Free AI web copilot to create summaries, insights and extended knowledge, download it at here

1976

Abstract

"3dfc">I recall the final time I’d jump with some trepidation. Who could have known what was about to happen? Well, we should have! I mean, it’s not like anyone could see the future! Don’t you love sarcasm? It’s just so timeless.Anyway, there I was, the clattering difference and analytic engines divined the impossible directions through time and space. Hooded ranks of acolytes from the Babbage Institute hunched over input racks, spinners, and articulated arms and levers adjusting the time machine itself and thus the timeslip.Tonnes of Australian anthracite fed the time engine’s power plant with the highest quality coal into the world’s most complicated machine. All the heat that could be extracted from such a perfect energy source converted to impossibly rising steam pressure, enough to contort the timeslip.I will have sealed myself into the travel chamber with a certain trepidation. Of course, I would have known the outcome adjacent to departure, that’s what being unstuck is all about. And yet, I watched as I strapped myself into the seat and pulled the helmet over my head. And all along I know/knew/known/discovered the disaster as it unfolded.From what I have read about the event, the pressure chamber and two turbines had to be replaced immediately following my departure. Yes, before they pulled me back. And yes, before you say it, this broke every rule from volumes of well-established protocol.As much as the RTC acolytes attempted an exact recalibration to pull me home, they knew the chances were slim. Through what could have only been divine intervention, the time machine operators found me in the timeslip. Though even taxing the Babbage machines to their absolute limit, they could not effectively match vectors for both time and location trajectories.But acolytes being acolytes, they threw every toggle and bar switch they could in a panic

Options

response. “I got her!” — “I lost her!” — “Who are we looking for?” — all added to the chaos culminating in my ultimate decoupling.But travel I did.Instead of being greeted in the elegant return parlor by uniformed attendants offering a cup of tea and a warm scone, I came back to a much different world. Instead of that familiar room, I tumbled into the ocean. Within minutes, a crew of American sailors pulled me aboard an immense ship where I was promptly rushed off to a windowless room and offered a cup of coffee and a donut.They’d known exactly where I would be — and they wanted to talk.When I read the report “Aurelia Bliss has come unstuck in time” I felt it my duty to fill in some blanks. Everyone knows I disappeared, like some kind of Amelia Earhart forever lost in the timeslip. In the last century and a half, I’d been relegated to one of many topics for mystery shows, and reduced to little more than urban myth.For the longest period, DARPA encouraged me to stay low, and live in privacy. I’d moved to Florida and found a bungalow on a beach to pass my days as a retired time jumper.How they guessed even the partial truth they have I will never know. But now with a major motion picture coming out on me and my life, including my reappearance, well, I thought I should get ahead of the eight ball.I just thought many of you might be interested in hearing the real story before the sensationalized one that will appear in the movies. So I am here, telling my story in my own way.Now, after all this, why is time travel a woman’s game? Like I opened this report with, there isn’t enough steam left in the world to send me home. And everyone that ever entered the timeslip is gone, lost to the past. Everyone but me, that is. So the question is answered quite simply. I’m the last woman standing. I win.</article></body>

A WAYBACK MACHINE ADVENTURE

Why Time Travelling is a Woman’s Game

Aurelia Bliss has come unstuck in time.

**The Travel Chamber sat above a series of focused Aether Twister turbines.** Photo by British Library on Unsplash

I know what you’re thinking, there isn’t enough coal-powered steam left in all the world to save her even a few minutes in the morning to power her hair drier let alone send her off gallivanting around the timeslip. And you’d be right about that. Because, as I said, I have become unstuck in time.

I had been jumping for the Crown for several years by the time the first ever publicly acknowledged “Time Trolley” came online. That’s not to say that commoners were welcome to go back and chat with great-grands, that simply never emerged as an option. Security regulations limited the use of the machine to trained and seasoned jumpers like myself who had been involved with the Regimental Time Corps, or RTC before anyone even considered an unveiling.

In case you’ve never seen those first announcements and non-technical explanations, every active duty member of the RTC stood up on stages and described all the accomplishments that would have already happened once the machine’s boilers were finally stoked the following day.

In so doing, we had to invent new verb tenses as we went, keeping the Queen’s grammarians up at night in worry and ways that jumpers would no longer care about once yesterday arrived.

I recall the final time I’d jump with some trepidation. Who could have known what was about to happen? Well, we should have! I mean, it’s not like anyone could see the future! Don’t you love sarcasm? It’s just so timeless.

Anyway, there I was, the clattering difference and analytic engines divined the impossible directions through time and space. Hooded ranks of acolytes from the Babbage Institute hunched over input racks, spinners, and articulated arms and levers adjusting the time machine itself and thus the timeslip.

Tonnes of Australian anthracite fed the time engine’s power plant with the highest quality coal into the world’s most complicated machine. All the heat that could be extracted from such a perfect energy source converted to impossibly rising steam pressure, enough to contort the timeslip.

I will have sealed myself into the travel chamber with a certain trepidation. Of course, I would have known the outcome adjacent to departure, that’s what being unstuck is all about. And yet, I watched as I strapped myself into the seat and pulled the helmet over my head. And all along I know/knew/known/discovered the disaster as it unfolded.

From what I have read about the event, the pressure chamber and two turbines had to be replaced immediately following my departure. Yes, before they pulled me back. And yes, before you say it, this broke every rule from volumes of well-established protocol.

As much as the RTC acolytes attempted an exact recalibration to pull me home, they knew the chances were slim. Through what could have only been divine intervention, the time machine operators found me in the timeslip. Though even taxing the Babbage machines to their absolute limit, they could not effectively match vectors for both time and location trajectories.

But acolytes being acolytes, they threw every toggle and bar switch they could in a panic response. “I got her!” — “I lost her!” — “Who are we looking for?” — all added to the chaos culminating in my ultimate decoupling.

But travel I did.

Instead of being greeted in the elegant return parlor by uniformed attendants offering a cup of tea and a warm scone, I came back to a much different world. Instead of that familiar room, I tumbled into the ocean. Within minutes, a crew of American sailors pulled me aboard an immense ship where I was promptly rushed off to a windowless room and offered a cup of coffee and a donut.

They’d known exactly where I would be — and they wanted to talk.

When I read the report “Aurelia Bliss has come unstuck in time” I felt it my duty to fill in some blanks. Everyone knows I disappeared, like some kind of Amelia Earhart forever lost in the timeslip. In the last century and a half, I’d been relegated to one of many topics for mystery shows, and reduced to little more than urban myth.

For the longest period, DARPA encouraged me to stay low, and live in privacy. I’d moved to Florida and found a bungalow on a beach to pass my days as a retired time jumper.

How they guessed even the partial truth they have I will never know. But now with a major motion picture coming out on me and my life, including my reappearance, well, I thought I should get ahead of the eight ball.

I just thought many of you might be interested in hearing the real story before the sensationalized one that will appear in the movies. So I am here, telling my story in my own way.

Now, after all this, why is time travel a woman’s game? Like I opened this report with, there isn’t enough steam left in the world to send me home. And everyone that ever entered the timeslip is gone, lost to the past. Everyone but me, that is. So the question is answered quite simply. I’m the last woman standing. I win.