I promise that if I ever step through a ley-line, a weirstone, a swirling vortex, a mysterious portal in the ziggurat I have just unearthed; if I ever fall asleep after whispering “I wish I had her life” while watching a shooting star from my bedroom skylight; if I ever hit my head while watching a movie about the Battle of Dunkirk; if I ever tell an insightful homeless person with surprisingly white teeth and a knowing gleam in their eyes that I’ve always wondered what would happen if I hadn’t taken that job and had instead settled down with the one who got away, I will do the following:
- Keep my head down
- Wait for other people to talk to me before I open my mouth and give myself away with my accent/strange vocabulary/inability to remember my new wife’s name
- Say things like “Yes,” and “I agree,” and “I remember that” and “I also venerate our King, as you do” instead of opening conversations with “WHO ARE YOU” and “I DON’T THINK TREASON IS A VERY BIG DEAL”
- Look for context clues in conversation rather than demand everyone who treats me like an old friend identify themselves immediately
- Start a lot of conversations with “Hey, you” and wait for a third party to drop their name so I can learn it and remember it for later
- People only leave you alone if they trust you; the easiest way to get back to the Portal in order to try to get back to my own reality is to act so normal that I don’t get thrown in jail/handed off in marriage/sedated by a government doctor
- If someone calls me “Mommy” or “Darling,” respond in kind rather than shoving them away and bellowing “WHO ARE YOU?” even if I have never seen them before
- Immediately abandon every single value I have. Whatever this culture approves of; I approve of. Whatever this culture abhors, I abhor. This is no time to invent female suffrage. It’s time to get home, somehow
- If I’m in the past, immediately stop making references to things like air travel, modern medicine, television, or anything that sounds like magic; if the future, refuse to ask “What does this do?” about everyday objects
- Make no waves. Ask no unnecessary questions. Draw no inessential attention to myself. Come up with a decent explanation for why I’m dressed the way I’m dressed, then get changed as quickly as possible. Let other idiots try to bring democracy to Camelot or avert the Battle of Changping. That’s a great way to get yourself burned as a witch or chock full of typhoid. Leave no trace. Take only memories, leave only footprints.
Tags: advice, i’m the first non-brazilian person to travel through time, keep your head down, time travel
Iknowrite?
MOST IMPORTANTLY: try not to get tried as a witch
Good advice at all times, really. It’s just easier to avoid these days. In this part of the world.
Come to think of it, do we truly know that Mallory ISN’T a time traveler?
This would *not* be keeping her head down.
“Oh hell. I’m in the early 21st century now? What did people do then? Myspace? No, I need to start a blog.”
She’s definitely a time traveling Dumbledore; look her handsome Weasley-coloured mane!
Thank you. This is why I cannot watch body-swap movies. I know from the start that this person is going to act like they’ve never heard of Freaky Friday before, or there will ‘conveniently’ be some MAJOR EVENT that the person they have become can’t miss, so they have to be constantly thrust into uncomfortable and embarrassing situations.
I mostly work from home and my social interaction is mostly online, so switching bodies with someone for a day or two would be no big deal for me. Maybe for the other person, but whatever, not my problem.
This is like every zombie movie / show ever where the concept of zombies apparently don’t exist as a thing in their world so they are clueless when it all goes down.
Have you read the Newsflesh books? It’s a series where zombies rise but George Romero had them covered so they managed fairly well, except for the government crackdown on media.
Like would it have been such a big deal for them to both call in sick for a week, right? Then spend the week working out how to switch back without having to try to be someone else during a normal day.
And for god’s sake, stop stepping on things.
Tbh, you’re probably going to end up chock full of typhoid whether you stage a revolution or not.
Are you Me? At least 20% of my idle time is filled with thoughts like these. But my main theme is: How To Acclimatise The 1800s Person Who Suddenly Appears In My Room To Current Times. And yes, I have a whole checklist…
I think my first item on that list would be Quarantine for Smallpox/Yellow Fever/Unfamiliar Flu Strains. And definitely get my guest a flu shot too. Safety first!
High-five! I *frequently* day-dream about showing 1800s-persons all the exciting technology of our times. And of secretly delighting in their terror the first time we went on the freeway.
