- The Time Traveling Salesman
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- 2/6 || A dead cow almost stops the telephone from existing || Rec. 219
2/6 || A dead cow almost stops the telephone from existing || Rec. 219
Jon has to make a plan and travel to 13 Hope st.
JP Taxman
December 21, 2024
If you missed part one…
Back at the Salon
“Amber!
Are you listening or are you just going to dance and file my toe nails?”
“I’m listening! And dancing. And filing your toe nails. I’m a good multitasker Jon!”
“Okay, okay, as long as you’re listening. I can just go tell this to a 30 time encrypted GeneAi in the shape of a potato you know?”
Amber chuckled, “Please continue.”
Jon carries on with his long winded story…
Okay, so I made a quick bite to eat in the MoFood, god I love that thing. It’s so terrible I can’t travel with one.
Oh, shit!, wait, duh, why don’t I put one in my suitcase!
Sorry, so, anyhow, after I ate, I did a quick costume change to fit the era we were headed to. I was especially excited to wear a dope top hat! Of course I went grey, but I put a pretty pink flower in the black silky band that wraps around crown of the hat.
Amber asked, “dope? Like stupid?”
“Sorry, no, dope is a word from the 80’s-90’s I picked up that basically means I like it and think I look good in it… It can also refer to weed.”
“Oh, okay, people used weird words back in the day.” Amber concluded as she let Jon continue his story.
Anyhow, in order to pull off an idea of this magnitude, and to ensure it sets properly, it takes interacting with the ideator at several different points in their history. This sucks for two reasons, 1) interacting with them twice at two different points in time increases their chances of catching on to the fact that I’m a time traveler, and 2) I have to do a shit ton of traveling, which makes timing everything more difficult, by roughly a factor of 10.
This meant I had to do some subliminal implanting in Alec’s young mind when he lived in Edinburgh Scotland. Luckily for me, since I ranked up so high in the company, I get the perk of having two offices, my other one is in my home country of England in Fresh London, which back then was just known as London.
So to avoid having to take a slow ass boat that would have taken weeks, I called a drone to fly me over to my London office.
After grabbing my suitcase and a few snacks for the trip I got in the drone and was off.
…to sit in a drone for fucking 10 hours.
I always make sure to get a drone that has bed-tech. I’m sleeping for at least 2 hours comfortably. The rest of the time I use to plot my strategy to pull off the job.
After some good zzz’s and what I thought to be a mostly thought out plan… I arrived at my London office and hunkered down to make some finishing touches to it.
I had Anna Iris set the date to September 6, 1860, on the qTicker PRO, Alec had just turned 13. I knew it was important I start when he was young so that the seed of the idea for the Telephone had time to grow inside his head.
My initial plan was to meet Melville Bell at his house on 13 Hope Street and give him a clear set of instructions to implement over the course of the next 20 years. On the list was:
1 - Tell him he has to offer to pay for everything to make the mechanical head.
2 - Continue to feed his curiosity of sound and speech, teach him everything he knows.
3 - Both of Alec’s brothers die of tuberculosis, so it’s important that he supports Alec through this rough period, especially Melli, who Alec was close to. He must tell him to focus on work and keep at it, guide him to use his work as a distraction from the pain.
4 - Offer continued financial support when he’s working on the Telephone and multi-telegraph.
5 - He can’t support Alec’s love for Mabel, Alecs future wife at first.
After delivering the list, and getting DNA agreements processed, I had a sit down with Alec. He was at the age of 12 so it’s very unlikely he’d remember a random stranger he met once at his house for 5 minutes.
What I told him was that he was, “going to let the world hear and speak to each other.” Vague enough so he’d brush it off, and direct enough that it should become an internal compass in his subconscious for the remainder of his life. To help cement it in, it was important that I had him say this back to me as question.
I’d also put this saying on a few flyers and in some ads I knew he’d come across in the newspapers at random points throughout his life, it’s amazing how small actions like this get into people’s subconscious's so easily, believe it or not it’s small actions like these that drastically improve my implant’s reinforcement percentages. I learned this tactic from Darren Brown while watching his tv show in the early 2000’s.
Anyhow, having my plan set, I walked out the door and onto the streets of London in September 6, 1860. I headed over to the train station where I hopped on a train to Edinburgh Scotland, the city that Alec’s family resided in at the time.
To pull this whole plan off it was critical that I was at Melvilles house at 6:30pm. Everything was looking good, I was even early for my train,
but,
As I was waiting, chatting up a beautiful young debutant who was headed to Whales, disaster struck.
My train had been delayed. Fucking, god, damn, cow, died on the tracks. This is why traveling sucks, how is it that people in my time period (TP) have figured everything out except teleportation? Star Trek got that so wrong, and I’m super disappointed about it. I mean sure, there’s portal tech that’s finally working, but they only use that to travel to other planets, not from place to place on a single planet.
Luckily, however, the train people had figured it out and my train was headed our way, it was going to be close but there was still a chance I wasn’t going to make it. Alec went to bed at 8, so if I was too much later than 7:30 I wouldn’t have had a chance to meet him. As you know, The Employee Handbook doesn’t allow me to be within 3 days and 50 miles of myself at any point in time. So it was critical I made this happen that night or else all my timing would be off.
Eventually the train arrived… about an hour late, but I got the debutants address then boarded the train.
After a great train ride, because almost all train rides are great. Traveling may suck, but trains are the best form of transportation. Trains are my consolation prize for not getting teleportation, especially when they start going at close to the speed of light.
Sorry, got distracted, but I mean, trains, come on! Anyhow, we arrived at 5:45pm… and I still had an hour or so carriage ride to their house, of which, I would have to find…
Yeah, taxis, not a thing back then.
I paid some semi-rich guy way too much money to take me to the house. Nice fella, on the ride he told me all about how he’s donated hundreds of thousands of dollars into researching the human anatomy. He also supplies the bodies, it’s actually how he made his fortune, selling dead bodies, mainly the unclaimed soldiers from battlefields to universities for research and medical training.
A great racket for the time if you ask me.
Anyhow, Barney and I arrived precisely 6:57pm at 13 Hope St. I paid him an extra 2000 of whatever the currency was as the time and ask him to wait for me, then said I’d give him another five grand when we arrive back in London.
He happily agreed, apparently that was a lot of money back then.
Back in the fuzzy chair…
Amber was massaging Jons hand as she asked: “Wait, so what happened with the debutant?”
Jon smiled coyly, “I’ve been having Anna Iris send her love notes I wrote, and gifts like flowers and jewelry.”
”Little much don’t you think?”
“Amber, by todays standards, absolutely, but back then that’s just how it was mandatory, especially someone of her prominence. I’ll take her to a lavish dinner maybe later this week when I go visit my Mom.”
“What is this woman going to think when she finds out you’re not going to marry her?”
“I’ll explain it… kind of, like I can’t tell her I’m a time traveler, but honestly she’s got at least 30-50 men vying for her attention, she’ll be alright. Also I looked her up and she has a very loving relationship with her husband, which could be argued she doesn’t arrive at without meeting me. We’ll I know that for a fact, I’m going to introduce them. I always to my best to leave the women I meet better of then when I met them. My intent is never to harm, just to enjoy.”
“Okay, well I guess that makes sense. We’ll talk more about this later.”
Did you know that we hacked Jons computer and stole the file with his precious Often Unnoticed Moments
We also had a chat with him about using ‘Password’ as his password...
But you can get access to the files and any new ones he records for just $5 of your currency units a month!
We have to charge for this because we had to pay our best hackers to access them. He wasn’t supposed to have them in the first place, so that’s why we feel justified in acquiring them for you.