Confessions of a Time Traveler: Time Amazon

By Doug Molitor

History's not what it used to be.

Ariyl Moro, the gene-powered Amazon from 2109 A.D., drags David Preston, archaeologist, back to ancient times to help her fix some broken historical events.

But after an epic night together, Ariyl vanishes, leaving David her Time Crystal . . . and a clue that might lead him back to her . . . in the camp of a Mongol warrior princess . . . or a harem in medieval Baghdad . . . or a monstrously mutated 1950s America.

Sci-fi meets romantic comedy...with sword-swinging adventure!

Note to readers: This book makes the assumption that climate change is not a hoax and anyone who thinks it is, is not qualified to be President. If you disagree, this is definitely not the droid you're looking for.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Third Street Press
• Release date: Dec 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781948142168

Book preview

1

Prologue

That night at Ford’s Theatre, I had every reason to believe that Ariyl Moro did not intend to kill John Wilkes Booth, much less unleash the insane events that followed: She was in a hurry, she doesn’t quite know her own strength…and she definitely doesn’t know history.

I had deliberately told the Time Crystal six A.M. on April eleventh, to give myself a three-and-a-half-day head start on Ariyl. Suffice it to say, I did not anticipate spending almost all of that time in jail. My final escape attempt on the night of the fourteenth was successful but a matter of pure luck, which is not the same as great luck.

As I ran down the dirt street, I saw a clock tower reading eleven past ten. I had less than two minutes. Thanks to the Crystal’s default safeguards, I could not jump back to give myself more time or correct an error. I had to do this right on the first take.

A hundred yards up the dirt street, I spotted Ariyl at the arched entry of the big brick building. I tore off in her direction.

She was dressed like a western dancehall girl from some early Technicolor epic. It made her look vaguely of the period, but gaudy and wanton. She was pleading her case for entry with a tall, strapping army sergeant whose mustache grew right into his muttonchops, and who was blocking her way at the door.

The soldier had been born a century too soon to have seen the costuming in MGM musicals that her SmartFab outfit was apparently channeling. He plainly viewed those bared athletic arms and her eye-popping décolletage as immodest. That she had two inches on him also seemed to offend him.

Ariyl glanced to her left, and saw me running toward her. The soldier turned as guffaws erupted from the crowd within. Ariyl seized the opportunity—and the sergeant—lifting him into the air.

Ariyl, no! I yelled.

Unhand me, you virago! sputtered the sergeant.

That she did, flinging him backward across the lobby. He slammed against the far wall hard enough to split the paneling and sank senseless to the floor. A big laugh erupted from inside the auditorium.

Wait! I called out, almost to the entrance.

Instead, Ariyl flew up the stairway, six steps at a time. I charged up those same stairs as rapidly as I could, but since she was far faster than me—or any other human before the twenty-second century—it was no surprise that she had vanished by the time I got to the second floor. I stuck my head inside the door to the balcony to get my bearings. I glimpsed an actress making her exit, leaving an actor alone onstage to deliver his comic monologue:

Don't know the manners of good society, eh? roared the player, to widespread chuckling. Then just above the right side of the stage, I saw the union flag draped as bunting across the fateful box—my eyes hadn’t adjusted enough to the dark to see the president’s shadowed face, but I knew it had to be him. I left the balcony and dashed down the right-hand corridor.

"Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal…" echoed the voice from the stage.

The door to the presidential box was ajar, and as I entered, I realized Ariyl wasn’t there—she must have gone to the wrong side of the theater. Standing to my left, so focused on his target that he didn’t even notice me, was Civil War America’s up-and-coming new stage star. Dark eyes shining in messianic victory, he was aiming his derringer at the base of the Great Emancipator’s skull.

At this point, let me back up a bit.

If you’ve read Memoirs of a Time Traveler, you know who Ariyl is, and that I’m David Preston, professor of archaeology. You, of course, assume that first book was a work of pure fiction; you’d be crazy not to.