I guess it’s the Chronic Explainer (Womansplainer) in me. The THINGS i could explain, by using similes from her (it’s a she, duh) time. So I would start with things that are familiar. Like bread, or water, and then slowly take it from there….
I talk to Laura Ingalls Wilder in my head all the time.
I spend a lot of time deciding what modern music to play to Shakespeare. (Why music? Why not drama in whatever medium? I don’t know.)
We need this checklist! Possibly as a post. This is the sort of thing Toasties need.
By the by, what year is this? Asking for a friend.
Tell your friend it’s 2015 AD/CE, Barack Obama is President of the United States of America (of which there are 50), and nobody will understand any references they may make to the Zarblonxiad.
Ask what day, month and year it is according to another calender system (ex Hijri ) and then convert it to the date system in use where you are…
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who wondered about this. One of my many irrational childhood fears was being trapped in another time period and never being able to return.
Another was “trapped in a labyrinth” so I studied riddles in case I needed to outsmart a monster/demon/Goblin King. You know. Just in case.
Yeah, well of COURSE trapped in a labyrinth. I expect everyone has got numerous contingencies in place to escape a labyrinth.
That’s just basic sense.
Mine was being transported into the world of a book I’d never read before. if I’d read the book, obviously I would have no trouble, but what if there’s a plot twist that I don’t know about because I haven’t read the book yet??? How will I know whether the wise magician who tells me to do something arbitrary without explaining why is good or evil? I mean obviously if he’s the advisor to a king he’s evil but what if I don’t know of his status in local politics and accidentally refuse help from someone who was recently forced into exile through no fault of his own?? Because then i’d just have screwed up everything.
Mine was ‘get transported back to a time period JUST BEFORE or after a time period whose history I knew well.’ So I’d be like ‘oh I know! Sometime in the next ten years a big thing is going to happen. It will be bad. We should avoid it. HELPFUL. MUST STUDY MORE HISTORY.
Also my contingency if trapped in a labyrinth is ‘die’.
It will never stop being hilarious to me that worst worst thing of all for George Bailey, beyond his old boss KILLING A KID and going to jail or his brother DYING or Potter ruining the town was Mary becoming a librarian.
“She’s just about to close up the library!”
THE HORROR
The lack of makeup! The glasses!!!
*clutches pearls*
*faints*
The glasses annoyed me so much. How exactly does Bailey existing or not affect her eyesight?
Dowdiness is very bad for the eyesight.
Or maybe when she married George, she knew she had vision problems, but decided to tough it out, because a good wife doesn’t allow herself to be seen wearing glasses.
“Why, Mary! What’s become of you?!? You’re nothing but a punk ass book jockey!”
You should definitely boil your drinking water, though, in private.
If any past-people walk in, tell them you’re making soup and throw in an onion.
“Now you take this home, throw it in a pot, add some broth, a potato. Baby, you’ve got a stew going.”
And a stone.
Or, you know, make tea.
I got to say, this feels an awful lot like how you are supposed to act in regular life.
Right?
Keep my head down.
Check.
Wait for other people to talk to me before I open my mouth and give myself away
Check.
Start a lot of conversations with “Hey, you” and wait for a third party to drop their name so I can learn it
Check.
People only leave you alone if they trust you; the easiest way to get back to my own reality is to act normal
This really describes my agenda at all times.
Really? Whenever anybody expresses affection or a prior relationship with me, I always push them away bellowing WHO ARE YOU? Isn’t that… never mind.
I don’t know, all I know is that I go around all day long saying “just act normal just act normal just act normal just act normal” to myself, and I feel like this would be a very good adaptive strategy if I accidentally become lost in time and/or in an alternate reality where I am married to the town librarian.
These are very sensible tips. I always think about my poor recollection of high school history classes would doom me.
https://youtu.be/PGjKL9UZiMU
If deposited in a fantasy world and informed I am the chosen one and eventual queen I will nod and smile and find a way back home immediately. I have no aptitude for government in my own time and space, I would undoubtedly make an absolute hash of it somewhere/when else.
Especially when you realize that everyone else wants to take you down and take over your throne! Where’s the fun in that?
While I obviously venerate our lord the King, if I fall in with a group of rebels, I’ll not speak of how loyal I am to my country or how great the empire is.
