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            “Okay, shot: A guy is clambering up a hill…”
            “Clambering?”
            “Clambering up a steep, rocky hill in the bright sunlight of the fucking Ancient World, okay?  He reaches the top of the rise and on the other side is the fucking Battle of Thermopylae, or ancient Alexandria or Babylon!  Title comes up: The Histories.  That’s the name of Herodotus’s book, the first history book.  Creative, right?  The guy invents history but can’t invent a … clever …”  Ray laughs too long, stuck momentarily in a self-effacing thought loop (nerves), then finally reacts to the money man’s stone gaze by continuing his description.  “And so this guy has a mission, whether it be to fight in the Battle of Thermopylae or steal into the medieval sultan’s harem or just live in Crocodilopolis for a week.  And we’ve got four cloaked cambots filming him.  Live.  It’s the new History Channel.  It’s an alternate-reality show.  Because the way time travel works, as we all now know, it doesn’t matter how you fuck with the timeline because you’re still gonna come back to where you left from – here.  That timeline, who cares!  But the entertainment potential there…”
            “Crocodilopolis?”
            “It was an ancient Egyptian city, center of the worship of the crocodile god Sobek.  See, and this is why I’m the guy to make this show, because I’m a history enthusiast-slash-expert…”  Ray attempts a cool flex of his shoulders.  “I’m a buff.  You know, no degree or anything, but, trust me – I know more than you.”
            “About history.”
            “Yeah.  And trust me also about this too – the history most people think of is probably some boring stuff, right?  But the places I am going to send people, the stories I will rocket them right into the middle of – there are stories … out there … in the ethers of time, of all the moments that have happened on this Earth – buddy, I am telling you the ancients didn’t play.  I mean, like, they did not play.  Archimedes, in the ancient times of Greece and Egypt and all that, built a giant wooden claw that came out of the walls of Alexandria and was able to actually pick up sea vessels, the triremes and quadriremes, and then drop them onto other ones and fling them around.  You know, similar technology to our modern construction giants but back then, and just this one dude did it once, but I know this shit and I can send people there with fucking cambots.  Stealthed cambots.”
            “Stealthed?”
            “It means that they will be effectively invisible to human sight.  Not entirely invisible, but mostly.  You’ve seen the invisibelt technology?”
            “The invisibelt.”
            “It looks a lot like that – like your basic moving cloak.  That, of course, is so the cambots don’t film each other and so the residents of the ancient world, our ancestors, don’t see the cambots floating around our hero, who ideally will have some chance of maybe actually fitting into the culture at least to some extent, as a fellow human.  Though they often wouldn’t as well, to hilarious results.  See, each contestant, as it’s planned right now, will be given five different possible missions ahead of time so that they can study as they see fit, be it by learning languages or attaining skills through notransference or…” Ray chuckles, “…by reading books or whatever.  It’s their three days.  And that also gives us a chance to introduce the contestant and film them for a few days.  Regular people – you, me, your mother, your neighbor, your plumber.  The president?  You see the variety I’m thinking?  So we’ll get to know them and we’ll watch them choose what to learn and take and then we’ll have them say their goodbyes to their family and let the audience get nice and attached, and then we bring ‘em into the studio and throw ‘em in the ol’ time machine and zap ‘em right back to … one of the five options they were given.  And they have to find out when they are and where they are and figure out what that means they have to do.  And, of course, the whole time, they’ll have audio connection to our time thanks to Meltronia’s new mic that allows for the energy translation between timespheres.  So we’ll have a host – we’re talking to the Schwarzenegger’s head people – joking – constantly interacting cleverly with the contestant, and the contestant will be able to make comments back to his own time, allowing also the ability to request a mission abort.  At the utterance of a word, the contestant will be instantly mothered back to our time safe and sound.
            “Or, they could also die in the past.”  Ray claps his hands and laughs hard four times.  “It depends on how they do.  You know the modern American World doesn’t mind a little gravitas anymore.  Well we’ll be oozing with it, I promise you.  Gravitas-comedy.  Reality.  Alternate reality.”
            “Where’s the money?”
            “Well, advertising for one.  They’ll bring products along with them to help them on their journey.  What sells through depicted use better than survivalism equipment?  And you know people these days are into make-it-yourself.  Well, ancient world stuff is all like that!  Plus, there’ll be a chance for gadgetry, the other thing that sells best with depicted use.  Sweet gadgetry in the ancient world?  How can you not be fully on board with me yet?”  Ray grins open-mouthed and holds his hands out.
            The very old bank man, Mr. Emery, pulls a pack of cigarettes out from the drawer of his desk and lights one up, takes a slow drag and then looks at Ray.  “I just can’t believe it’s already now.  I grew up a long time ago, Mr. Nulswor.  The Twentieth Century, if you can believe that.  The Nineties.”  He coughs a sad laugh to himself.  “I lived through the Sad Tumult.  Now here I am, I’m an old man, and I can smoke cigarettes again like I’m twenty goddamn years old.  New lungs.  And here you are, wanting money for a time machine reality show.  How much are time machines, anyway?”
            “Four billion dollars,” Ray says.  “And I’ll need two to start with.  Our fundamental concept and other investors demand two machines.  They think it won’t be efficient enough with only one person in the past at a time.  We need to two channels running at a time, due to the costs.  We have numbers to show that it’s worth the initial cost.  If we can get even B-level advertisers for this thing, which we absolutely should be able to get because this thing is going to be fucking brilliant, then we’re supposed to break even after only twelve months.  If we can keep it going that long.  It’s in the bag.  This will be a hit.  I promise you.  Look inside your heart, Mr. Emery.  You know it to be true.”
            Mr. Emery folds his hands on his desk.  “This is your brainchild?”
            “Brainchild?”
            “You came up with this?”
