of yellow--circumscribed its perimeter on the wall. It was an eyesore. I would have to acquire another piece of furniture--perhaps a wardrobe--to hide this mar of tainted wall.

I was irked. The stain bothered me. I painted the bedroom anew in a dark color, but still, it shone through. It was in my bedroom, so I couldn't escape it. Even when I passed down the hall, the bedroom entrance vaguely displayed in just my peripheral vision, it caught my eye.

I made plans to go to Portobello Road one Saturday, the last Saturday of January. Certainly, there would be something to at least sit or hang in front of my apartment's paint-proof age spot. If not furniture, perhaps a tapestry. Yes, a tapestry would do just fine.

It was a bargain. It was heavy. The woven collection of intersecting silk warps and wefts, large enough to cover that ghost of furniture past, hung tastefully over my flat's blemish. Just about completely.

I found that there was a bit of the spot peaking from behind it, so I removed the tapestry to readjust its anchorings on the wall. It was thirteen minutes before sunset on that first Friday of February. While measuring again the sallow stain shadow-thing that was evidence of the furniture previously in front of it, the continuum of history, compressed into a singularity 2x3 meters, fluoresced its invitation.

I've always been the adventurous type, jumping through the hoops of destiny that appear before me, from my first foray into the world through a birth canal I found surprisingly patent on my birth day. Thereon, slogans such as "Go for it," "Just do it," "Full speed ahead," and "Onward ho!" have always created the vacuum I was compelled to fill. This is not very good thinking for business strategies, but I've survived the slings and arrows it has wrought and I have survived. In any event, I suppose my recklessness is all part of my charm.

During those thirteen minutes of continuity with the infinite, when my hand first met no resistance (otherwise expected thanks to plaster and horsehair filler), retrieving my hand immediately seemed sensible. Adventurism notwithstanding, I'm not crazy.

My hand was fine. I checked off all the boxes in my survey for reassurance: it wasn't cold behind the wall; it wasn't hot; it wasn't painful. I had felt no wind or precipitation. My next adventure was my hand making a visit to eternity for only a few minutes, which is pretty funny when you think about it. Retrieving it back, again the checklist of checked boxes reassured me.

Now it was time for my head.

What I saw was the meaning of life itself. All of time running concurrently but curved onto itself into a tunnel of temporal...something...I couldn't describe it. I understood it, but I could have never put it into words. When you see all that time and life and existence can be, focused in parallax, which I know is impossible, you can see the meaning of life.

I removed my head after only a moment, and when I read my clock, it turns out I had been a turtle head in the void for sixteen hours before retracting it back into my shell of limited existentialism.

Buzz off, Kerkegaard! Bite me, Nietzsche! Jaspers and Sartre--you can both kiss my ass!

As my excursions expanded in scope and body (my body), as I grew into a citizen of the hither-aether behind the wall, I found an ability to imbue myself into the temporal gallery. Was it possible to step into the past? Was the future to my back when I walked along the ticks of time?

The adventure continued. Any serious academic institution would have taken months to undertake even what I had done with my hand. There would have been committee meetings, proposals for the Investigational Review Board, and even interference from the Department of Defense.

I have no love lost on red tape. By the time their first review were to conclude that more study was needed, I had already successfully attended my own birth. My other jaunts included a trip to 1933 Berlin, an exploration of the skies BCE to identify the Star of the Magis, and a visit to September 11, 2001. These were anonymous calls on unsuspecting hosts who hadn't even noticed. No harm, no foul, right?

Then it occurred to me.

Would it be that I was destined to change history? Wow + Yikes = Me? Is human history safe in my hands? I couldn't even remember to change the oil in my Audi. (I no longer have a car, because Audis burn up.)

Small experiments first.

I stepped into 2007 when Kim Kardashian and her boyfriend du jour, Ray J, made their sex tape. As they slept in their post-conjugal stupor, I erased it. That tape was never leaked online, failing to garner the Kardashians the attention that led to their scoring a reality show.

Now I've read enough SciFi to know about the butterfly effect, but when I stepped back into my bedroom, the world wasn't speaking German, it wasn't the Russians who had landed on the Moon, and even the Colts had still defeated the Bears in Superbowl XLI. In fact, nothing seemed to change except for the fact that there were no Kardashian influencers at work on the web. Some things, I figured, just don't matter.

But some do.

