Found at Avro 691 Lancastrian Wikiwand
Martin Fields knew time travel was dangerous, but not necessarily annoying. Their take off from the Negombo RAF Station, Colombo had been delayed two hours because of some problem with the Avro 691 Lancastrian One’s radio equipment. Finally, they’d gotten the problem worked out and the five crew, five passenger converted bomber was in the air again.
They were all going to die.
Edward C. Allaway (c.), alleged killer of seven people at California State University two days earlier, is led into Orange County courthouse July 14, 1976. (TMS/Ap)
Martin Fields, time traveler in training, was finally given his first solo assignment.
Normally on Sundays, he stayed in his apartment, forgot about showering, dressed in his most grubby clothes, and tried out a new recipe for dinner.
Martin loved to cook and he loved to try out new foods. He was in his “Middle-Eastern food” stage now. But this Sunday, he figured the stove and the oven would go neglected. He had a solo time travel assignment, and Isis wouldn’t be around to bug him.
Of course, she wouldn’t be around to save his ass either, and this was a potentially dangerous mission. Interestingly enough, he wouldn’t be going anywhere at all…geographically. He would however, be going backward in time nearly 41 years in his own apartment. Of course it wasn’t his back then. He hadn’t even been born yet and the apartment building was brand new.
© Google 2017
Nine-year-old Erik Lund quietly crept out of Hammerfest’s historic Hauen Chapel. He never knew his great-grandfather and didn’t understand why people were upset at his death. Bored with the service, he went outside to play in the snow-covered cemetary. That’s when the man in the old-fashioned uniform appeared.
“You must not be here. Go back inside.”
Erik had seen men like him in a history book. They were called Nazis. They’d been here a long time ago.
“Who are you?”
“A man who regrets many things.”
Erik was too young to understand, but captivated by the stranger.
“Go inside to your family. Go!”
Erik started to get scared, turned around, and ran. He didn’t see the apparition vanish. He didn’t see the seventy-year-old unexploded German mine the ghost had kept him from detonating.
The next summer, a groundskeeper would find it and have it safely removed.
Hauen Chapel in Hammerfest – found at Wikipedia
I wrote this for the What Pegman Saw weekly photo prompt based on a Google maps location. The goal is to write a piece of flash fiction no longer than 150 words. My story is 146 words long.
This week the location is in Hammerfest, Norway. After doing a bit of Wikipedia research on the town, I discovered Hammerfest had been occupied by the Nazi’s during World War II. When they left in 1945, they destroyed almost the entire town. Only the historic Hauen Chapel pictured just above this commentary, survived.
I also found out that to this day, mines and munitions left over from the war are still being found and disposed of. I decided that a long dead German soldier, regretting his role in Hammerfest, came back one last time to save a child from the consequences of this single Nazi’s actions.
For more stories based on this week’s prompt, visit InLinkz.com.
Found at http://econc10.bu.edu/
Stalin is an asshole. I couldn’t believe it when Isis told me about this. It never came up in my High School World History class.
It’s March 1933 on a farm, or what’s left of one, in the Ukraine. Her parents, her baby brother are dead. They starved.
That sadistic bastard Josef Stalin wanted to convert large areas of land into collective farms, but he reasoned to do that, he’d have to kill off all of the existing farms run by the peasants. Not only did he destroy existing crops, but he slaughtered all the livestock, any stores of already harvested food, and even seeds kept in sheds for later planting.
Isis said that in 1932 and 33, up to 10 million people in the USSR would starve to death.
I’ve been here for just three days and I haven’t eaten a thing, but the hunger I feel is nothing compared to the suffering this eleven year old girl is going through.
© Virtual Museum of Canada
Martin’s eyes snapped open the second his alarm clock announced itself with nerve-jarring buzzing.
“Yah! What time is it? Oh shit, I’m late for…”
Then he remembered that he didn’t have to be at the office by 8 a.m. today or ever again. He didn’t work in publishing anymore. He was a time traveler in training.
“But then why…?”
Martin Fields hadn’t had to “punch a clock” in months. Why did he set his alarm?
“In case you were wondering Martin, I set your alarm.”
Martin hastily rubbed his eyes and sat up in bed. “What are you doing here, Isis? Don’t I get a day off?”
Image: nbc15.com
“I quit. I don’t care about the money. I don’t care about anything. You’re going to get me killed.”
Martin Fields removed the Temporal Jump Suit and threw each piece on the floor of his bedroom rather than packing it in its customized carrying case.
“That idiot in Las Vegas almost shot me.”
Isis stood passively listening to Martin as he started removing his clothing, which was appropriate in New Mexico of 1879 but would look like a foolish costume in the present day.
“That idiot was John Henry Holliday, also known as Doc Holliday, and perhaps he would have been less inclined to threaten you if you hadn’t been staring at his common-law wife’s nose.”