The most useful persona to adopt in all situations in a civil-war-torn country is that of a common laborer whose life is too busy and hardworking to care about who rules the empire, yet who is skilled enough to offer useful service to whichever side is currently most likely to consider killing you because you’ve seen too much.
The fact that this undoubtedly describes pretty much all of my ancestors is making me feel good about my general timidness. It’s adaptive! Can’t fight evolution, amiright??
“Start a lot of conversations with ‘Hey, you’ and wait for a third party to drop their name so I can learn it and remember it for later”
So……. no different from my normal life, then.
One thing a lot of people neglect in their emergency planning is a codeword. If you’re trapped in, say, the medieval era and the Portal has closed behind you, you’re going to want to get yourself a job illuminating manuscripts. Then, a thousand years later before you go back, Discarding Images will post a picture of some amusing marginalia with a winged fish and the text “fleogende ȝoti” – now you’ll know exactly when and where you’re destined to end up, giving you the ability to prepare appropriately and possibly even avoid your fate (unless, of course, it turns out that trying to avoid your fate is the thing that seals your fate, but still, you can at least get vaccinated).
you would be surprised how much time i spent as a kid logic-ing out plans like this
I am sorry we were not kids together, because having company logic-ing out plans would have been nicer.
same here! honestly, i wonder sometimes how remarkably different i might’ve been if the internet proper was really A Thing when i was a weird little dreamy kid and i’d had other weirdos to bond with online 🙂
I have a code word for if I get kidnapped and forced to write a letter, but not one for my own time travel. Clearly I have been negligent in my planning.
If I remember correctly from “A Sound of Thunder”, even leaving footprints might not be the greatest of ideas. Then again, I’m not sure how you’d live dinosaur values or learn their names, either.
Is that the story were the man goes off the path and then back in modern times the spelling is weird and the other political party has won
It is that, yes.
Coloneldad would tell a bastardized version of that story every time we went hiking in an effort to keep us on the trail. It worked. I spent years terrified I would either step on something and alter time or that I’d get eaten by a moose.
Thanks, coloneldad.
Jurassic Park Rules: You’d get eaten by dinosaurs, almost immediately.
Jurassic World Rules:
When taking over Malkovich’s body, please do the right thing for the love of God try and seal the deal ASAP with a never foxier Catherine Keener. Unless you are Malkovich in which case, things are about to get… weird.
Plan for time travel into the past: lie down, wait to die
Time travel into the future: lie down, wait to die
Alternate timeline: lie down, wait to die
Magical parallel world: lie down, wait to die
Body swap: depending on specifics, investigate; then lie down, wait to die
Awaken as younger self: lie down, wait to die of embarrassment
I really have no confidence in my ability to navigate these situations. I’m barely able to survive the reality I’m in right now.
This response tickled me greatly. Should you wake up in an alternate reality over which I am a mostly-benevolent dictator/supreme ruler/glorious queen, you have my full protection.
Advice like this is why Rombledore got away with it for so long.
As soon as it becomes clear that I have traveled any further back than, say, 1968, I am going to have to take up some sort of religious headwear so that my extremely short hair does not get me identified as a witch or collaborator.
You could say you had brain fever, or lice?
Tell them all you had to get rid of your hair to cure the brain fever. Works every time.
Unexpected Time Travel: The only reason I EVER paid attention in history class. If something from the “not really useful in event of time travel” pile ended up on the final, well, I was just shit out of luck.
If I get swapped with Jamie Lee Curtis’s body, I’m not giving it back.
I definitely kept armchair-quarterbacking Outlander and thinking about how I would have handled things differently/better…
I bought my son a little build-your-own-catapult kit, started to build it with him, but he quickly became bored. So then I finished it and made myself feel better about this waste of time and money by convincing myself that I am now an asset to anyone in the past who needed to know how to build a catapult.
Also, I have imagined so vividly a Revolutionary War soldier coming home down a driveway to this historic house nearby that I swear it’s real in my head. The house is really isolated and the driveway is a dirt road and truly, time has stopped there.
I truly did think I was the only one who daydreamed this way!
I am SO buying one of those kits. With the excuse it’s for my daughter, but really, for me. I need to know how to build one, just in case.