But just for a moment pretend that time travel to the past is actually possible. Or to be precise that in the future it will become possible. A time traveler’s first discovery is that history can be changed because, from the instant of his arrival, he exists in a time and place where he never existed before. But if he wants to return home, he cannot do anything that will significantly change the future whence he came. If he makes only tiny alterations, he will be able to move forward in time to his own era…or something so much like home it might as well be the same one he left.

Nonetheless the traveler has the capacity to do something that will change the past profoundly. He’s at a branching point. His action splits a timeline off from the history that we all know, and the traveler proceeds along an altered timeline into a new, unpredicted future. If he’s trying to get home, he’s out of luck.

At least, that’s the theory.

By now you must be wondering why the devil I began this narrative in Washington, D.C. on April fourteenth, 1865, rather than picking up right where the first book left off, on the Greek isle of Santorini, at the Cave of the Dolphins, in the year 432 B.C.E.

The answer is: I’ll get to that part when I’m good and ready.

2

Cave Of The Dolphins, 432 B.C.E.

W ell, I’m sorry about your effed-up Minotaur, said Ariyl. I guess you’re in a hurry to fix history. You know, get our worlds back. I mean yours. And mine.

I took her hand and gently tugged her back down beside me on the blanket.

Tomorrow. The world can wait.

Really? She lifted an eyebrow, dubious.

We can make up for lost time.

You’re not mad at me about messing up your treasure?

Are you kidding? I held up the golden Minotaur…and chucked it as far as I could, back into the sea. Then I gazed into those purple eyes. Look what I found.

I kissed Ariyl.

She looked at me for a long moment. You know, where I come from, the woman is really supposed to make the first move.

So make it.

She kissed me back. And then some.

A seagull’s cry jolted me awake. I was lying on a blanket just inside a cave but feeling the warm morning breeze and hearing the waves pound the sand just yards away. I blinked, sat up, and tried to remember where I was. And when.

The first thing I noticed amiss was that I had a fresh scab along my chest where the tip of a sword had sliced my skin the day before. Why?

This disorientation had never been a problem for me before I met Ariyl Moro. For one thing, I rarely drank. Or had reason to.

And why did I have a sword wound? Oh…right.

I now recalled that I’d been excavating ruins in this sea cave on the Greek isle of Santorini for five months in the year 2013. Then one fine October day Ariyl Moro showed up, dug in exactly the right spot, and found a golden Minotaur statuette that proved my theory. I hadn’t the foggiest notion that she was a time tourist until she dragged me back to 1628 B.C.E., to the unruined Minoan temple that used to stand there, to the very day an epic volcanic eruption buried it in searing ash. And nearly us along with it.

She had a pretty good excuse for kidnapping me: Virtually no one in 2109 learns history. Deprived of any kind of knowledge computer, she needed a historian as her guide.

After escaping that disaster, our excursions included a modern Los Angeles run by the victorious Nazis, a war-torn 1976 Philadelphia where the nation called America had never existed, and a 1945 Hollywood where the murder of one beloved movie star led to nuclear Armageddon. Despite her near-total ignorance of history, none of these worst-case scenarios were Ariyl’s fault. They were caused by thefts of crucial objects and documents by Ariyl’s ex, a relic-collecting head-case named Jon Ludlo, who had given me that scar on my chest while trying to disembowel me and whom we’d then seen drowned by the tsunami that consumed the island of Thera in 1628 B.C.E. We’d barely dodged that bullet ourselves.

I fuzzily recalled that we’d interrupted Ludlo’s most notable heists, and repaired most of the damage to history. But Ludlo had also erased the technological paradise in 2109 C.E. where the artificial intelligence called N-Tec had invented Time Crystals and allowed the pampered, immortal citizenry of that epoch to use them for vacation travel, the way you or I might employ a Eurail pass. That utopia—Ludlo’s and Ariyl’s home era—had been replaced by a Stone Age ruin. Or at best, a really rusty Iron Age. So Ariyl could not get home. Not yet.