“Damn!” It was the only word Martin Fields could get out before falling into the Pacific Ocean near the equator, north of what would one day be called Papua New Guinea, and thousands of years before he was born.
As his head resurfaced above the equatorial waters, he heard her say, “Try again, Martin.”
Before Martin could try anything, he could feel changes in the circuits of his Temporal Jump Suit and he was on dry land again. More specifically it was the vast Australian Outback. His virtual display told him he had only moved geographically. Chronologically, he was still walking the Earth several centuries before the birth of Christ.
“What the hell!” He instantly went from treading water to collapsing in hot, dry dust. It clung to his still soaked suit, though fortunately, the mysterious technology that allowed it to travel through time was immune.
Illustration by: C R Sasikumar – found at the Indian Express
“George Phillip Meadows, you have been found guilty of Betrayal of Trust, Neglect, and Excessive Absenteeism. Your sentence is set at ninety days of exclusion. Do you have anything to say before sentence is carried out?”
“No, Your Honor. I accept the sentence.”
Without another word, George picked up his suitcase and walked out the front door. The taxi was waiting for him and the driver put his luggage in the trunk.
“Geary Apartment Building,” George told his driver after he got into the back seat.
“Yes sir. I know the place.”
For the next three months, George would have to live in a one room apartment in the Richmond District, apart from everyone he loved. His wife Stacie had been his judge and his three kids, Mark, Peter, and Amanda had been the jury.
He’d been found guilty of staying too late at the office, not attending Mark’s soccer games, missing Mandy’s music recital, and bringing work home over the weekends. He’d been found guilty of neglecting his family and the sentence was not having a family for three months.
He’d excluded them from his life, and now they were excluding him. George missed them already.
Written in response to the Wednesday Writing Challenge at Angie Trafford’s blog. The one-word prompt is “Exclusion”.
© Roger Bultot
Martin Fields looked out window of his rented condo at a street recently swept of snow. “So primitive, Isis, but we won’t be here long.”
“It’s your fault we’re here at all.”
Fields turned to face her. She was beautiful by design, reminding him that she wasn’t human.
“How could I know he’d find my time machine? It was a one in a million shot that he figured out how it worked.”
“We gave you time travel so you could enforce justice.”
“We traced him to 2014, forty years after the Zodiac Killer disappeared. This time he won’t get away.”
I wrote this as part of Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ Friday Fictioneers Challenge. Using a photo prompt, authors are supposed to write a piece of flash fiction no more than 100 words in length. My wee missive weighs in at exactly 100.
To read other stories based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.
There are two influences for my story. The first is the Star Trek original series episode Assignment: Earth. The starship Enterprise travels back in time to Earth of 1968 to do historical research and encounters a human being beaming from a planet light years away to New York City accompanied only by a black cat.
The man is the descendent of humans taken to another planet thousands of years ago by an alien race to be trained as secret agents intended to guide humanity to become a peaceful race. The agent’s name is Gary Seven (played by the late Robert Lansing), and he made a similar statement about primitive humanity looking out the window of his penthouse down at the streets of Manhattan. His cat was named “Isis” and was actually an alien metamorph.
The second influence is the 1979 film Time After Time. In late 19th century London, writer and visionary H.G. Wells (played by Malcolm McDowell) invents a time machine which is then stolen by his friend Stevenson, who has been discovered to be the notorious murderer Jack the Ripper (played by David Warner). Wells chases Stevenson to 1979 San Francisco to stop him from killing more women and somehow to bring him to justice.
In my case, I changed Jack the Ripper to the Zodiac Killer, who is believed to have murdered up to 37 people in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1960s and 70s.
I added a twist. Future humanity didn’t invent time travel. It was a gift from non-human entities who have chosen certain people to act as their agents, doing justice across history.
I know. You’re probably getting bored of time travel stories by now, however I want to see how many I can write based on these prompts.
Addendum: If you liked this story, I’m featuring the same characters in another, slightly longer tale called On Wednesday the Time Traveler Got Wet.
Image: BBC News
Pamela had an unusual job; she was a time traveler. She worked on contract for the Department of Temporal Affairs. She was one of a dozen or so time workers who traveled up and down eternity detecting and correcting potential rifts in the time stream, events that, if left unchecked, would threaten the static history her society depended upon.
Every weekday morning at precisely 8:01 a.m. and 10 seconds, she put on her time harness, kissed her husband Morton good-bye, and left for work, vanishing from the center of their living room…
…only to reappear one to five seconds later. Her work days might be an hour or several days long, but she always returned to Morton as soon as possible after her departure.
“I love you, Mort. See you in a few seconds.”
“I love you too, Pam. Have a good day at work.”
They kissed, Morton stepped back several feet so as not to become caught in the harness’s temporal field, and watched his wife of six-months wink out of existence…
…only to wink back in three seconds later.
“Miss me?”
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