PHOTO PROMPT © Liz Young

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“You really like it in that steampunk reality?” Josue Hunter stood in this secret museum admiring the flying machine with his best friend Wyatt Ellison.

“You sound so surprised, Josue. I got into time traveling for the adventure, so when history made this turn, you knew I’d jump for it.”

“And you knew I’d pass, giving up time travel. My universe became safe and mundane, well except for this.” He motioned toward alternate reality’s first steam driven aeroplane from the mid-19th century.

“You needed your history to be safe for your family. The time change gave you that, my friend.”

Time once again to dabble in Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ weekly Friday Fictioneer challenge. The idea for the August 4th edition is to use the image above as the prompt for creating a poem or short story no more than 100 words long. My word count is exactly 100.

I’m “borrowing” my characters Wyatt and Josue from my science fiction/steampunk short story “Wayback” which was published in the anthology Spring Into SciFi 2021.

My pair of time travelers from the distant future were charged with maintaining their timeline, removing any historical artifacts that might interfere with their past and replacing them with fakes that could be easily dismissed. They then kept a secret, massive museum of everything from Amelia Earhart’s missing aircraft to the real wreck of the Titanic.

In “Wayback” there was a competing force from the 19th century trying to resurrect an invention. It was a special engine that would create marvelous technology such as time travel and space flight in the mid-19th to early 20th centuries. Only one history could “win” and keep time travel.

As Wyatt said, he joined the Balancing Point Institute for the adventure and fun of time travel. Josue, being married with three kids, did it to keep his world and his family safe. When it came time to choose which reality they would live in, their natures won out.

It’s not the only story I set in that universe and it was a fun romp. I thought I’d get my two pals together for a reunion for old time’s sake.

To read other stories based on the prompt, visit inlinkz

To read “Wayback,” click the link above and get a hold of a copy of “Spring.”