Now, if you’d woken up thinking about all this occurring over the last three or four days of your life—you’d lost count of the hours because you’d had to pawn your antique wristwatch in 1939—naturally, in your first waking moments, you’d suspect that you just had one freaking hell of a dream.

And add to that you’re pretty hung over.

Then suddenly a gorgeous, buxom, six-foot-three blonde all but bursting out of a clingy little white dress kneels at your side and gives you a long, long, long kiss. Then she rolls onto her back, pulling you onto her lush body as if you weighed no more than a throw pillow.

And as you gaze down into her purple eyes, you realize every fantastic event you thought you’d dreamed, including making love to her, was real.

Morning, sleepyhead, Ariyl purred.

Hi, I said. You know, I haven’t brushed my teeth yet.

She chuckled softly.

Yeah, I can tell. But that won’t stop me.

No surprise. I’d never met anyone as unstoppable, nor anyone who could endure as much physical discomfort as Ariyl. She nuzzled my nose and murmured, I’ve tasted a lot funkier stuff than you on this trip.

Um…thanks?

She shut me up with another long kiss, with her tongue gliding around inside my mouth doing things I never knew a tongue could do, while her hands moved across my back, massaging me as they gently pressed me into her amazing body. Where did these twenty-second century girls learn this stuff? My overwhelmed cerebral cortex issued one last desperate order to disengage, while the rest of my body was screaming, Shaddap, stupid brain!

Ariyl, just a quick question.

Make it fast.

How long have we been doing this?

Making love? Since last night, she giggled. Duh!

Just one night? Really?

Why?

I didn’t say so, but it felt like four nights strung together. Or like we’d screwed all night, but not regular old coitus as I knew it. It was some weird futuristic Kama Sutra sex where she kept me in the throes of ecstasy for what seemed like an hour before a thunderous mutual climax…and then afterward, just when I’d drifted off to sleep, suddenly she was waking me with one part or another of her incredibly arousing body, which led into another hours-long coupling. Then another lewd awakening, and another. It was non-stop. And lest you think I’m Casanova or a pro athlete or a porn star, I assure you I’m not. I’d never had this much sex in one night in my life. This girl was a virtuoso, and she was playing me like a Stradivarius.

And now, with the sun up, I was so sleep-deprived I couldn’t think straight. The more she kissed me, the more my head swam, and the more my loins ached for her. But also from her. Actually, all of me ached. I felt like I’d just finished a triathlon. She was ten times as strong as I was, and no matter how hard I went at her, she just drank it in and asked for more.

And here I was again, lying atop her, feeling her in my mouth, my hands, my groin…I didn’t care. I wanted her again. I dove back in.

When I awoke this time, it was midday. I was sore, exhausted, thirsty, starving…and I needed immediate relief. Ariyl was dozing beside me. I silently arose, tiptoed around some rocks, and, as quietly as I could, pissed like a racehorse.

After I finished, I turned to find her smiling lasciviously at me.

You shouldn’t tease me like that.

Jesus! I exclaimed, my heart fibrillating. I buttoned up my 1908 Levis as fast as I could.

She unbuttoned me faster.

I hope you don’t think we’re done. She put her lips on mine, and as she gathered me into her voluptuous embrace, I felt my feet leaving the ground again.

I spoke as best I could around her kisses. Ariyl, for God’s sake, have mercy. I can’t take any more.

She stopped. What do you mean?

I mean, I need to eat, and drink, and…

She silenced me with a kiss. Is that all? Relax, dummy! When I heard you get up just now, I zipped over to Athens and got us breakfast!

For a moment I thought she was joking, but then I remembered Ludlo’s adjustments to his Time Crystal. Using the password his inventor grandfather had bequeathed him, Ludlo had removed most of the device’s default safeguards, including the one that prevented instantaneous reappearances. And now that his Crystal was in her possession, Ariyl could vanish to anywhere for as long as she wanted and return to me the next second.

