This is the diary written by a traveler from
the 20th Century, specifically from 1967. This traveler wasn´t part
of a scientific expedition, but the innocent victim of a time warp, a phenomenon
of incomprehensible origin which strikes humans once in a while, but which
remain under recorded by the complete lack of proof proffered by those who
travel through time and manage to survive.
Diary Text Follows:
We planned for months the protest of October 21st
(that´s in 1967). We met and read about
Vietnam, some brought letters written by friends stuck over there, others
exchanged notes on how to escape the draft, get a deferment, whether to get a
chick pregnant with triplets was feasible, the trip to Canada….and rolled
joints.
The protest movement wasn´t exactly invented by
an ingenious brain. It was well advertised, but it hardly needed it: the
seductive nature, and the energy behind it, came from the simple fact that most
of the participants were middle class kids who didn´t want to go die or lose
their legs to make Vietnam free for democracy. There was a lot of talk about
the poor Vietnamese, but that was the cover. Nobody really cared for gooks,
especially anti American commie gooks who dressed in black and stuck sharp
bamboo sticks under prisoners´ toe nails.
On October 20th we formed a convoy
to get to the Pentagon. I was greatly surprised to see so many elderly people—some
of them were as old as 50. Most of them were parents of prospective draftees,
although some of them seemed to be radical college professors, the same guys
who taught us that dropping LSD was liberating, and that free love ensured a
healthy future.
Typical anti Vietnam War demonstrators in 1967
That day we hit the road I felt we were on our
way to a great adventure. Boy was I way off the mark. . It was wonderful to
escape our daily routine, and I especially enjoyed having sprinkle donuts with
strong coffee brought by one of the older couples. I was satisfied with the
picnic atmosphere until, early on the 21st, we got close to the Pentagon, and we disembarked next
to a crowd of rowdy characters chanting antiwar slogans. At that time I wished to be elsewhere. I saw
the faces of my travel companions, and they too seemed a bit lost. After all,
we were a very civilized group, we just wanted to avoid going to Vietnam, and
we had mixed in with a crowd which appeared ready to burn the Pentagon to
ashes. It just didn´t seem right.
So as we approached the Pentagon and saw the
tear gas cloud, our small group huddled under a tree, and debated whether to
get involved in the fight. And then we saw it: a supernatural light coming from
above, a spooky fog, and the ground began to shake.
Next thing we knew, we were all laid on the
ground next to the same tree, but the crowd had disappeared. We shook ourselves
out of our slumber, and stared at the cars going by…they were small, egg
shaped, and lacked the customary tail fins. We also noticed a few people
walking across the boulevard…heads down, talking to a small object they held in
their hands, which seemed to answer and occasionally drove them to touch it as
if they were typing.
I also noticed the sky was gray. Much grayer
than it had been hours before. And it was definitely much colder than usual for
October in Washington DC, about 30 degrees F (later I would find we had time traveled to
the winter of 2017, and that the planet´s average surface temperature had
increased one degree F, so I imagine that day the temperature would have been
29 degrees F or even lower if global warming hadn´t happened).
We walked down the avenue until we found a
kindly old man, who looked at us and smiled “Those dyed tied down T-shirts sure look
like the ones I used to wear 50 years ago”.
I whispered to my friends the guy was a bit
goofy, and my companions seemed to agree, so we ignored him. But then he took a
small rectangular object out of his pocket and asked us if he could take “a
selfie with you guys”. We were a bit confused, but decided to humor him, stood
in a tight group around him, and dutifully smiled as he said “Cheese” and held
the small gadget up in the air.
At that
point I got a glimpse of our image printed on the gadget´s surface, and that´s when I began to realize that something was really
wrong. So I asked him if he could explain how the device worked.
The old man answered “I´m not sure, I got this
for my birthday present. I´m just a
social sciences college professor teaching “Climate Change Communicational
Strategy” and “Micro-aggression Avoidance” in the School of Engineering”.
As you can imagine, we were quite confused.
