True Story™... Time Traveler

 

     I have recently wasted some valuable time away from work in pursuit of creating a better way.
Did y’all miss me?  Did anyone even notice I was gone?

     Of late, and as some of you have read, I am having to maintain a promise to dial back the supervillainy a bit.  I can still do my get money shit, I just have to do so in a manner that does not inflict suffering upon people.
I will miss the Cicadas thing.

So what is the play now?
Thanks for asking!

     One show I know you have heard of involves a WW2 nurse traveling back in time and falling in love with an 18th-century Jacobite warrior.  I got WAY more into this show than I expected to when my wife sat me down and held my eyes open to make me watch.

(live footage)

The whole time,  though, I thought to myself “why is this bitch going back to the 1700s from the 1960s with the knowledge of most modern conveniences and ain’t inventing ALL that shit and setting her progeny up to be the world’s first trillionaire dynasty or some shit?”  I may have asked this out loud and been informed that I was ridiculous.

     I had an idea.  If time travel is a thing, and the idea remains that I could go back in time and make some changes to fix the 2020s for me and mine, I’mma go back and figure the shit out!

Armed with a plan and objective, I set aside a corner of my garage not already being consumed by electronic or exercise equipment and I used YouTube tutorials to build a time machine.  I spoke with my aunt about the archive work she did on the family to trace us back to Africa before the kidnapping coming to America.  I chose a bit after that in what is now known as Zimbabwe a little before Cecil Rhodes arrived and made it Rhodesia.  Destination set, let’s get to going…

     “Why go there?” you ask?

Well, dear reader, if I go there, I can hip my people to the ills of the pink people arriving on boats (or however they arrived, as Zambia is landlocked).  My task was preparation for said pink people with weaponry and possessing simple knowledge of what would happen if we didn’t fight.  While I was there, I put them onto the gold, oil, diamonds and other precious minerals and how to monetize them before the usurpers ever arrived and got a chance to try them.  I didn’t take any 2022 technology with me, everything would be ”discovered” and “invented” on the way through history albeit with an unbeknownst headstart.

Having legit visited the ancestors, I put them on to the get-money’est of get-money schemes in the history of getting money.  I did so without giving anyone any overtly specific information on how I knew this or getting anyone pregnant.  Still, I knew that making this change in the past could change things heavily and perhaps render the future Phlip-less but I was after something more important than myself.  If my blood could prosper and not go through the shit we did, then it would be perfectly okay with me to not exist.
I could have gone back into the 1960s or 70s with $10k and bought like 4 cars in my grandparents’ name and hid them somewhere before coming back to a million-dollar collection all for myself, but that would still have left the pain and suffering of the Rhodes family, more slavery/blood diamonds, and lord knows what else.
That is the beauty of sacrifice.  One could say that I have learned selflessness in supervillainy through the years.  Odd.

So here I am, traipsing about the world of my ancestors 153 years in the past…  I am using information I gleaned from LITERALLY sitting in the den at my grandmother’s house reading encyclopedias  to teach these people to extract the commodities from the ground, how to process them and profit from them.  I instilled in them how to protect them.  During my time in the village, I would become known as “The Traveler” for how I seemingly arrived from nowhere and everyone assumed I was passing through.

Okay…  We are as industrialized as one can be with 1870-era-available technology.  We’re making money hand over fist, we’re trading and my people know the worth of what they are taking from the ground, The Hwytes arrive…  As expected and as we know history to demonstrate, they got in good with the group and learned the local ways of doing things.  Naturally, a virus first has to learn the life of its host before negatively impacting that life.

As the one who introduced and taught the “industry” of my people, they deferred to The Traveler when the newcomers had question about the hows and whys of the operations.

Now it is 1871.  A sickly Cecil Rhodes arrives with an entourage…  The day-to-day continues to be what it is.  I know what happens, historically, without my hands on this and I also know that my hands on this to this point will have changed the future.  So here we are.  I am still effectively managing the situation while keeping literally nothing, knowing that I will be going back to the future as soon as I slit Cecil Rhodes’ fucking throat.