            Ray laughs and says, “Brainchild is an amazing word.  I have never heard that before.  And the answer is yes, this is my brainchild.  My wife and I haven’t been able to afford a historical vacation since the technology became available, but I’ve been thinking about it ever since April Twenty-ninety, when Burtzkramer released his findings on temporal dynamics.  Have you gotten to the past?”
            “I was there once as a child,” Mr. Emery nods with a subsurface wry grin.
            Ray stares blankly, then laughs.  “You were a child in the past.  Yeah, well, in the real past.  I mean, have you ever ridden in a time machine?”
            Mr. Emery shakes his head no.
            “No one I know has.  It’s too expensive.  Everyone wants to, but who’s got a million dollars to blow on a vacation?  Nobody.  Why should the superrich and graduate students be the only ones who get to go to the past?  It’s like people think all the past is there for is the prove what happened.  We may not be able to change this timeline by going into the past, so why not fuck around a little back there?  You see what I mean?  What’s your favorite period of history?  Mine is the ancient world.”
            Mr. Emery nods and leans back in his chair, puts out his cigarette in an ashtray on the windowsill behind him.  “I like the Victorian Era,” he says when he finally looks back up.
            Ray laughs and snaps his fingers.  “They were some interesting people doing interesting stuff, weren’t they?”
            Mr. Emery coughs a little laugh and looks away from their eye contact.
            Behind Ray, the door to Mr. Emery’s office fades open, revealing Ray’s assistant, Jay Lucknew, who whispers, “You’ve got about one minute left, Ray – good luck!” then slips out of view to the side of the doorway as the door fades back into place.
            “Nice door.  How do they make it do that?  Where does the door go, again?  I don’t get that.”
            “Mr. Nulswor,” the bank man says with gravitas-comedy in his voice, “I am strongly getting a sense from you that any project under your command will fail epically, and yet each of the autosprites that I’ve been given are indicating you to be a sure financial bet, so I can only imagine that the two are related.  Somehow, your loss in this endeavor will make the Memes I work for a great deal of money, and they are certain of it.”
            He looks into Ray’s eyes, man to man.

[another bit I particularly like, further on, when Ray is on a panel discussion show...]

            “So you just flat out don’t believe in time travel, is what you’re trying to say,” Ray clarified.  “You think it’s some kind of unbelievably elaborate hoax?”
            “You got it, buddy.  You said it.”
            Ray just laughed.  “I guess you think the Moon landing was a hoax, too?” he sniped sarcastically.
            Mr. Kiplinger leaned forward with a serious look at Ray and said, “Fella, I was born on the Moon.”  Then he pointed and said, “But I wasn’t born there yesterday,” as he leaned back confidently.
            Ray nodded and smiled down at his own folded hands.  “I see.  And so your opinion is just somehow valid.  What about the time mines, sir?  Where did all that new oil come from?  Have you forgotten the seventies, and how the time miners brought back this lovely world of excess we get to share right now?  Where, tell me, where else could all this oil possibly have come from?  I mean, there is no rational argument for what this guy is saying, for anyone who is not ignorant to the past fifty years of history.  Seriously, why is this guy even here?  Why not have me debate with just a full-on insane person?”
            “Previously untapped suboceanic reserves kept secret since Eisenhower,” Mr. Kiplinger recited like it was his personal tagline.
            “Okay.  Eisenhower kept secret oil reserves that Freemont just kept shut through the whole Oil Crisis.  You have a colorful answer for everything.  And I guess you still think the Flying Spaghetti Monster really created the universe?”
            “Come on, now,” Mr. Kiplinger objects.
            “Alright,” Ray concedes, looking away.  Then, in a eureka moment as he was looking into the high bright lights and the tiny red ones below, knowing that the robotic studio audience was behind those lights though he could not see them, Ray conceived of what felt like a perfect marketing stunt.  He spun dramatically to face Mr. Kiplinger again and said, “Who do you want me to bring back from history?  Name me anybody who you know, who you could confirm was from the past in some way that you would be willing to accept, and I will go and capture that person and bring them back here to you, to prove to you that we really are going back in time.  We can do it on the show.  Who should I bring back for you?”
            “How about my wife?” Mr. Kiplinger said with a stoic frown.  He and Ray shared a long, silent moment of frozen eye contact, he in his confident frown, Ray in his mid-shrug, wide-eyed showman’s plea.
            “What is she, dead?” Ray asked with a touch of a comedic tone, not thinking.
            “Yes.”
            “Interesting,” Ray said, and thought for a moment.  Then he pointed melodramatically at Mr. Kiplinger and said, “Alright, sir, you fucking asked for it.  Your dead wife it is.  What age?  As a child?  The day before you met her?  The day of your wedding?”
            “Jesus,” Miss Eleanora gasped, and put her thin hand to her mouth.
            “There was no Jesus, Miss Eleanora,” Ray said with a vicious snort as he leaned back away from them both.  “Time machines proved that for us unequivocally.”
            “The day before I met her,” Mr. Kiplinger said quietly, tears welling up in his eyes.  He seemed to realize he had been looking sadly into space and so closed himself up, sat back in his chair and looked down.  “No, Mr. Nulswor,” he said, “you see I wouldn’t want you to bring me back my dead wife.”
            “Because it would feel somehow artificial and blasphemous or something?” Ray asked the man.
            “Because I had gotten over her, you thoughtless punk,” Mr. Kiplinger grunted, and suddenly Ray felt a little guilty for a moment.
            Ray stood up and took off his microphone.  “I no longer approve of my association with this program,” he said with frustration.  “I just made a little bit too much of an ass of myself.  Sorry, Eleanora.  Love the show.  Continue without me.  Where’s that kid who took my coat?”  Some producers brought Ray his coat and took his microphone.  The robot audience applauded.