What It's Really like to Travel through Time: First book, "Double Trouble"

By Gregory Paul Wilhelm

A global war veteran from the future who discovers a way to manipulate his naNabots into allowing him to travel through time somehow ends up being caught outside his own time. In order to get back what he lost without causing the universe to unravel into chaotic disarray, he once again enlists the help of an ancestor who had helped him before. But before they can begin to correct what had gone wrong, they must stay a step ahead of alternate versions of themselves who are intent on eliminating them.
Join Candace and Sam as they race through time, from the ancient Library of Alexandria to the Olympus Colony on Mars, correcting time wherever and whenever they can before their timelines are lost forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gregory Paul Wilhelm
• Release date: Jul 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005366513

Gregory Paul Wilhelm

Greg lives in Maine with his wife Lisa and their cat Ranger. He is currently busy working on a new fictional series titled "Tregothagan Quay", a side project about a fictitious village in Cornwall England. Its due date is to be announced soon. The second book of his new series "What it's Really Like to Travel Through Time" will be on hold 'til further notice.

Book preview

Preface

It wasn’t my idea. I know it sounds like something I would do but it didn’t happen that way. I agreed to do it because it was the right thing to do. No one else was going to do it. No one else was ever in the position to make it possible. I was. I had access and privilege. My background enabled me. I had been schooled by the best. At the risk of sounding cliché, my education was ‘beyond the bots’. I’ve always made sure not to ever allow them to lead me. Though there are some who would say that’s what they want you to think. All my life I’ve been told they were the enemy. They were the reason I served. I found out that was wrong too. Travelling through time will teach you that. It’ll teach you a lot of things. But most of all, it’ll teach you what trouble is.

Well I’ll be buggered! It really did exist! All my life I’ve always believed in the more mature consensus, that the story about the Lost City of Atlantis was fabricated. I would have to admit I still do, the made-up version that is. Now that I know the whole story, I could see how people could believe the romanticized version was real.

Throughout history, every attempt to find it had always failed. And now I know why. I can tell you now for a fact that no one would have ever found it. Not without time travel. I’m standing smack bang in the middle of Atlantis and I was still having trouble believing it ever existed. Yet, here it is, right in front of me.

I arrived only minutes ago, a few weeks before I couldn’t. It took longer than usual for my bots to translate everything. But thanks to them, working backward through hearsay and secondhand fables, I was able to track down where the story originated. I’m standing in a large open area in the middle of the city with various groups of people coming and going. I assumed the spot I chose would be their town square or something equivalent. Of course, I really didn’t expect an actual town square. Not like any I would’ve been accustomed to.

My proximity alert has told me there’s a high probability someone might see me phase-in if I remain in this spot. I looked around for a better place and saw a partial extension of a structure that might be less conspicuous. It was highly likely to be of no interest to anyone and therefore less likely for anyone to see. But of course, as always is my luck, I had to carefully manoeuvre between two groups to get there. If I touched anyone in either group, they might believe someone from the other group did it and an argument might ensue. That wouldn’t be good and definitely not what I intended. I stood beside the extension and checked my surroundings. No one’s looking. I dropped my personal EM field and wished I hadn’t. The smell permeated my nostrils. I swear I could taste it. I’ve never smelled anything like it before in my life. Though, if I’m honest, it does seem to be somewhat tolerable. It might seem pungent but it does get a little more bearable the longer you breathe it. In fact, I could swear I was starting to smell an underlying sweeter smell floating within all the tanginess.

Obviously, any so-called accurate depiction of the place was going to be completely off. The story had been told so many times and in so many ways, it was a fictional myth by the time Plato heard it. If anyone from the twentieth century ever saw it, they would’ve been very disappointed. There was absolutely no sign of any highly advanced technology anywhere. No one was standing around with the keys to the universe. There wasn’t any music playing, no buskers in the streets, or a video producer ready to yell cut. It’s real. I still can’t get over the fact that it’s here. I only made the effort to find it because I heard someone in the near future, the future from this point in time, talk about it as if it were some place he had actually been to. I would’ve never believed I’d be seeing it with my own eyes.