As she set me down, I caught a whiff of kebab on the sea breeze. I salivated like Pavlov’s entire kennel.

She took my hand and happily dragged me to the cave, where she’d laid out a feast. A cornucopia of skewered meat and vegetables, bread, fruit, cheese, silver goblets and ewers of wine and water. I sank onto the sand and devoured it all like a ravening castaway. Ariyl watched with amusement.

And you make fun of how I eat?

This is amazing, I moaned between mouthfuls.

That’s what you were saying all last night, she winked. Come on, eat up. You’re going to need your strength.

Uh, yeah…

I finished my food, took a healthy slug of wine, and faced the music.

"Ariyl, could we possibly not make love tonight?"

It was like I’d slapped her.

But, you liked it! Didn’t you?

"Liked isn’t the word, I said, chuckling at the absurdity of the question. You are the most amazing lover I ever had. I could happily do nothing else but screw you till the end of my life."

Aww, she blushed.

Which will be tonight, if I don’t get some sleep, I added, my voice cracking.

Oh, she said quietly.

No offense, but I’m only human.

She drew back. "Like I’m not human? Yeah, why would I take offense at that?"

I could see I had to head this off, fast.

Look, if I can get some rest tonight, we can do something fun tomorrow. There’s something awesome I want to show you.

She perked up. Really? What?

I really hadn’t thought that far ahead. I just needed to get her off Topic A.

Something I bet you’d have thought of yourself, given a few minutes. I mean, here we are in ancient Greece. What thoughts does that conjure up for you?

She thought for a second. Naked men wrestling!

What on earth? Was this from one of her kinky vidz or…oh.

Right! I nodded. The ancient Olympic Games! Well, that’s just where we’re going. In fact, this year, 432 B.C.E., was an Olympic year.

Oh, David! she cooed. She kissed me again. And again. And some more.

Sometime in the heavenly afternoon she let me drift off.

3

Olympia, 432 B.C.E.

Gigantic Zeus stared down at us from his cedar throne. As we descended the scrubby hillside, his lapis lazuli eyes, nearly four stories above the ground, gleamed at us in the sun slanting through the columns of his temple. The god’s ivory skin glowed, and yellow rays shone off the gold of his robe, his scepter, and the winged victory statue he held in his right hand. His divine throne was studded with rubies, citrines, topazes, emeralds, sapphires, amethysts, and diamonds that all rainbow-sparkled in the morning light.

Ooh, pretty, said Ariyl.

Pretty? I exclaimed. It’s epic! The crowning masterpiece of Phidias, the greatest artist of his century!

As we descended the hill, we lost our view of the god’s statue behind the trees.

Wait till you see it up close.

Ludlo and I were all over Greece one summer. How come we missed this?

You weren’t time travelers yet. This temple will burn nine centuries from now, in 425 C.E.

Isn’t that seven years from now?

"No, that would be 425 B.C.E. Sorry, I forgot—in your time, they’d say it burned in 425 A.D."

Yeah, that C.E./B.C.E. of yours is way confusing.

So you’ve told me. Anyway, that’s when this temple is put to the torch. And historians think the statue had already had its gold stripped off a couple of centuries earlier.

You mean it was stolen? So maybe Ludlo did survive the sinking of Atlantis?

Thera, I auto-corrected her.

"We proved your theory. Thera was Atlantis, remember?"

Oh, yeah. I had yet to publish that theory in my time, but…

You’re thinking maybe he’ll show up here.

I shook my head. Even if your crazy ex somehow survived, I don’t see him going after a humongous statue that’d take him days to swipe. In sections. And where would he put it? No, the gold was no doubt ripped off by the same kind of chiselers who will someday steal the marble off the Colosseum for their local palaces.

Then why are we here?

Just to make sure history is on track as of this date. Plus, I thought you’d like to see the Statue of Zeus at Olympia. One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

I’m sure it’s a cool statue and all, but I’d rather see Disneyland, she shrugged.