I keep an eye on his (and their) daily movements.  They are quite apparently watching and trying to learn from me too, impressed how I seem to know things that will happen before they happen.  I mean, I DO know what will happen before it happens since I have come back from generations in the future but that is beside the point.
In 2023, and thanks to Burn Notice reruns, I know when I am being followed in the car.  In 1871, on foot and/or carriage, I am not similarly advantaged.  One morning after breakfast, I am cooling off to the side minding my own business relaxing when I am approached by a woman who came in with The Hwytes.

 

WW: “Good day, sir.”

Me: “Hello”

WW: “I’m to understand that they call you ‘The Traveler’?”

Me: “Verily so.”

WW: “Why is that?”

Me: “Well, naturally, because I am not from here.”

WW: “From whence did you arrive?”

Me: “Far – FAR – away from here.”

WW: “I see.  How are you called?”

Me: “Pardon?”

WW: “Surely ‘The Traveler’ is not your name.”

Oh shit…  I’ve been able to exist a little while without my actual name.  Time to use an old fave…

 

Me: “Oh--…  It’s Moe, Moe Phillips”

WW: “I’m Guinevere, wonderful to meet you Mr. Phillips”

Me: “Thank you”

WW: “You seem to know a lot about the lands here and are quickly ahead of problems.  It is uncanny how proactive you are.”

Me: “I have spent quite a bit of time studying.”

WW: “Where were you educated?”

Me: “I read from the writings of travelled men before me in my grandparents’ study starting at an early age.”

WW: “Interesting”

 

     As we’re having this conversation, I couldn’t help but think “shit, this woman looks familiar.” 
Given the depth of what I am attempting here, it does me NO good for anyone to look familiar to me.  I’mma need to cut this trip short.  It is time to cut Rhodes’ throat ASAP and either get Back to the Future (HA!!!!) or fade to nothing when I finally ruin my own future existence.

     I spent two more days CLOSELY following Rhodes’ moves to know when he would and wouldn’t be alone, when I could get up behind him and even when he might be drunk and easily taken.
It’s on, I know that after breakfast and the first round of morning tasks, the asthmatic Rhodes goes to his quarters to rest.  I will watch from as far as possible and strike right then, then get the fuck back to 2023 if 2023 is still there for me to return to.

     The groups finish the morning tasks, I am JUST about to split off and make my move and…

 

Guinevere: “Excuse me, Mr. Travele--…  err…  Mr Phillips?”

Me: “Yes?”

Guinevere: “Sorry to bother you, but I couldn’t help but be intrigued by you.”

 

     Is this woman trying to catch some dingaling?  I am still quite happily married in the future, I can’t do no stupid shit right now.  And, again, I need not get anyone pregnant in a land and time where contraception doesn’t yet exist.

 

Me: “Oh?”

Guinevere: “Yes”

Me: “Umm…”

Guinevere: “It’s just…  You ALWAYS have exactly the right answer.  My grandsire might have thought you a powerful warlock or sorcerer.”

Me: “No, no, I--…”

Guinevere: “Don’t worry.  I won’t tell anyone, I just wanted to query if you had some connection to the ether.”

Me: “No, I am simply well-studied and know nature.  Nothing more, no magic tricks”

Guinevere: “Well thank you…  Sorry to bother you.”

 

     Dammit, this woman done made me miss my spot!  To top it off now that I know I was being watched, at least by her, I need to act as if I was doing something other than murder.

     I still couldn’t help but think “I KNOW this bish from somewhere and it is KILLING me that I can’t remember where.”

 

Then it hit me, hiding in plain sight.

     Guinevere…  Guinevere…
It’s 1871, so a lot of people are still holding on to the traditional spelling/naming conventions.  I can’t just whip out a smart phone and Google shit like that…  Think, Phillip, think!
OH SHIT!  The name “Guinevere” went out of use sometime back in the days in favor of “Jennifer!”  I can’t seem to get away from this nosey, needy-ass broad in my own state, now I apparently can’t seem to shake her 150+ years in the past!

 

     Mission aborted.  I couldn’t spend any more time in the past, not even to take the time to cut Cecil Rhodes’ open like a thanksgiving turkey and prevent his atrocities.
I waited for everyone to go to sleep and came on back to the present.  I did the Googles on the DeBeers company and, as if the fact that I hadn’t arrived in 2023 mostly as I had left it wasn’t evidence enough, Cecil Rhodes did Cecil Rhodes shit and Rhodesia went on to become a thing despite my best efforts.

FUCK!!!