50 Shades of Blue: The Brainstorm

So, I've had a whole week to brainstorm some ideas about how I'd write a time travel story and this is what I've gotten so far. Most of it is notes. They do start to streamline into a sort of certain kind of story that I think could be very interesting. This project is going to start to get very strange after a while. Let's hope I do actually write a good story. I mean... it probably won't be "Twilight with Time Travel", but it could be really cool.

Brainstorm Ideas:

·         Characters

o   Main Character: strong, independent woman who is in college/high school, takes aikido, works hard at horrible job until a time traveler shows up and takes her on adventures (cross between Cyn and Donna Noble?)

o   Love interest: crazy adventurer, maybe and outlaw from the future who’s trying to fix past disasters and issues, and saves lives in minor ways

o   Ethnic Minority Friend: transvestite who may or may not have feelings for main character. Either hetero- or bisexual who just happens to enjoy wearing make-up and dresses. Executive Transvestite

o   Best Friend: Stevie crossed with Betty or Al.

·         Plot: girl meets time traveler. They go on adventures and maybe eventually fall in love. There may be world-saving scenario.

·         Time travel is a rare, but possible commodity in the future limited to the historians and similar academics, the rich, police, and certain criminals

·         Space travel is a more common and popular commodity available to anyone willing to travel at near-light speeds and leave their families behind.

·         Time travel is possible through the use of wormholes, but a device is needed to “create” (realy they locate and expand pre-existing wormholes) a wormhole that a human is able to travel through. The device would be shaped like:

o   A cellphone

o   A ball

o   A remote control

o   A gun

o   A bottle

o   A pen

o   Nothing anyone’s ever seen before

o   A vibrator a computer mouse

o   A squid-thing

o   A sword

o   A voodoo doll

o   A pyramid

o   Non-Euclidean geometric thing

o   ID Badge

o   A bird

o   A paper airplane

o   A Rubix Cube

o   Some other puzzle box

·         In the year 5,000 space and time travel is possible. Space travel at near light speeds is common using an as-of-yet undiscovered fuel derived from plants. They rich, academics, criminals and police also have time travel which is possible through wormholes.

·         The year 4,850, the first great experiment with time travel take place. Goal: prevent the MASSIVE loss of life that occurred during World War II as a result of an effective German leader uniting with Russia rather than starting a two-front war with it and leading to the USA nuking the hell out of Europe to save the world from the combined forces of the Axis of power. How? Time travel. Historians, scientists, and the greatest minds of the time joined forces to determine if the history of WWII could be altered. Initially, changes were unsuccessful until one of the agents surprisingly has a son while in pre-World War I Austria. The addition of the new human with 50% genetics from thousands of years in the future was initially detrimental until careful manipulation of the child’s life led to a history where Germany was defeated soundly and Japan received two nuclear strikes.

·         Known Rules of Time Travel:

o   One cannot make a change to the future that will result in one’s death prior to one’s “present.”

o   If a life is saved in the past, changes to the past will also lead to a similar life ended. Likewise, if a person dies in the past that would not have died otherwise, a death that would not have occurred will be prevented.

·         Due to these two rules, there is a special force/coalition of police who monitor time and changes with the intent to prevent them.

·         There are also a number of companies who run vacations as trips to the past. Go to any era. Can’t make changes, but can experience the past authentically.

o   Discounts for group trips!

·         Another big money-making time travel venture is completely under the umbrella of criminals. They get paid to prevent certain deaths or even kill those individuals that would otherwise have caused the downfall of certain companies.

o   Some of this is just lies and cons though.

·         There’s also going to the past, stealing a bunch of money and storing it to sell the coins in the present, but this is the most easily traceable chronocrime and caused some inflation during the 50^th century.

·         Story idea:

o   A girl born in our time is actually the daughter of a notorious chronocriminal who stranded herself in the in the past to escape the authorities. This chronocriminal went completely underground, did everything she could not to change history, but accidentally had a child anyhow (excessive travel through wormholes can lead to infertility and numerous other health problems). The mother then dies of a rare form of cancer when the girl is a teenager; teenager moves in with flighty father’s parents (Mother and father never married; would change the past).

o   Mother’s previous partner-in-crime shows up in protagonist’s time shortly after mother’s death (having found Mother’s obituary at long last) and chose to prevent a massacre/bomb/disaster to save the protagonist’s life.

o   Criminal takes girl on adventures using his specialty time travelling device which can actually pinpoint desired locales and times with his programming (also, stolen latest prototype), they grow close.

o   Problem: Chronotravel agency is on his tail and the girl gets caught in the crossfire.

o   Mother may have left own time travel device to protagonist disguised as a locket or medallion that actually works off telepathic field limited to wearer. Will take her where/when she in her heart wants to go.

o   Protagonist may be somehow special or immune to affects of changing the past of something due to being the child of a time traveler born out of said time traveler’s time.

o   Emily Dickenson or otherwise related poet for opening poem (if we want to be a bit pretentious)

o   One of the things protagonist and criminal do is visit protagonist’s mother or relative who died to say good-bye like many people wish they could do with their relatives.

·         Children born of time travelers in the past have unique properties. Mainly they can see ripple effects from changes in the timeline and they can remember the original timeline before time travel entered the picture. This is quite rough on them and most are declared schizophrenic at an early age because if they grow up in the time they were born in, then their whole life is a ripple effect. They can remember what things would be like if they were never born. Some kill themselves at surprisingly early ages. If they reach adulthood or are found by the Coalition, they make for perfect agents. However, the Coalition can’t track all of these children down. Others become prophets like Sibyl or Cassandra who no one believes.

·         Did you know there’s a history where Jesus didn’t exist?

·         Children of Gods are Children of Time. Chrono children. Wormhole Runts. Wormies. Children of the Fae. Children born of alien abductions.

·         If they grew up in the time of the time-traveling parent, they do actually turn out quite normal and well-adjusted.

·         Either way—they’re a hot commodity for anyone interested in time travel.