2nd Quarter 2025: Storytime Bloghop

Of course, I also managed a (last minute) story for you to enjoy:

I’m not Late. Really, I’m not!

If only, I thought. But then, if only had never helped anyone, as every half-decent time researcher knew. After all, it was the ministry’s motto, carved from stone and displayed above the entrance to our lovely university.

tempus fugit – non auxilium si modo

And if I didn’t use what little tempus I’d left, I’d fugit from the university. I didn’t put in the work last week when I should have and didn’t manage to make the time. The work I’d done for the professor had been so much more enticing than writing an essay about a barely known scribbler from the seventeenth century. Now I was late with only two hours left to the deadline.

I turned on my eBoard, bent my head over the worn wooden table in my dorm room, and started typing. When I’d just about finished compiling my hastily done research, the eBoard rang. Of course!

I was tempted to not answer it. There were still 500 words missing from the end of my essay, and my mind was whirling with facts on the seventeenth century. In the background the math necessary for the professor’s machine also kept computing and it had been hard to keep the two subjects separate. The incessant ringing threatened to destroy the carefully established balance.

But it was the professor’s number, so I didn’t have much choice. Without the money I was earning by working for her, I wouldn’t be able to keep studying, and there was nothing more enticing than the prospect of becoming one of the few selected people in the ministry one day. Who knew, maybe I’d be upon the first to actually travel through time. So I accepted the call with a glance at the clock. Half an hour left.

“Come over, right now.” The professor’s voice sounded angry. “Someone messed with the dials.”

“Five minutes.”

“Immediately.”

I didn’t dare to tell her that I needed to finish my essay. So I wrote a few bullet points as a reminder of what to write upon my return – hopefully before the online portal closed – and ran over the nighttime campus to the badly lit building with the professor’s lab in the basement.

I managed the familiar trip to the vault-like concrete emptiness in less than three minutes, but the professor still paced to and fro like a tiger in a cage. The red and green LEDs on a cupboard sized metal machine with a door-like attachment at the left side glowed in the semi-darkness of the lab, and her voice rang out like a bell even though she spoke quietly. “Did you jot down the dial settings before you left for dinner?” She didn’t even greet me.

“Of course I did.” It would be stupid to attempt fetching a sample from the time stream without exact coordinates. I went to the wobbly metal table beside the filing cabinet, the only other furniture in the big, empty room.

“It’s not there. I looked.” The professor grabbed my shoulder and pushed me toward the machine. “Didn’t you say you had a photographic memory? Go on, reset the dials.”

Well, photographic might have been a little overstatement, but I’d worked here long enough to know the numbers by heart. So I turned dials, pressed knobs, and rotated disks until all the setting were as close to what I remembered as I could get them. “Done.”

“You took your time. Now let’s see if it works.” The professor walked over until she stood to the side of the door-like structure. “What item did you choose?”

“Something unimportant.” I smiled. “I think no one’s going to miss a basket of apples from a cellar in Warwickshire.”

“You confirmed the research?”

“Of course.” And I’d used it as a starting point for my essay.

“Good.” The professor grabbed a lever at the side of the machine and pulled. The door lit up with swirls in bright colors as the machine hummed.

Something tugged at me. First on my sleeve, then my whole body. Like in slow motion, I saw the professor’s mouth fall open. The dials whirled back to their original position. A basket of apples came flying out of the illuminated door. And I was pulled in whether I wanted to or not.

I screamed.

And landed on my hands and knees in the wet grass of an early morning meadow. The air smelled sweeter than anything I’d ever breathed, and the world was radiant with yellow, orange, and white clouds against an increasingly light sky. As I stared at the scenery, a hand came into my field of vision.

“I’m sorry for scaring you.” A young, handsome man stood beside me, holding out his hand. “I didn’t mean to. May I help you up?”

His English sounded different from what I knew but I understood him without trouble. I allowed him to pull me to my feet and stared in surprise at the wide, brown skirt and linen blouse I was wearing. Could this be real? Had the professor’s machine worked as intended? Including the clothes simulator and the translation device?

“Do I know you?” It was hard to find words, but I knew I’d met him before. Or had I read about him? “You feel familiar.”

“I, too, feel like I’ve known you for all my life.” The young man smiled. He was younger than me, maybe by six, seven, or even eight years. “I’m William. May I take you home, Miss Hathaway?” He took my arm and the essay faded from my mind like a bad dream.

Visit the others:
Priceless Treasure by James Clapp
Ridesharing by Gina Fabio
Knot Safe by Barbara Lund
Before Sunrise by Angelica Medlin