Well, I conceded, "over the centuries there has been a bit of inflation in what it takes to be considered a wonder of the world. Our problem is that if right now we jump to Disneyland in 2013, we might land in radioactive ruins. Or a sleepy orange grove. Or a Southwest desert that never became part of America. Depending on which historic relic your sticky-fingered friend might have lifted while we were enjoying ourselves."

So you do think he’s alive!

It’s a remote possibility. So I’ll ask someone inside when the statue was finished. According to history, Phidias built it in 445 B.C. So if this place is thirteen years old then we’ll know so far, nothing major went wrong with the timeline here in Greece.

I didn’t need to remind her that we couldn’t afford for Ludlo to get behind us in time and do something that erased all the downstream history—with us in it. We still needed to move ahead a century at a time to be sure Ludlo had made no other changes before his gnarly wipeout under a billion tons of seawater.

Well, since we’re here, sure. Let’s take a look inside, she sighed with all the excitement of a fourth-grader consenting to go on a home and garden tour.

There was a long line to enter the temple. The thought hit me—what if they charge admission? Instinctively, I reached under the tunic Ariyl had brought me from Athens, into the pockets of my jeans—which I’d turned into cutoffs so the denim wouldn’t show beneath the hem.

All I found was a humble penny: a 2008 zinc cent. Scarcely enough copper in it to color it. The kind that when you drop it on a hard floor, sounds like a tiddlywink. Definitely not legal tender here. I shoved it back in my pocket.

By this time, we had reached the base of the hill, and I realized that we had the height problem again, the same one we’d faced in the Minoan Empire a millennium earlier: At five-eleven-and-a-half, I towered over the Greeks of this era, and Ariyl was four inches taller. She had her flaxen hair coiled atop her head in the Grecian style, making her look even larger. We were still a hundred yards from the Temple of Zeus and already we stuck out like two enormous sore thumbs.

I beckoned her out of view, behind a building that backed up against the slope. No offense, but I think you need to wear something else.

She looked down at her dress. Thanks to her programmable clothing, she was wearing a light linen chiton that hung to her ankles, bloused at her waist by a belt tucked under the overhanging cloth. The filmy fabric fell in pleated rivulets around her spectacular bustline.

I thought you liked this little number, she said, throwing back her shoulders so the pleats dangled further outward.

I do. You look like a caryatid.

A what?

Those sculptures that hold up a building. Which I’m sure you could do.

Aw, you’re cute, she said, pulling me into a long kiss.

"What are you doing?"—or rather, angry words to that effect in ancient Greek—made us jump. An aristocratic young man with a neatly plaited beard, wearing a cloak edged in purple glared at us.

Would you go whoring in this sacred place?

Apparently, this building was some kind of shrine. I recalled the local penalty for indecency was to be thrown off a cliff. The ancients were pretty hard-ass prudes.

Ariyl got a funny smirk on her face and turned to face our accuser. I knew who’d be getting thrown if it came to that. I got between them.

It is lawful and proper, I told him in my best Classical Greek. We are husband and wife.

Ariyl stifled a snort.

Our instantaneous marriage alleviated his complaint, if not his disapproval.

You sound Persian to my ear.

We are Thebans, I ventured.

I might have guessed. If you want to start a family, take your Amazon home and do it, he sniffed. He stalked off towards the Olympic stadium.

I let out a breath, relieved.

That was close, husband, said Ariyl. Then she cracked up.

I had to tell him something. What’s so funny, anyway?

Ariyl stopped mid-laugh. Apparently, nothing, she said quietly.

Is it marriage in general that amuses you, or just when it involves me?

So! she said, with a clap of her hands. Let’s check out the big statue!

I gave her the once-over. Before we do that, you better take it down about a hundred hoochie-points, or you are going to draw a bigger crowd than the games.

I could see she was pleased by the prospect, but she took pity on me. Well, what if I went brunette?

Ariyl touched her SmartFab headband and said, Jet black hair. Like a fluorescent tube flickering on, a shiny stygian darkness quickly covered her hair. I touched her now raven locks. They were dry and still soft to the touch.

