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Lifesaver
The wind blustered through the trees, swirling fallen leaves as it went, till it reached the old cottage door, lying blown back on its hinges. Maybe she had put just a trifle more oomph into that lock-picking spell than she had meant to, she conceded, looking down at the little electric-blue spark still crackling on the end of her finger. ‘Um, hello?’ she said, stepping tentatively inside, ‘I knocked, but I couldn’t seem to get an answer …’
Strictly speaking, she shouldn’t be doing this, she thought, looking over the neat clay-tiled kitchen, but it wasn’t as if she had much choice. ‘I’m sorry about the door,’ she continued. ‘It’s just … I’m in trouble, and I need your help …’ And, in a whisper, ‘I kind of need a hero …’
*
In the next room, there was a man on the floor, youngish, dark hair – he didn’t look well. Without realizing it, she was kneeling down next to him, checking his breathing, feeling for a pulse: weak, and getting weaker by the minute.
She looked around desperately. She didn’t want to do this. Look at what had happened to the door. But it didn’t look like she had much choice. If she did nothing, he’d probably be dead soon. She extended a finger, crackling with tingling motes of energy – this wasn’t the way this was normally done, but she guessed there was a first time for everything: One, two, three … clear!
*
He drew in a deep gasping breath. There was a … woman kneeling over him with a concerned expression on her face, his skin was tingling all over, and the smell of burnt hair lingered in the air – that, and hers was standing ever so slightly on end.
‘Um, hi,’ she said. ‘You weren’t … um, that is to say, you weren’t well and I kind of …’
‘Thank you,’ he breathed, still kind of gasping.
‘Um … I sort of need … Do you think you could come with me,’ she said brightly, as she helped him to his feet. ‘I’ll explain on the way.’
She led him out past the back door, which was slightly skewed on its hinges for some reason, out through the garden, past the hedgerows, and into the woods; there, hanging in mid-air and apparently made of light, was a magic portal in the middle of the clearing.
She held out her hand to him, glancing towards the portal. ‘So,’ she said, with a big smile, the glowy fairy wings on her back shimmering in the twilight, ‘I was kind of hoping you might be able to help me out …’
Published in Entertainment
Can it handle time whorls, time bounces, or time slips, though?
I use it for keeping track of history topics, including family history. But here is how it advertises itself for creative writers:
In other words, it’s a lot more boring than your description, and the reason their product is not a household name is that they didn’t hire you to write their advertising copy.
In my case, the bit of time travel was done intentionally. It was righting an injustice from before my timeline had started. It was not an error in my timeline.
As for keeping track of information, I’m an old data modeler and database developer. I have two related and linked databases. One is a genealogical database in Gedcom format.
You should look and see. I had for years been frustrated by the lack of any good timeline tools; Around 2012 I found one for history that started out cheap but became just a bit too pricy for my personal budget, and it wouldn’t have been suitable for your needs. There were a zillion products out there that called themselves timelines, but almost nothing that helped with actual organization of information. Then I found Aeon. I spent $50, and I think I eventually spent another $50 for an upgrade to Aeon Timeline 2. I would gladly pay twice that much for an annual subscription, if that’s what it would take. My greatest fear is that it will get popular and then Microsoft will buy it out and ruin it, as it has done with so many other great products. Capitalism: When it gets big it’s almost as bad as Socialism.
I hope so.
I don’t know if Aeon has an actual relational database behind the scenes, but it works as though it did. I don’t think it’s a substitute for a genealogical database, though. (I use Legacy 9.0 for that.)
I don’t know what those are, so I wouldn’t care to predict whether it can do those.
Eddies in the time-space continuum.
I have 41,297 characters in the genealogy database at the moment. Many of them are background characters who never show in the series, but their children or grandchildren may. There are other unrelated characters, mostly historical, who are not in the genealogical database, but in the other. The other database is on another computer that I don’t feel like bringing up at the moment, but it has at least fifty tables. Since my historical timeline departs significantly from history, I have to track nations, rulers of nations, governmental structures, national award systems (such as orders of chivalry), church hierarchies and bishops through time, and for the future: other planets and spaceship classes. I’m probably leaving out whole sections of the database.
What he said. If one is writing about time travel, one must understand the nature of time and how the travel is achieved or apparently achieved.
Time slip: Someone goes back in time without coming back forward. One of the great examples is L. Sprague de Camp’s Lest Darkness Fall. Martin Padway goes back about fifteen hundred years accidentally, and then has to make his way in the Rome of the early Middle Ages or Late Antiquity.
Time bounce: Someone goes back in time, but is bounced back to the present because he would have created a paradox. The story I quoted from early in this thread has several examples of time bounces. Three brothers are investigating what happened to a fourth brother. When they realize he had been killed, one brother who has abilities to travel in time tries to go back and save him, but keeps getting bounced back to the current time (in 1778 as current in this case). The story it refers back to is called “Pixie Pinches,” and is in my second volume, Angels Revolting.
Time loop: a simple historical loop where the causation was someone who traveled back in time, which then led to that person’s traveling back in time to cause the loop. A great example is the famous story that is called “All You Zombies” by Heinlein. That is really a multiple loop, but not a whorl.
Time whorl: a time loop with multiple pathways, such as is shown here. This is a simple double loop whorl.
He is, is he?
If nothing else that’d mess with Arahant; he has characters who make a habit of being in two places at once. And that’s only in the books I’ve read.
Yeah, for some of my characters, that is expected, if not passé.
Or eddies in the space-time continuum?
Once again I’m the victim of not reading through all the comments before commenting myself.
My favorite time travel story has always been By His Bootstraps by Heinlein writing as Anson McDonald.
Eddie in the space time continuum…
In the PIT, we call that being Deaned.
I enjoyed the time travel arc in the Stainless Steel Rat series. It didn’t seem to take itself too seriously, but the arc was awfully consistent when resolved.