I wanted to explore. I wanted to remember every detail. I took in as much of my surroundings as I could. I wanted to remember how the air felt damp but comfortably cool, and that a light breeze occasionally came wafting by. I wanted to remember that the sky was… hang on a minute. The sky wasn’t normal. Someone had put an opal wall behind it, like some ginormous theatrical backdrop. It looked as though the entire earth was trapped inside a sundog. No one around me seemed to notice. Probably because, unless it’s raining fireballs, the people in this time period usually don’t care about the sky once the sun is up. It’s the night sky that mystifies them. I have absolutely no idea why the sky looks that way. It was very strange and unexpected. It appeared to be dissipating. The problem seemed to be taking care of itself, which was just as well. There was absolutely nothing I could’ve done about it. Not without knowing the cause, which was highly unlikely. This time period isn’t well known for its vast library of recorded history. I had absolutely no way of knowing which date or time to shoot for. Finding a parietal wall painting on the subject would be useless. Calendars and clocks are centuries away from barely being someone’s insane idea. I would have had to have overheard a conversation about this phenomenon from the same people I heard talking about this place before getting so much as close to tracking down the cause. All I could do was try to ignore it and focus on exploring Atlantis.

The market I was expecting to find stood a mere few feet away from me, or so I was told. If I hadn’t known I’m sure I would’ve overlooked it. A couple of people loitering next to some semicircular, hut-like structures, with their attention focused on a bit of trash on the ground, really didn’t say market to me. Their merchandise, which was spiny oyster shells and animal hides (a.k.a. the trash), was left lying in a jumble of mixed piles. It was obvious that none of it was sorted into any orderly display of any kind. It was as if they just dropped them on the ground and left them where they landed. I thought, Anyone claiming this to be a market has to be off their nut. But that could be just me. While I was busy making mental derogatory comments about their trading abilities, some customers stopped to trade with them.

I chose this spot because of the social activity it provided. Hearing people speaking a language we hardly know anything about is without a doubt a don’t-miss opportunity, to say the least. Especially after I discovered the way we thought ancient languages should sound was more off the mark than we originally thought. In a few hundred years from this point in time I heard some slight subtle differences in the way people pronounced certain words that anthropologists had never known about. At first, I thought it was some kind of strange affliction, but when I understood what they were saying I realized their way of pronouncing things could’ve been the very building blocks that influence the development of modern languages in Western Europe. It also became clear to me that this discovery would’ve solved the mystery of why some of the words and languages that prehistoric people spoke, people living thousands of miles apart, tended to have similar origins.

I still can’t get over it. This is all too surreal, so surreal that it’s like a surreal world, where everything is the very definition of surreal. I look around and I see it but I can’t believe I see it. And yet everything I trust, everything I rely on to tell me what to believe, tells me it is real. I travelled to Daynis, where the First Encounter occurred. I travelled to Stonehenge when it was new. But when I came here, to the Lost City of Atlantis, that’s when the weight of it hit me. Atlantis’ simple basic reality made me realize the truth of what I am actually doing. I travelled through time and it was so easy. It’s actually no more difficult than a daily commuter riding a train to work. I’m a time traveller.

I hear the people of Atlantis talk and my bots go on translating as if I were just visiting a foreign country on vacation. I get the feeling they’re unimpressed. I take one more look around and still find it hard to believe. And then I remember the sad bit. The bit where, in just a few weeks from now, the Red Sea will come crashing in to claim its spot on the map. And all of this hard work put into making this beautiful primitive city, the first one of its kind in the entire world, will be completely washed away and lost forever.

So far there haven’t been too many downsides to time travel. Mind you, I’ve only been at it for about a month now. Though there are some that are bad enough, currency, being one of them, especially in a place with no recorded history. Seeing how people trade is one thing but finding out how to get something worth trading is another. One of the first things I’ve learned that time traveling has taught me is that the world in my time is unique in how we pay for things. Whenever I want to buy something all I do is touch it and it’s mine. My transactions are processed automatically using tactile microsensors. It isn’t commonly discussed but I assume it’s done using something that vaguely resembles what you would call the internet. I’ve never handled any bills or coins of any kind. I’ve never had to deal with my accounts or bothered to think about them my entire life. I’ve never seen or heard of a bank. Before I started travelling, the only time I so much as had a passing thought about money was when I saw pictures of it in a history book, or an exhibit at a museum. But of course, this wouldn’t be at all possible without my bots.

