seymoure

It was in the summer of 2036 that Time Travel was just a beta-program. There were Government offices set up for the containment of the unsafe use of the technology.

The amazing thing was that Time Travel was massively energy efficient. Since it worked powered by the magnetic energy of the Earth’s poles. It would never lose a watt of its power by allowing people to travel from one time to another, since they all existed within the magnetic region powered by those poles.

The first thing the inventors discovered was that all of time is constantly present. Time is magnetic. We, with iron in our system, were pulled through time without knowing it. Everything has some small amount of iron in it, so everything progresses through time. The less the deposit of iron, the slower the progress.

That is why most vegetables age at such varying rates. Trees last so much longer due to their low ratio of iron within them.

When people learned, some 24 years later, that time travel existed, they were ready to break down the doors to get at it.

Some wanted to meet their ancestors. Imagine the ability to see your parents as children!

Some few wanted to relocate to a “better time.”

Even few were just curious to see the massive events of time. Travel agencies lobbied to be allowed to create “Time Tours.” If you wanted to see the Parting of the Red Sea, the falling of the Berlin Wall (after seeing the construction), see the D-Day Invasion first hand! And, yes, there were those who wanted to hunt Dinosaurs! Do people learn nothing?

The government was fairly able to stop the tech from getting out. But, as with all things, criminals will find a way to steal.

Smuggling was the greatest market.

Auctions were held underground for the most amazing articles one could imagine. And, since the crooks were more worried about money than the stability of the timeline. So the Mona Lisa, nearly impossible to steal now, vanished from several places in time. The one that finally made it to the present without vanishing in the custody of this thief or the other, was from the day Da Vinci finished painting it. The paint wasn’t even dry.

When the crook got it here he found it wasn’t worth anything. It hadn’t been around to be looked at all those years. It wasn’t famous. Only by the burglar actually returning it did it return to its former fame.

At this point theft of art tapered off.

Theft of personal artifacts of famous figures became the choice of time traveling crooks. With fingerprints as evidence some things became worth something. Hitler’s possessions must have played havoc with the lunatic’s mind, since anything might just cease to be all the time.

The first thing that became a huge popular hit was smuggled food. Original sugar sweetened sodas were a big hit. Candies of the early 20^th century were also major money. Truckloads of these items were shot from the past to the present.

But it was Bob Franklin who hit upon the greatest sellers. Since the early days of the 21^st century processed food had become a target of those who would have us all eat healthier. Favorites of fast foods lost much of the evil fats and other items that made them taste uniquely.

Bob brought forward a van full of Original Original Recipe Kentucky Fried chicken. It lasted ½ hour after going on sale.

KFC truck

Since the White Castle chain had gone out of business after trying to make their product dietarily safe. Bob brought a School Bus of hot fresh sliders and there was almost a riot when they were all gone.

The Government arrested Bob for illegal use of time travel, but the genie was out of the bottle.

Before the month was out, chicken was an endangered species in all the world. When KFC couldn’t fill all the orders, they bought out farmers who wouldn’t be able to repopulate their chicken farms as quickly. Shipments of chicken feed became golden, and cost as much. Soon it was impossible for farmers to afford to feed the chickens they contracted to sell, they went out of business.

No one was raising chickens.

In 2030 a blighting disease struck the remaining chicken population. This kind of death might have been survivable with a normal numbers of poultry, before the time travelers devastated it.

Now, only by treating them like the California condor, chickens were teetering on the edge.

Thus did time travel alter the world’s economy and eventually threaten all the people.

That’s why I came back to live in 2012.

THE END