time travel

Chat-your-own-Adventure #35: 1986

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Author’s Note: This story was written live on stream with the audience voting to determine the path of the story.  The underlined phrases in the choice of three were the winning pathways.  Stop by twitch.tv/blainearcade if you’d ever like to participate in our interactive fiction.

Psycho Clown                  Epic Playlist                    The Guy Run Over by the Bus

He didn’t remember the destruction, as he’d never lived it, but he felt like he should have. The event was so cataclysmic, so volcanic, that it probably shook most of the world. People from a continent away did report hearing the boom. Raery Jeed was not one of them. This was not his experience, so he walked through it as cautiously as he could. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: The Falling Fossil

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: A history book sends its reader 1000 years into the future.

The library was restricted to anyone under the age of eighteen. It wasn’t just books that were kept there, but all sorts of anomalies. They called it a school because there many thins to learn there, but few people outside the facility understood what that really meant. The things you learned there could change you, even making you into a different person altogether. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: An Unopposed Sword Clashes

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt:  A kid gets taken by a band of space pirates and eventually finds a magic katana.

Even the bag over Maximus’s head was strange. It wasn’t burlap; it was some kind of rubbery fabric capable of holding a charge. He knew that because, every time they bumped his head into something, a jolt of static moved between the bag and the tip of his ears. He was only thirteen, just young enough to fit under the giant man’s arm like a briefcase. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: The Dawn of Fetch

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

The problems for Jetson started around the mid 1900s. He’d taken off like a shot straight out of the year 3500. God bless his owner for having such a hell of an arm. Jetson had bounded flawlessly through the debris of 3000, the socialist secret-less utopia of 2800, and even skipped across the surface of the oil-covered oceans of 2500.

The damn 1900s however, were full of people who had no idea what they were doing. They stumbled between philosophies and religions like they were hemming and hawing at a buffet. It was a century full of explosions both literal and figurative, and either of them could’ve distracted Jetson. The real problem with running through time was not getting distracted by the sad sights. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: Who has the Green Expectations?

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

The man seemed to misplace his name. All of a sudden he couldn’t remember it. He remembered his situation just fine. He was currently traveling through time, strolling through it really, and observing the effect. The time tunnel was a pleasant light show, though his mind had difficulty following it, what with the quantum confusion and all.

He remembered what he was doing before the time tunnel, just ten minutes ago, if minutes still existed. He was very devoted to his idea. He’d spent years getting everything arranged, though those years looked like nothing more than plastic bags over his shoulder now. Time travel had eluded everyone else, but his idea was fresh. Continue reading →

Singin’ in the Upper Paleolithic

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 3 Comments

(reading time: 24 minutes)

Of the sixteen time machines in operation, only one played a video of someone tap-dancing.  The machine itself wasn’t much to marvel at; in fact, it looked like a space heater from the 1970’s, just with a fancier coat of paint and 6,380 small wires snaking out of its base and entering all kinds of unusual places around the laboratory.  Some went into sockets, some hugged the wall and left the room, and others rose into the air dangerously enough to get tagged with black and orange warning stickers. Continue reading →

Paused Fire

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 3 Comments

The devices changed everything, allowing disasters to be frozen in progress, resulting in countless saved lives.  It takes dedicated people to work as rescue miners, tunneling into the paused time to extract the petrified people.  A bomb has gone off, and there might be something strange going on deep inside the solidified smoke and flame…

(reading time: 54 minutes)

Paused Fire

By

Blaine Arcade

My pager went off. Both our faces forgot what emotions they were supposed to express and sunk. Our perfect moment shattered by that obnoxious beeping. Why did it have to be now? Why did whatever maniac blowing up whichever politician pick now? It’s as if our moment was his countdown. Drop to one knee… 3. Open the blue velvet box with the paused water ring that cost me four months’ pay… 2. Ask her ‘will you marry me?’… 1. Boom. Pause.

50 hours until crystallization Continue reading →

A Long Wait for Meatballs

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 3 Comments

Clarence Under helps police the high altitude areas between the shafts of commercial space elevators.  The one warning they always give is to never attempt light speed within the atmosphere.  If you do, time will distort, and Clarence is left cracking open your vehicle to see just what of you is left…

(reading time: 1 hour, 17 minutes)

A Long Wait for Meatballs

I’ve got a couple short stories to tell you… well not exactly short.  They were short for me, just a few minutes or hours; they were painfully long for everyone else, sometimes days and sometimes years.

You can have the legal details first.  Legally, my name is Clarence Under.  I was born black to white parents, which my father was pretty upset about.  He left for a while but eventually came back.  Legally, I’m married to a fantastic woman named Alberta.  She co-owns a garden supply shop with one of her chatty friends.  (I think all the plants there do well because she’s always talking at them… I heard that makes plants grow) Alberta’s second job is worrying because, legally, I’m a police officer. Continue reading →