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Your heart raced, so fast it may have reversed time on its own. You stood in front of a large metal box. Tik, tik, tik, it said. Its mechanical heart pounded inside its steel chest. The reflective material shined beneath your small, tanned hand. Your friend had said it was a Time Machine, boasting about how smoothly it run and its pinpoint accuracy. He spoke as though Time Travel was a perfectly ordinary topic. Although his attitude was, in a word: peculiar, his genius was appreciated. Your mission was simple: go back to roughly 200 BCE and study the Antikythera mechanism before it was lost. Perhaps you could warn the people on the boat, but that was yet to be decided. Your personal fixation on the object was really the only thing fueling your audacious trip, though you kept telling yourself it was for the good of humanity.
As soon as the machine’s doors close, lights begin zipping around like bullets. The sensation overwhelms you, your eyes screwing shut at the nausea suddenly engulfing you. The world seems to tilt, falling backwards into the winding void of time and space. When the sun graces your eyes again, you are on an old dock. Workers scurry about, loading a mid to large sized boat. A number of objects catch your attention, hinting you to the fact that instead of being a few days off, you were only a few minutes away from the ship’s departure. A statue of a young man in particular is familiar. His outstretched hand holds something, but it is whisked away too fast for a closer look to be taken. You sigh, supposing whatever was in his hand will truly always be a mystery.
You quickly remember your peculiar clothing. Afterall, shorts and a tank top that says “JUST DO IT.” aren’t exactly ‘period accurate’ to say the least. You make a mad dash behind a crate; luckily the dock workers are too preoccupied to notice you. Also luckily there is a large cloth and some pins, perfect for a makeshift chiton. A few minutes of awkward fiddling later, you emerge from behind the crates and approach a worker carrying a medium sized box.
“Μπορώ να σας βοηθήσω; (Can I help you?)” He asks. Shock freezes you. How in the world did you not think about that?!
“Uuuuh…” You stammer. Then a light bulb goes off in your mind. You point to your ears, making slight noises of confusion. The worker’s eyes widen before he shifts on his feet for a second. What might have been an apology escapes from his lips.
You glance at the box with a subtle hint of curiosity, hoping the man will pick up on it. When he doesn’t, you sigh. You throw a confident finger towards the box. He finally understands. Except he doesn’t give it to you. Instead, his fingers clasp the box even tighter than before. Suspicion covers his expression, clearing questioning your interest in the contents of the wooden cube. ‘Right, that thing was revolutionary back then. It was going to Rome when the boat sank. Of course he’s not going to let me see it’
You consider just giving up, going back home, and sulking while watching as many documentaries as you can find. You don’t.
Before you even process it, your hands are reaching out and ripping the box from the man’s grasp. It’s really heavy but you’ve already done the deed. No going back now. Like Nike and your abandoned shirt says, “JUST DO IT.”
“ΓΥΡΙΣΕ ΕΔΩ! ΚΛΕΦΤΗ! (GET BACK HERE! THIEF!)” You don’t stop. You run and run and run. Nothing can stop you now! You sprint back through the small city, dodging frightened citizens. Some time after you lose the man, a map graces your sights. It’s difficult to decipher, considering it’s in Greek and Latin. An old script of it too. Despite the language barrier, the general geography looks similar to the maps you had studied prior to taking this trip.
Weeks of travel wear you out as you make your way to Rome, taking a small rowboat off of the island you were currently on. Your mission was simple: go back to roughly 200 BCE and study the Antikythera mechanism before it was lost. bring the mechanism to Rome yourself. Surely it couldn’t cause too much of a break in time? Right?
The journey back to the present was almost as nauseating as the one leaving it. When you got back everything looked the same. Sort of. A few things were out of place, namely that the English posters on the wall had a strange font, with the A looking like the Delta symbol –which didn’t even make sense since Delta didn’t make the A sound– and everything looking just a bit more Roman. The plain pillar in the middle of the room looked a little bit more Greco-Roman than when you left. But perhaps that strange friend of yours just had a little change of decoration in this different present.
But then you look at the cross necklace you had left on the counter nearby. It had 3 crossbars, with the bottom one of them being slanted. Orthodox. That necklace had been a gift from your very-much-Catholic aunt. Looking around you notice more things, the bible on the shelf was what looked like a combination of Latin, Greek, and the Cyrillic Alphabet. When you turned to your friend he just stared back at you, completely unconcerned.
“Ήξερα velles изменять aliquid. (I knew you would change something.)” Was all he said. His words were like hot candlewax in your ears, burning and deafening. What he said, you didn’t know, but something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.
Yanking one of the many history books off the wall you looked at the maps, the only thing you could still comprehend without a translator. 200 BCE, Rome grew some. 0 CE, Rome grew a lot. 75 CE, Rome was in America! 1000 CE, America was called Posia and stretched from northern Canada to Honduras! 1500 CE, Rome had fallen, Eastern Orthodox took over most of Europe and Posia as the main religion, and Islam held most of Asia and Europe!
“Oh crap.” You muttered.