I targeted the rise of Putin, and it turns out Russia successfully conquered Ukraine in 48 hours. I targeted Pol Pot and the killing fields were even more efficient amidst the scramble for power to run the agrification of Cambodia. I pushed Lee Harvey Oswald through a sixth-story window in a book depository building in Dallas, but the thirteen days of October, 1962, became the 6 years of nuclear winter for Cuba and Florida and a lot of Europe. Which is weird when you realize Kennedy was assassinated after the 13 days of October.

My flat was in ruins. My magic wall stood, but there was no roof. Yep, I had fucked up very, very badly. Was there any way I could step through one more time to fix things? Or had things gone so awry that I was to live my life in this new dark age?

Putin, Hitler, Pol Pot, anarchists, despots...why weren't we beyond all that? Before the bombs went off, total human knowledge had been doubling every year. Isn't knowledge power? Why was it we still had genocide, revolutions, and bad guys winning? How might another thousand years of civilization make a difference?

Exactly.

I knew my wall might crumble and disintegrate at any time, so I figured I had, maybe at most, one more trip. I knew it would probably be a one-way trip, but that was OK. Even if I got appendicitis now, today's ashen infrastructure would not even be able to provide me general anesthesia.

Homo erectus, from two million years prior. That's when things really took off. But could I even jump-start the process before that? And what would I bring with me to do it? An encyclopedia? A Bible? (Probably not a Bible.) A wheel?

Three million years before the Kardashians, I landed as a god to the feeble-minded beings, Homo habilis. I had only the clothes on my back and one other thing--a little surprise for the homies.

Life there wasn't easy. My identification as Divine assured my survival among them. But I had to learn their language. I figured learning a few hundred words for me would be easier than the million words English offered, sometimes beyond comprehension even to Homo sapiens brains.

I lived among them. I even mated with many of their women, who certainly could have benefited from the Influencers of my former modern world. I wondered if my trysts were to be responsible for the truncation of our species.

I went back to the spot my wall had deposited me, but it was gone. I was right: this was to be a one-way trip.

We camped, we cowered in caves together, we avoided the wild animals. We fought--actually, they fought--I was a god. We fucked. We foraged. We laughed, we cried, and we raised babies. Being a god, the females clawed at each other to have me.

On one chilly night, as we prepared to retreat into our caves to escape the cold and the hungry, howling carnivores in the distance, I finally had enough language skills with them to tell them this: "Ikta Presch Ikromo."

I had wanted it to be special, to utter those world-shaking words with a fanfare befitting the coming of an age. But there wasn't anything special about life back in Pleistocene sub-Saharan Africa. So that night, I just said them.

"Ikta Presch Ikromo." The closest translation there is to these three words is, "Guys, get a load of this!" And then I fished out my book of matches.

A million years before Home erectus had discovered fire and began cooking the meats that provided the protein to grow their brains bigger, I made it possible for Homo habilis to do it a million years earlier.

I would up dying, ironically, from appendicitis. But before I did, they were lighting up the place like the most cunning arsonists and more frequently than the most prolific pyromaniacs. What better treatment for a god once I was dead and cold? Prometheus had spoken. Ikta Presch Ikromo.

And so began humanity's love affair with fire, a million years earlier than it was supposed to be. Although I could not return, if I could I would've landed in a world a million years more advanced than when I had left it. My last thoughts were wondering if we had finally gotten beyond the dark times of murder, cruelty, and subjugation. The Hitlers, Vlads, Stalins, Maos, and Husseins?

I guess back in my flat I should have re-blocked the portal, stayed put, and just waited a million years to see. While this greatly surpassed my life expectancy, it's also true that my Homo sapiens brain just wasn't that patient.

I stepped out of the fog into a beautiful garden. I quickly shed all my clothes. I ran to the man reaching up into the branches of the tree, also naked, but apparently unashamed. "Don't listen to the snake, Adam! Do not taste that apple," I cried, as I snatched it from his hand. So incredulous was he to see another woman, he completely forgot about the apple. "Let me tell you a story," I said, taking his hand and that of Eve, as I led them away from the tree. The snake slithered away, defeated.

One year. One month. One day. One ship. One man.

I shuffled along the deck. The crew dragged bags and pushed barrels. Their skin glistened in the sun, tanned by the heat. Sweat poured down their backs. They tugged ropes and wandered the deck, searching for shade. Soon the heat would dissipate, but their weariness would only increase. Distant clouds threatened rain.