Years before I was born, there was a significant technological breakthrough in the field of Cybornetic Biomedicine. They’re called naNabots. *The second N is a registered trademark. A trend started by Google when it changed its name to G. When they were introduced they were hailed as the indisputable answer to all the problems of everyday life. They’re made up of a complex construct of quantum carbon crystals and tubes contained within a recipient-compatible elastic micro outer shell. Their main purpose was to maintain the health of their host on a subatomic level. And so they did. Ever since the day they were made available to the public, no one has ever needed to schedule visits to see a doctor or order prescriptions. No one has had to suffer through an illness or feel pain and discomfort of any kind. Corrective eye surgery, wearing glasses, and vaccines became a thing of the past. Diseases are forgotten and genetic disorders prevented.

But health wasn’t the only thing they could manage. They do so much more. The Planck microkernels that govern their operating systems make it possible for other system applications to be incorporated within them. One such application replaced the handheld communication device commonly known as a cellphone or smartphone, essentially making them obsolete. Apps became system augments, or auggs, which can be either automatically or manually downloaded or deleted according to an individual’s habits and needs. Hacking bots is so impossible I’ve never heard the word ‘hack’ used in that way before. Gaining illegal access would require more than just a data connection. Even if it were possible, it wouldn’t be worth the trouble. The way the systems operate renders them useless to a hacker. Rotospheric sensors maintaining a constant genetic location awareness reading also make the software completely tamperproof. Any change in these readings with dissimilar genetic codes causes a system with the same encrypted proximity pairing codes to go into a full delete and auto reset mode.

But not everyone jumped at the chance to get in the queue. Those who prefer to be cautious questioned it, asking if we were absolutely sure this was the best solution. Especially so soon after the incident where some people were genetically edited without their knowledge. Rumours circulating throughout social media said this new technology had been developed using the same illegal tech that had been used in that incident as a template.

But the world governments had turned a blind eye. They only saw how it affected global finance. They saw the cost of healthcare take a steep drop. The price of taking care of citizens around the globe was finally manageable. So much so that the governments unanimously agreed without any deliberation that it be mandatory for everyone on planet Earth to be injected with these naNabots.

Slightly less than half the population of Earth was completely against it. An antipolitical group calling themselves The People for a Nanabot Free Earth was formed. Worldwide protests were held every day that often resulted in destructive and violent riots. Random bombings began only weeks later with each blast being more destructive and deadlier than the last. One day the protests stopped without warning. Only to be replaced by suicide attacks. The majority of their targets were anyone and anything associated with the corporation responsible for creating the naNabots. That’s when the world governments lost their patience and started a different approach. They no longer viewed these Nanfrees as citizens and declared war against them. A large part of it involved having the military working with the police. They would accompany them on street patrols, but rumours of snipers caused community officials to be concerned for the safety of their officers. They took their police force off the streets and allowed the military to completely take over. At first, it was only small towns and villages but it wasn’t long before cities followed. Socialist countries had declared martial law. While some people in the U.S. believed they should do the same.

The war was long and might’ve been longer had the Nanfrees been injected with naNabots. To this day, it’s still being debated whether or not to call this World War III. And, if it was, when it officially started.

Whatever it was, it was near its end when I was recruited. The skirmishes and bombings were less often and more localized. My time in the service might have been enough to give me high marks for actions of valor and earned me a respectable reputation, but my travels through time were making me regret it all. Witnessing personal struggles and how people lived through them, allowed me to see how the people in my time had completely lost sight of who they are and where they came from. And we call ourselves advanced.

I wanted to see more of Atlantis. I wandered into a section that could be considered residential. It was obvious the idea of a building was new. They had small openings where windows should’ve been and they were being used for passing things through instead of something you look out of. There were some buildings that showed signs of an attempt at adding a second story but it was apparently only for storage purposes. None of the homes had doors. Mainly because there wasn’t any place to put one. These people lived very open lives. Even though the houses had a lot of minor differences between them, overall they were all just very large, semicircular huts made of a beachrock type material that looked very much the same as the next. Obviously, there wouldn’t be any theaters or department stores but there were some food merchants working out of something I could only describe as community fire pits. I wasn’t hungry but the idea of being able to say I had a meal in the real Atlantis was enticing.

An alert sounded that only I could hear, courtesy of the naNabots. It was a double beep alert, meaning something was wrong with history. An anomaly had occurred. It wasn’t the first time I’ve heard it. I’m still