Time Travelers

“It’s like a parallel universe. Except that what you are seeing has already happened in the past. It’s not happening now.”

          Mister G paused for a second to take a sip of hot chai tea. The elderly man sat comfortably in his favorite recliner, and he was attempting to explain to the two young cousins exactly how their time travels worked. The looks on their faces, however, told him they were growing more confused.

          “But we’re experiencing it now,” said Zammie “Not now now, but now then. When we were there.”

          “How can it be another universe?” asked Kyla. “You mean like the Milky Way?”

          “Milky Way’s a galaxy,” said Zammie. “It’s inside the universe.”

          “Oh, yeah. So how can there be another universe? Wouldn’t that be inside this universe, too?”

          “It’s not another universe outside of this one,” said Mister G. “You aren’t leaving earth. You are still here. Just at another point in time. A point in time that has already left its mark on the world.”

          “So we can’t go into the future?” asked Zammie.

          “No. At least, I don’t think so.”

Mister G had given the metallic Arjuna doll to Zammie as a reward for being such an astute history student at school. It was a doll that he had owned since he was a child growing up in India. It had been given to him by his father who had, in turn, received it from his father. He wasn’t exactly sure the age of the doll, but if he were to find out that it was over a thousand years old it would not have surprised him in the least.

The doll, which was made in the form of an ancient Indian archer, had magical properties that gave the owner the ability to travel back into time. Typically, based on what Mister G’s father had told him, users of the Arjuna would travel back into time and only have the ability to see the past for short moments, like looking through someone’s window into their living room for a few hours. They could not interact with the people. They couldn’t talk to them or even be seen by them. It was similar to Scrooge’s journeys in A Christmas Carol. When Mister G first used the statue as a child, however, he discovered that he could interact with the people in the past. He could talk to them, be understood, share their food, and by all other standards live in the past just as the actual people in time did.

When Zammie and Kyla told Mister G that not only could they interact with people in the past, but they could bring back objects from their time travels as well, he was shocked. He had known of no one who had been able to do that, not even him. For whatever reason, the Arjuna doll reacted strongly with the two young cousins, giving them the ability to experience the past unlike anyone else he knew.

“Can we grow old in the past?” asked Zammie.

“Can we die?” asked Kyla.

          “It’s difficult to say. It’s almost as if the rules of the doll are being rewritten for you. In my experience, no, you cannot grow old. I once went back to see Gandhi in India. I was there for nearly nine months, and I never even had to shave my beard. But your experience is different from mine. I also do not think you can die, but I wouldn’t test it. Don’t be taking on unnecessary risks.”

-- Opening of 

Time Trip #3: Witness to the First Thanksgiving 

"The First Thanksgiving" by J.L.G. Ferris (early 1900s)

TIME TRIP ADVENTURE 3

WITNESS TO THE FIRST THANKSGIVING 

Available at Amazon.com!

TIME TRIP ADVENTURE 1

THE JOURNEY TO ANCIENT GREECE 

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TIME TRIP ADVENTURE 2

A RIDE ON THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

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