One crew. One secret cargo. 350 men. I was there to change the life of one. I passed the sailors, and wondered if they understood their place in history.

I glided down the stairs. The trapdoor closed behind me. The cool sea air and bright sun gave way to darkness and suffocating heat. Horror. No word could describe it better. 350 men, dying in mind and body. Coughing, and groaning, laboriously breathing. They stared through me with vacant eyes. I could’ve helped them all, but my reasons for being here were selfish.

I stumbled over bodies and passed through blood. I knew the name of the one I was looking for, but I had no knowledge of his appearance, and in the dark bunker of death, I began to despair.

The trapdoor opened, the sun offering the hope of life for brief seconds as men close to death were dragged on deck. The sailors thought the air might restore them. I saw him. A tall, black man whose frame was strong months before was now skinny and shaking. The hot air and utter darkness, and the stench of bodies around him were too much for his soul. He was dragged to the deck.

He was laid carelessly in the sun. He would wake soon. I sat beside him and touched his hand.

“Great-grandfather,” I said. “It’s me, Asha.”

“I don’t know you.” He said.

“You may not, but I need you to live. Without you, I’ll never exist.”

“Existence, girl, is difficult. For me to exist is the most torturous of all. See where I am? I am close to death, and even life is death. No matter where I go, everything I see is death.”

“Great-grandfather, don’t talk like that. Even in darkness, there is light.”

“You’re right. Even now in the shadows of death, I see the sun.”

He woke and looked at me, but he didn’t see me. “Even in the shadows, I see the sun,” he mumbled. “If only I could get out of the shade and stand in its warmth.”

“You can. Have hope,” I said.

The sailors forced him to his feet and pushed him back into the darkness. His dying companions were tossed into the sea.

One man. One storm. One night.

The ship rocked and creaked. Clouds covered the sun. Icy rain poured over the sailors. Winds chilled the hardiest of men.

One man. One storm. One night. One hour.

I ascended the mast and climbed into the flooding crow’s nest. I couldn’t help but shiver at the sight of the endless, storm-tossed sea. The ship looked like a toy below me, the captain one of its figurines. He stood at the wheel and shouted.

One man. One storm. One night. One hour. One minute.

I grabbed the spyglass, which was carelessly left to soak, and descended. Halfway down I saw my mark clearly. I dropped the glass. The captain crumpled to the deck.

I trudged through the flooded deck. I touched his hand.

“They’ll die if you let them out,” I said.

“Some will, but all will die if I don’t.”

“Let one man stay. He will die if you don’t. Give him food later. You know he is weak.”

“He’ll come out like all the rest.”

“If he does, you will never wake.”

“Am I asleep?”

The crew rushed to their captain and carried him below deck. Now I must wait.

The sailors passed the night without sleep. Drenched, they waited eagerly for the warm sun in the morning hours, but the rain kept pouring.

The captain woke in his cabin. He threw on his long coat, and returned to the rain. He shivered. The ocean, once warm, was a frigid sea. It was time. The captain ordered for the men and women to be brought out for food.

In the storm, the poor souls were ushered from their furnace to the frigid deck. I scanned the men’s faces. He wasn’t there. I rushed to the nightmarish bunker and found him, sitting on the floor. He was deep in thought, his face marked by sorrow.

“Great-grandfather. It will be okay.” He didn’t hear me, but his face softened. “Even though your path is hard, and your road dark, push on.”

“I will not give into despair,” he muttered. “My father raised me better. I must be strong, though I do not feel strong.”

“You are strong to have come this far.”

“I know there are those who need me. My life was happy. Now it is sad, but I must be there for the women, and my new companions on this boat. I long for the day we find land, but I fear it just the same.”

“You will have many struggles on land, but you will see the sun again.”

He sat in silence, staring up at the dark ceiling. He smelled the vomit and stench of rotting bodies. The darkness pressed around him.

“I will press on,” he mumbled.

Alas, if only history could’ve changed in this way. I only dream of an alternate reality. In that year, in that month, on that day, on that hour, the man was kicked onto the deck, chained to his brothers. There the drastic change from the oven to the icebox killed him.

Because he died, I will never live. Because he died, he never married. Because he never married, I was never born.