This thing dyes hair? I asked.

It’s not dye. It puts out some kind of light-deal. Polarization field…thingy? Anyway, it gives you the right hair color if you want to blend in.

Can it do skin color too?

Of course. Want to see me African?

Actually, I would. But not right now. I don’t suppose it can shrink you half a foot?

No. And that is so unfair, anyway. Men in the past can be as tall as they want.

Wait a sec. That’s an idea. Can that thing dress you as a man?

Amused, Ariyl touched her shoulder.

Male clothing, Olympia, 432 B.C.

With some kind of hood, I said.

With some kind of hood, she repeated.

Her chiton thickened; its hem rose from her ankles to her knees, and it sprouted a white woolen-looking cloak that grew until it hung down from her shoulders to below her waist. She pulled the cloak over her head.

How do I look? she said, dropping her voice an octave.

Like a really hot tranny.

Hey! said Ariyl, bunching my cloak in her fist. She was upset. Not as mad as when that ill-starred Nazi cop called her a crazy f-ing bitch, but I could tell I’d angered her.

What’d I say? Tranny?

David, knock it off! That’s not an acceptable word! One of my closest friends went trans.

Oh, sorry. In 2013, tran—uh, the T-word is just, you know, a hip comic reference.

She smoothed out my cloak, relenting.

Well, that’s gonna change very soon. In 2109, it’ll get your ass kicked.

Seriously? You people in utopia get in fights?

Oh, hell, yeah. Pretty violent sometimes. But…you know us. We heal up fast.

So for you guys, the T-word is like the N-word?

What’s the N-word?

"Wow. You guys are advanced."

There’s a lot of your old insult words we don’t use any more. Like bastard. I heard that once in a vid, and it cracked me up. Sounds like turd. What’s it mean?

It means your parents were never married.

They weren’t. That supposed to be bad?

I guess not. Sounds like you guys have moved on in a lot of ways. Hey, could you like, slump forward and slouch your shoulders?

She did. She stopped looking so va-va-voom. But still not mannish.

I don’t suppose your SmartFab can supply you with a beard?

David, are you trying to tell me something? she smiled.

Ha, ha, I said, unamused. That does remind me of a joke. But it would only make sense if you know who Scarlett Johansson is.

I know a couple of them.

No doubt named for the movie star.

What movie star?

Never mind. Look, I know you want to see the Olympic Games, but we have a problem—women like you aren’t allowed.

What? Why not?

Because the men compete unclothed.

Duh. That’s why I’m here! I thought that was for the women in the audience!

This isn’t Chippendales. Another reference lost on her. It’s a modesty thing.

But it’s okay for the gay guys to watch? ’Cause I know a bunch who’d be drooling at the chance.

Well, in ancient Greece, they don’t think of themselves as gay or straight. Among the ruling class, it’s considered a natural aspect of male…

Okay, bored now. Just tell me why the athletes get all nuded up.

The story goes that a woman once won an Olympic race. The men were furious, so they insisted on competing in the nude so no one else could cheat.

Cheat? You mean, so they couldn’t lose to another woman!

Pretty much.

She rolled her eyes. Fine, I’ll have a beard. She touched the fine gold headband in her hair and said, Release hairstyle but keep the ringlets. The band’s static charge relaxed her sable coils into a curly mass. She pulled some of her those ringlets forward along her jawline, held them in place with one hand, and touched the headband with the other: Hold my hair along my chin.

She let go, and her curled black locks hung in place, like magic.

You’re kidding, I said. But though I hated to admit it, hers didn’t look any odder than some of the styled beards we’d seen already, including the one on the Angry Young Aristocrat. With any luck, she’d pass.

Ariyl walked to the front of the hut and found a polished bronze shield on a rack. She checked her reflection and adjusted the hood of her cloak.

I look handsome, she said in her deepest voice. C’mon, dude.

She took my hand and strode toward the temple.

We stood in line