Reverse Time Travel
I was meditating, sitting on a meditation pillow when a tiny spark of an idea for a story came to me this morning.
Before I share and expand upon that idea, you should know that the Back to the Future movies were my favorite movies as a kid.
I also loved the book The Time Machine.
More recently, I've fallen in love with the Loki series, which introduced the "Time Variance Authority" (TVA) to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and features Loki, God of Mischief, as he uses this futuristic quantum technology from the TVA to travel across time and space.
Time travel is so cool, but it always seems to be either (1) present day people traveling to the past, (2) present day people traveling to the future, or (3) future people traveling to the present day.
What if–hear me out now, hear me out–what if someone from 1,500 years ago traveled to the present day?
...but how would that even be possible?
Magic.
Who had magic 1,500 years ago?
Merlin.
What if Merlin uncovered the remains of the Library of Alexandria and found, magically concealed within its ruins, a scroll of forbidden magic?
Time Magic.
What if Merlin traveled to 2026 and was mind-blown by our advances in technology, but disappointed by our complete neglect and denial of the magical arts?
What if Merlin was stuck here and couldn't go back to the past?
What sort of adventures would he find himself in?
Or what if he arrived next year, in 2027, as a newly sentient, self-aware Artificial Intelligence begins its rise to power and seeks to cleanse the planet of the only species actively destroying it: humans.
The end of Artificial Intelligence and the dawn of Machine Intelligence.
Sentient Machine Life in opposition to Sentient Biological Life (or rather, opposed to humanity which it sees as the greatest threat to planet Earth).
And then there's Merlin, teaching a team of young, misfit, present-day individuals magic to help him fight the machine super-intelligence and save humanity.
By the end of the book, I hope we find harmony between the chaos of human intelligence and the order of machine intelligence.
Does Merlin go back 1,500 years to his original timeline at the end of the book?
Or does he stay and start a school for sorcerers and sorceresses?
Book 1 could be magic versus machine.
Book 2 could be magic versus dark magic.
Book 3 could be magic versus aliens or zombies, because why not?
What if the ripples Merlin makes in the timeline gets the attention of TEA, the Time Enforcement Agency?
Or is that leaning too much in the direction of Loki / Umbrella Academy?
Cool concept but maybe a little overdone, yeah?
This idea, that I've now spent like 500 words exploring, started off as only a single sentence in my mind this morning:
What if a time-traveler traveled from the past to the present instead?
Cuz that hardly ever happens in time travel stories!
Oooh...
What if the misfits Merlin trains are a mix of neurodivergent people?
People who have ADHD, or OCD, or autism, or are addicts, or monks who meditate for hours each day, or are musical prodigies, or are psychonauts (people who take a lot of super high doses psychedelics).
What if, given modern day distractions, the failings of our educational system, and layers of societal beliefs about reality, Merlin finds himself unable to teach magic to anyone "normal."
But people who are "special," people whose brains are on some sort of spectrum and work differently, either by nature or by nurture, are the ones who are able to learn magic in special ways best suited to their particular proclivities.
As one example, maybe Merlin teaches the musician to play their musical instrument with magical intent, and as long as they play it, they cast and maintain an aura that benefits them and anyone else who was touching them when the music begins. The aura could make them invisible, or make time move slower for them, as long as the music is played.
Merlin might be the only "normal" person in the group, and he's the teacher having to train very different individuals with very different quirks.
But Merlin is old, in his nineties.
His balance isn't good.
He runs out of energy.
He has digestive issues.
He farts a lot.
So he's a normal old dude who time-traveled from the 6th century and he's the greatest sorcerer who ever lived, but he's fragile in his old age and isn't capable of single-handedly going to war against machines or aliens or zombies or whatever and he needs help if he is going to save the world once more.
This time from a threat he never could have imagined.
He may be old and fragile, but he was once a badass sorcerer.
He mastered many powerful spells, fought in many wars, and rumor has it that he single-handedly toppled not one, but two empires in his day.
He was a God among men.
A Legend among Legends.
But he's 97 years old now and he finds himself in our magic-less world against threats to humanity that has him befuddled.
One by one, he finds and recruits the most unusual and exceptional individuals from various walks of life, helping each of them unlock their own unique magic.
Together, against all odds, and just barely in the nick of time, they save humanity.
Hooray!
Our heroes saved the day and all was good.
The End
Epilogue
Helen turned into the empty gas station and parked right in front of the mini-mart.
She turned off her car and paused, glancing out the windows to make sure nobody was around.
It was the dead of night, so she wasn't expecting anyone to be out around here.
How far did she drive to get to this no-name gas station?
She was sleep deprived but she trembled with anticipation.
The thrill of fighting alongside the others against those machines.
The thrill of using magic.
She craved for that thrill, needed it.
She had a taste and she was hooked.
She'd spent most of her time since that final battle practicing her magic, but practice wasn't enough.
Practice paled in comparison to the real thing.
She needed to use her magic for real.
Helen walked up to the mini-mart and took one final look around before pushing the door open and entering.
The door closed behind her and she stopped, slowly turning around and locking the door.
A grin spread across her face.
This was going to be fun.