Never will I see the sun, and feel the ocean breeze. Never will I see mountains, rivers, or streams. Never will I behold the snow, or dolphins in the sea. Never will I see these lovely things.

Maybe I will never feel the rain that covers the sun, or the winds that make ships sink. Maybe I will never see clouds cover the mountains and floods in the rivers and streams. Maybe I will never shiver in the winter, or be stung by the creatures of the sea.

But life cannot grow without rain, and the beauty of the sun is more magnificent after the clouds. Reconstruction won’t begin without destruction, and warmth is heavenly after the cold. I will never be stung by the creatures of the sea, but I will never have the chance to see someone have compassion on me.

One year. One month. One day. One ship. One man.

One life that I will never have.

Part I

My hate of reading books has always haunted me. Through the years of failing grades at school and continuous appointments to my therapist’s office, I concluded that using my ears and my brain did not have to be accompanied by the usage of my eyes. That being said, my current journey of faith has been a tough one. From what I’ve gathered, I must read the #1 most read book in the world, The Bible.

I have been sitting in this chair for nearly an hour and I cannot, for the life of me, tell you what I have read. Darkness has fallen over the beautiful Southern California skies and the heat has settled down for the next 12 hours or so. At 6:55 a.m. the sun will rise and I will probably still be sitting here. There’s a little breeze of air that comes through the wooden door of my living room. As it brushes over my cheek, it makes its’ way near my ear. I can hear the traveling noises that come from the crowded streets of hopeless drug addicts and homeless people surrounding my neighborhood. My street is nice; though underdeveloped, it is quiet. There are hardly cars that race down it and I believe last month we barely even had two high speed chases. Yes, the husband and I have won the “lottery” when it comes to purchasing our first home. Did you catch my sarcasm? It’s not all bad. Nearly a quarter of an acre of yard for the ‘kiddos’ to play in when they grow up and for our three dogs to run freely in. The house itself is small but I have made it a point that I want a “livable” home that might need a few touches. So far, it has been great, except for the front wooden door. The door that leads straight into the living room from the front yard is made of 100% pine, however, the doorknob is made out of cedar. Apparently, this is a very expensive door. It has been the thorn of my side since we moved in and yet, I can not get rid of it. Thanks to the heaviness of this door, it has caved downwards, leaving a very small opening at the top, hence the breeze that has distracted me from reading this BOOK!

Great, the baby monitor is acting up again. Tell me again why I decided to take the cheap route and purchase an “Audio-Only Baby is crying, GET UP” monitor? I could never tell if she’s truly in need or is simply making her way around the luxurious 5ft x 7ft x 3ft “apartment” she lays in. The beautiful, innocent creature I birthed earlier this year delightfully sleeps in the hand-me-down crib my first born used. Baby Girl, is sleeping peacefully, what could have made that sound? It’s only me and her tonight, and… what is that pounding in the living room! As I’m rushing to the living room, it stops. There’s nothing. Or isn’t there? The front door looks odd. There’s something about it that seems a bit more intriguing than usual. There’s a wave of energy of some sort hovering its’ surroundings. And the space that lets the breeze in is glowing yellow. What is it? It’s nearly 8 p.m.; there is no sun out.

I reached for the doorknob and I am transported to a strange land. Why is it so dry here? Wait a minute, where am I? I can’t leave my house! Baby Girl could wake up at any second! Wait, I still have the baby monitor, I hear her breathing. OK, good. Well, wherever I am at, it’s definitely not SoCal anymore.

I have been walking for about 10 minutes now but I can hear that Baby Girl is still sound asleep, which is good; she has no idea that mommy has left her side. There’s a young girl who seems to be pacing back-and-fourth. Perhaps she can tell me where the heck I am! “Excuse me Miss, can you tell me where I am?” She looks very conflicted. “You are in Moab.” she confusedly replies. ‘Moab’? Did she just say Moab? Like the Bible, Moab?! Wait, why is she so conflicted? Maybe if I ask her for her name I can get a better idea of what’s going on. “Miss, what is your name?” “Ruth” she replies. Ruth? Where have I heard that name. And why do I suddenly feel a wave of anxiety. Oh… em… G... Perhaps I shouldn’t finish that sentence. OK, I am in Moab and this girls’ name is ‘Ruth’. I traveled back in time?