Back when I was in high school I abused my power as president of the Latin Club to convince the group to build a functioning catapult*. We challenged the other schools to a competition for distance/accuracy. Most of the other clubs built a small model (3-4 feet across); we used 16′ 2×4 lumber for ours, and a boat winch to cock it. It fired all the way over the school and lodged a bolt in the bed of the principal’s pickup. He was kind of mad until he learned we won the contest.
The 80s, man. I cannot imagine how fast we’d have been arrested for doing that these days.
* technically we built a catapulta, which is basically a huge crossbow
Technically it was also cooler. Some boys I knew in HS worked on a trebuchet for ages. I tried really hard to finagle an invitation to one of their build weekends but I guess they didn’t want any smelly girls.
Depends on the particular circumstances:
– If I were taken back before the invention of gunpowder: invent gunpowder. (Yeah, I’d feel bad about it, but it’s literally the only type of tech that I feel confident about making, thanks to that one Star Trek episode, above the level of tying a rock to a stick, and I’m too old to spend the rest of my days digging up turnips.)
– If I were taken back before the invention of vaccines: invent vaccines. (There, that’s more benevolent. Although I’d need to come up with some plausibly pious explanation to avoid getting burned as a witch, depending on the era.)
– If I were taken back before 1865: “Sir, it’s not that good of a play.”
– If I were taken back just after Brian Epstein died: “Look, you guys, if you take some time off to work on your solo projects now, maybe you won’t get sick of each other’s company so quickly and be able to get together once in a while for an album for, who knows, decades, maybe. Also, John, get a bodyguard, at least by early 1980.”
– If I were taken back to myself in high school: Realize that I was selling myself short and apply to better colleges that I could still afford. Also, spend less time wondering about how the X-Men’s powers worked and more time talking to girls. Also, put literally every penny of discretionary funds at my disposal into Apple stock.
– Swapped bodies with my rival at work: Immediately die of mortification. I don’t want to go into the specifics; just trust me on this.
– Swapped bodies with just about anyone else of the opposite gender: Seek out my counterpart, discuss the situation and possible remedies, and discreetly inquire as to whether, in the interim, I might have his/her permission to, well, you know. You know. They, of course, would have corresponding, ah, privileges, if they so chose.
– Changed genders without actually switching bodies with someone: Just go for it.
– Parallel universe where I’m married to the town librarian: Not seeing the problem.
The problem is that I don’t know how anything WORKS. Ok I could probably invent vaccines. Otherwise, I’d have to be like the kid in ‘Johnny and the Bomb’ where I become an investor because I know that tv is going to be invented, but who knows enough about how the first tv works to be the person to invent it? Not me!
Also, important question. Do you and your counterpart… you know… together. Or not?
I honestly don’t know if I’d want to see my own O-face. There are times when it’s not OK to burst out laughing, even if you’re completely sincere when you say, “It’s not you, it’s me.”
NO I CAN”T DO THIS, IT’S THE RATS, EVERYONE LISTEN, THERE ARE TINY DiSEASE BUGS ON THE FLEAS THAT LIVE ON THE RATS, GOODBYE HOME TIMELINE, YOU HAD SOME GREAT TV SHOWS BUT I CAN’T PROTECT YOU LIKE THIS
(continues shouting and sobbing in the town market until chased out of town by rock-throwing children)
Perhaps not.
WhaaAAT?! Fucking GERBILS? No way, sorry, this will not stand. One-third of Europe’s population was not decimated by gerbils. Or thirdulated, WHATEVER. Gerbils are metaphorically weightless. Are filmmakers supposed to symbolize worldly corruption with gerbils? Should we reimagine Count Orlok commanding an army of gerbils? I THINK NOT. Try again, “science.”
Would you prefer this?
You come back to the present time and the shows are better, good on you. You come back to the present time and they’re worse, you get to be the creator of [fill in your favorite show]. You can’t lose.
I fully agree and am 100% human animal natural just like you! I couldn’t even breathe without water, as we do!
My great fears in backwards time travel is:
1. It happening suddenly while I have my contacts in and no solution in my purse.
2. Managing my modern birth control.
OMG! I’m so glad I’m not the only one who worries about their contacts!
Not kidding, I have a strategy for weaning myself off my anxiety meds all planned out just in case.
