Text: Solveig Hansen, 2022

A time traveler’s dilemma: Great Expectations, a literary Saturday soirée, or a glass of absinthe?

WRITING PROMPT: If you had a time machine that let you spend one hour in a different time period, where would you go?

“Coming back in time, changing history — that’s cheating,” says Kirk to future Spock in Star Trek, as they prepare for trans-warp beaming. Of course, at the time, Kirk didn’t know he and his crew would do exactly that (at least in the original timeline), when they travel back to 1986 San Francisco in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home — to find humpback whales, invent transparent aluminum in the process, and ultimately save the Earth.

Time travel captures the imagination more than almost any other concept. We often forget that we are already time travelers — moving steadily into the future, second by second. Still, the idea of stepping outside of our timeline, even for an hour, is incredibly tempting. Would you glimpse the future? Relive a personal memory? Witness a historic event?

If I could visit the future, I’d choose an Earth colony in space — without question. But what excites me more is the idea of traveling into the past, simply to observe. Like watching a movie unfold in real time. There’s so much to choose from:

• The fall of the Berlin Wall
• Woodstock
• Apollo 11 descending toward the lunar surface
• The shores of Normandy on D-Day
• Titanic in her final hour
• The first performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, with the deaf master himself on the stage
• Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel
• The Great Library of Alexandria

And the list goes on…

You could go back to 33 AD to see what really happened, or be a fly on the wall at the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, witnessing the forging of religious dogma. Or even further back — to the invention of the first alphabet. Or why not go all the way and watch the first rays of sunlight touch the newborn Earth?

But I wouldn’t choose any of those.

Instead, I’d take a quieter route — snooping around for inspiration to bring back to the present. No transparent aluminum, no whales, no tampering with the timeline. Just one hour of pure creative input.

I’m torn between three possibilities:

One: Visiting Charles Dickens in his study at Gad’s Hill Place as he works on Great Expectations.

“Good day to you, sir,” I’d say.

Perhaps he’d reply, “Would you like a cup of tea, dear?”

I’d ask about his characters — does he create full biographies before writing them? Does he know how the story ends, or does it unfold as he goes? I’d ask him whether he sees himself more as a voice of society or an entertainer. Things like that. And if I told him I was from the future, would he ask, “Am I still remembered? Do people still read my books?”

Two: Swinging by a Saturday soirée at 27 Rue de Fleurus, Paris, in the 1920s. Gertrude Stein’s legendary salon.

Maybe Picasso, Matisse, Braque, Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, and F. Scott Fitzgerald are there. I imagine Stein seated in her chair with poodle Basket on her lap, while her companion Alice Toklas entertains the wives of the artists.

Three: Wandering the streets of Montmartre at the turn of the 20th century.

This is what I choose.

Writers. Painters. Dreamers.

Yes, we romanticize them — but every era needs its rebels. There was destruction, yes, but also creation. I’ll raise my glass of absinthe to that.

Where would you go?

Image: Gerd Altmann @ Pixabay