Ruth seems to be very worried about something. I can’t put my finger on it but she seems very lost. Let me try to get my “mommy mode” going and see if she takes the bait. “Ruth, is something wrong?”. She responds, “Everything is just wrong! My husband has fallen. His father and his brother, fallen. I am alone. I can’t go back to my parents. I won’t go to my parents. I want my husband back!”. She begins to weep on the dusty floor. I must say though; her outfit is crazy-beautiful. Focus, Betty! Focus! Does she not know that she makes it through this? Does she not know that she is the one who continues the family line that eventually leads to the birth of Jesus! THE. JESUS. CHRIST!? Oh… it hasn’t happened yet. I’ve seen so many going-into-the-past movies to know that I am in one. Ok, I need to help her make the decision. “Ruth, you must follow your heart. I know that times are rough, but you must go with your mother-in-law…. Ugh…. What’s her name again?” “Naomi?” she responds. “Yes! Naomi! You need to follow her wherever she goes. You are loyal to her and you will do great things and you will become known in history and you will re-marry and your gonna’ be great, trust me!” “Trust you? I know nothing of you or where you have come from! I know not of your past nor who you worship! And thus, if I know not of you, I shall not ‘trust’ you. Now I know that I must return to my parents. I know not of you, but you will not poison me with your evil. Let me be.”

Well, that was a complete fail. Oh no, Baby Girl is waking up! Where is that door!? There! In that weird rock-looking-thing. Why am I so sleepy? Focus! Hurry, get to the door. As I enter the door, I am transported back to my living room. Everything seems untouched or sandy. Was all that a dream? I am very sleepy. I need to check Baby Girl so I can finally rest. “Baby girl?” I can’t find her. Her crib is gone! Where are all her clothes?! Her bottles?! There’s no trace of a family even living here. The portrait of our family photo is also gone…

What happened?...

Part II

Journal entry #1

I hate myself...

I hate myself…

I have lost everyone I’d ever loved. Literally, “lost”. I seriously have no idea where they are at. I apparently don’t have a job, I don’t have a family and my dogs nearly ate me alive when I tried to go feed them. I have not received mail since the whole “going-back-in-time” situation. I no longer possess any hope. My two beautiful girls, my husband, my family… all lost. The only thing that isn’t lost is this house. These couches, these dishes, these dying plants, this stupid door that only seems to shine once every fucking million years because it has not shined since that night, and this baby monitor. I know I’m not crazy. I know they existed. This monitor reminds me that this will all be over. I hope…

End of Journal Entry.

History has slightly changed since the pine door was last lit up. My present and future has been re-written and not for the better. I have tried to maintain the faith but now I’m wondering “in what?”. “The Book of Ruth” no longer has its place in The Bible as it did before. The meaning has changed as well as the story altogether. Now, in this time-line, it’s a story about a young widow who was convinced by an evil entity to leave her grieving mother-in-law’s side and to travel alone after her husband, father-in-law and brother-in-law died. The mother-in-law then traveled the road to Judah alone and ended up getting raped and castrated by the perverted and sinful traveling companions. Crazy huh? Well, it doesn’t stop there.

In the original timeline, so said the Bible and before I fucked it up, Ruth shows complete devotion to her mother-in-law, Naomi, and stays by her side as they travel to Judah where Ruth eventually meets Boaz. Boaz recognizes her loyalty to her mother-in-law and invites her to dinner. They eventually marry and continue to procreate. The family line eventually leads to the birth of King David, thence, the birth of Jesus Christ. That sympathy and knowledge of devotion and loyalty that speaks directly to woman never made it through the blood line or the final edit of The Bible. Although the Bible still speaks of Christ and his greatness, this story never touched the woman of faith in Jesus Christ because it never happened! And because this story never happened, more and more stories in The Bible also did not make the cut. The Bible was re-written so many times, leaving out stories of woman triumphs and God’s blessings to them. I can’t tell you for sure if the stories never happened or if they just simply didn’t include them, but the Bible now, doesn’t speak to us ‘woman’ how it did before. This caused the world to be dim. No passion, no loyalty, no true love for one another, and fearfully, no faith in woman by the men.

Night is falling again; and again, my loved ones are lost. Lord, please hear me! Hear me weep! I am sorry! I shouldn’t have rushed Ruth to speak to me and I shouldn’t have meddled. I was just trying to get back to Baby Girl. Can’t you see that! I needed to speed up the process. I am sorry for not trusting that you would enter her heart and help guide her to make the decision to travel with Naomi. Please forgive me…

There’s no light. Nothing is happening... Nothing. Just emptiness.