“Make no waves. Ask no unnecessary questions. Draw no inessential attention to myself. Come up with a decent explanation for why I’m dressed the way I’m dressed, then get changed as quickly as possible.”
This is pretty much how I live my life anyway.
Desperately try to remember how to make penicillin. Horde it all for yourself, no need to kick off MRSA in an earlier timeline.
“Dinosaur Comics” creator Ryan North addressed some of these concerns in poster form, entitled “LET’S SAY YOU’VE GONE BACK IN TIME,” also circulated as “Time Traveler Essentials” or the “Time Traveler Cheat Sheet.” It is printed with very small type to cram in the maximum amount of information.
Alas I cannot find a link to a sufficiently legible image that this commenting system likes, it just keeps chewing my links up and spitting out gibberish and percentage signs, so youns will have to search it out on your own. Sorry about that, I cannot get used to your primitive technology. HelloOO, Computer?!
Apparently you can also buy it as a T-shirt, which is handy, at least if you always wear it. Or you could just laminate a copy and keep it in your pocket in case of time vortex.
OMG. Love this. Now I’m going to add laminated 3X5 cards with Really Important Information like how to make gunpowder to my purse, where I already carry my Swiss Army Knife and waterproof matches and paracord because You Just Never Know.
Extremely sensible advice. Remember, kids, if you find yourself dislocated in the space-time continuum, just ask yourself: What Would Ronbledore Do?
I have a new-found appreciation for the wisdom of Dr. Sam Beckett. (Though, of course, he had Ziggy there to remind him of all this.)
BUT MALLORY
What if you’re keeping your head down, trying to learn people and not dissent, and everyone keeps saying, “Gee, that’s not the Ambrosia I know… you wouldn’t usually stand for that,” or “Glad to see you FINALLY learned some MANNERS, Nora, we’ll see you married off yet!” or “WHERE IS THE DEDICATED FIREBRAND, OUTSPOKEN DESPITE IT MEANING ALMOST CERTAIN DEATH AND EXCEEDINGLY KNOWLEDGEABLE ABOUT THE MINUTIAE OF OUR TIME, THAT I MARRIED?????!!!”
I mostly worry about how I would support myself. So far the only skill I think I have is cooking, although once you get before 1700, most of the things we eat today would not be available (potatoes? tomatoes? turkey? pumpkin? If it is part of Thanksgiving dinner, it is not going to exist.)
Also cooking over an open fire would be a challenge.
I think opening a mikveh (Jewish ritual bath) might be a possibility. The drawbacks being; I’m not Jewish and where would I get the money. Also: pogroms. But you’d meet a nicer class of people, or cleaner anyway.
Maybe selling tisanes. Herbal teas as a recreational beverage.
Handsewing is also a possibility. Or millinery.
Or writing letters or contracts for the illiterate, if we were after 1575 or so.
I have read the Gale Women books, yes! My mother lent me hers and told me to. They're not really enchanted-portal books though are they? I haven't read Jack of Kinrowan though. I read some early de Lint, I remember something the Sparrow? (edit: The Riddle of the Wren) But so many years ago!
It seems so SIMPLE!!
When I was dating a dude who used a ventilator to breathe, we made various contingency plans together about how we were going to survive the apocalypse/time travel without his vent and my meds. That's what a relationship means.
I have many times imagined being in a time-travel situation where my knowledge of the first fitt of Beowulf would be put to good use.
Connie Willis' Domesday Book traumatized the hell out of me with the year reveal, Anno Domini aaaaagh
How does the Toast know that my secret WordPress ID is penstemon? It never did before… damn, I must have traveled to the future where obscure blog IDs are long gone.
I worked with a woman for TWO YEARS and chatted to her in the tea room on the reg before finding out her name. She was one of the few without a name plate at her desk, so i couldn't even sneakily find it out …
I used to have an implanon and I loved it for that very reason.
I now don't, and not having to think about birth control is SUPER GREAT A+ recommend dating someone who's had the snip (or otherwise cannot get you pregnant) but I do worry about time vortexes.
I honestly don't know if I'd want to see my own O-face. There are times when it's not OK to burst out laughing, even if you're completely sincere when you say, "It's not you, it's me."
I've got it in Latin so I can be a crazy nun like in the Domesday book.