Journal Entry #2

I’m going to do it journal. The pain. The emptiness. It’s too much. I miss my baby girl’s. I miss my husband. I’m going to end the suffering tonight. In approximately two minutes to be precise. This will all end. I can’t stand the pain. In less than two minutes the sun will rise and I will fall. 6:55 a.m. At least that hasn’t changed. I remember loving the sunrise. I remember watching the sunrise and sunset on top of moms and pops roof. Dad got so mad every time I did that. He would yell “te vas a matar!”. How funny that I think of that now. Since, sort-of-predicted one day I will kill myself watching the sunrise. In exactly 15 seco…

End of Journal Entry.

What’s that smell?

It’s coming from the living room.

I know that smell. It smells like… dirt.

The baby monitor is going crazy again but there’s no baby to monitor. The pine door! It’s lit! God, is this you? Is this the chance I have to see my baby girls again? Wait, what if I mess it up again? What more can I lose? I guess I’ll find out.

Torn between two antagonists

Poland, in 1939, became the rope in a nasty game of tug of war between two mighty military powers, Nazi Germany from the West and the USSR from the East. Although the Polish military was strong in numbers, they did not have the advanced weaponry the Soviets or the Nazis had. Their approach to fighting the invasions was faulty as well, using all-out defensive tactics right in the beginning, rather than biding their time and setting up in advantageously strategic positions to selectively pick off the troops of their invaders The army was almost completely defeated in the first few weeks of the war, leaving their citizens at the mercy of the bloodthirsty enemy armies.

It is believed that between 1939 and 1945 over 35,000 Polish citizens of every religion and background were murdered by the Nazis in the area running through from Gdansk to Lipno in Poland, and were buried in the nearby forests surrounding the verdant potato fields. That place is remembered now as 'The Valley of Death'. It is near one of those potato farms where my friend, Greta lived when she was a child. Her family worked on the farm and their home was on the outskirts of her village, near the forests where thousands of their fellow countrymen were slain.

The national Polish army was finished by Winter in 1939 and there were no safe places to go. With the Germans closing in from the North and West and the Soviets doing the same from the East, the surviving Poles had to be very smart about not getting caught up in the fighting. Greta's family left their home when they saw a stream of SS vehicles and tanks crawling toward their village. They had time only to pack up food, blankets, and rudimentary survival equipment then crept silently out to the middle of the potato field during the night. Digging furiously until dawn, Greta's father and older brothers made an underground cavern, which they covered with straw bedding that had previously been used to protect the potatoes from the burning Polish Summer Sun.

Greta's mother and older sisters used the blankets to pad and insulate the walls and floor of their underground home. At night they would ascend from their bunker and forage in the field for the unharvested potatoes, having to keep watch for soldiers, wolves, and bears, who were also doing the same. Greta told of praying for bears instead of the wolves or the soldiers because the bears came alone. Fifty years later Greta recalled her first trip to a dentist after the war, where she was told her bones and teeth would always be brittle due to the malnutrition she suffered from existing on raw potatoes for an entire winter during her childhood.

Greta's family survived the war, just barely, and she grew up to marry an evangelist who ended up settling down in my town when his traveling days were over. A warm and extremely self-sufficient lady, who still cuts and stacks her own firewood as she nears 90 years old. She may have suffered bone damage but her spine is made of steel. This is why I would send the grown-up version of Greta back in time to 1939.

She could tell her fellow countrymen what was to become of them if they submitted meekly to the Nazis that invaded their villages. She would warn them of the destruction that was sure to follow their army vehicles wherever they went. She could tell them to 'run', 'hide', never surrender, and fight as if their lives depended upon it because they did.

She could tell them the Nazis would go for the teachers and professors first, eliminating all common sense from the communities, then they would be able to easily wipe out all the other Poles who could not hear the wisdom from the historians who knew what was coming. She could warn the leaders that the army should wait and find better defensive positions and wipe out individual Nazi and Soviet units when they got deep into Polish territory. She could change the outcome of the tearing apart of her home country with her knowledge and wisdom.

Some information from:

Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Antiquity Publications Ltd.

https://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=World_War_II/Battle_of_Poland&action=edit

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/germany-invades-poland

A personal story from my friend, Greta.