When a fellow member of the Diogenes Club told Herbert he had actually built Herbert's fictional time machine, Herbert didn't believe it. Challenged to try it, he scoffed at first, but eventually relented. To his utter astonishment, he got a first-hand look at the shape of things to come.

Author's Comments: I challenge the other members of this list to devise identities with 1942, 1962, 1974 or 1999 as their "true" history headline.

Tragically, the Earth was a wasteland by then. Nothing remained of human civilization except a "time capsule", buried during a "world's fair" 5000 years ago. But those artifacts inspired us to use time travel to rescue humanity, by preventing a global atomic war. What we didn't consider was how mankind's survival would impact our own..

Time Travel is fun. Time Travel is lucrative. The result? Incredible rivalry between fellow Time Travelers. My solution is simple -- I've recruited assistants that I can trust implicitly -- younger versions of myself! It was a great way for me to apprentice, and the extra help always keeps me a few steps ahead of my competition.

Author's Comments: Does anyone have a suggestion for a better name?

Look up the lottery numbers, and hop back in time a day to buy a winning ticket. Unfortunately, the dollar given to the clerk was enough to have him make the drop early at which he swatted at a butterfly which caused a disruption in the air molecules and caused my numbers not to be drawn.

"With this machine, we can assemble the best band ever! The danceband on the Titanic, the Ford's Theatre band, anyone is ours!" "Well, what makes you think they'll want to jam with us, and not be with their families and stuff?" "It's better than the alternatives. No, I'm more worried about accidentally erasing The Cure!"

In my world, capitalism was king. My company put billions into time travel research so we could corner the market. Unfortunately, an accident with my timepod changed all of time, erasing my home from existence. Now my company, End of Time Estates, finds homes for people with no timeline to return to. It's a living.

A careless time traveler dropped some gum at the creation of the universe, causing my people, the Dinosaurs, to become hyper-intelligent. How do I know this? Because the Saurian Temporal Authority ordered me to arrest him for littering. They didn't realize that monkeys were responsible for society. Now, I'm only called in for "special" missions.

I was bored, so I took a half jug of milk, stuck five tacks in it, duct taped a battery and a watch to it, sprayed it with air freshener to give it a nice scent, and then set it on fire. Instant time machine. Now, I move throughout time causing wackiness in my wake.

I forgot to bring the chronolenses. Months of learning how to breathe the lower-pressure atmosphere, and I leave the one thing I need most. How can I collect samples with my eyes closed? I've heard horror stories of people coming back with severe retinal damage from the infrared-laden sunlight. Hope my insurance policy covers that.

I've always been fairly skeptical. It's hard not to be, in this day and age. I didn't believe in Churten Theory at first, either. It didn't make sense to me. How can something be moved to another place even before it left there? Well, that's what I said tomorrow. And I'm going back home yesterday.

Her grandfather was a Jew whose passionate oratory moved Germans to repeal their Nuremberg laws. Her father was a Russian capitalist whose passionate oratory prompted the Soviet Union to reform itself. She wasn't blessed with the same golden tongue, but her brother was. When he died at Columbine, she dedicated herself to fixing history's mistake.

A slave from birth, he grew up among the worst of humanity, hatred and indifference his foster parents. When his masters died at sea, he fled to Germany, joining the chorus of hate. Boredom set in after surviving the ultimate Final Solution, so he tinkered with time travel. Futures where humanity lived didn't impress him.

Despite a number of skirmishes, the USA remained mostly isolated during the 20th century as experienced by Bubba, which induced all kinds of cultural miscommunications. For his first time trip, he thought he'd fart in the face of Hitler's assassin to show his appreciation. Little did he suspect that the assassin would suffocate before firing...

Time travel was introduced during the 1948 World Fair, and within 20 years minor edits of the timestream had become commonplace. So, when Nixon faced having to resign in the face of Watergate, he dispatched one of his aides to undo the incident. Unfortunately, it turned out that the alternative to Nixon resigning was...Nixon resigning.

An average person in his own timeline, he had scrambled to purchase a time dispersion device. However, one moment with a lack of judgment caused him to permanently alter the course of time. He was marooned. And so, deciding he wouldn't be the only one to have to suffer, strived to ruin it for all.

Author's Comments: *You win the game if, at any time, there are 13 unpatched paradoxes in the timeline (note: the uberparadox, and all paradoxes created because of it count as 1). This happens before the game is considered a mutual loss and prevents that from being the case.

Preventing your own death sure sounds great when you're a time-traveling ghost. So I stopped the killing spree that finished me; great idea, right? Well, when I saw what the me that got saved was like twenty years later and grown up, I decided the bastard deserved to die after all.

As his nightmares got worse, Jules decided to stop visiting the harbor taverns all night getting background for his new play. What wild vision his inebriated subconcious produced! Ships sailing below waves instead of on them, or floating on air like mammoth balloons. What next? A trip to the moon?!

Mojo spent years searching for the Eternal Library, a collection of books containing every answer to every question. He found it, just inside the end of time. Skipping past works on enlightenment, the reason for being, and the nature of free will, Mojo returned home with a really great bread recipe. "Man, this'll be good."

We knew the "space race" was a joke. We were busy winning the time race. When KGB agents with energy weapons got the rest of my team before we could neutralize Lenin, I jumped forward and prevented their departure. But now that I've seen the insane future we were making, I cannot continue my mission.

Bob adjusted his tinfoil hat. He lay behind a hill as the motorcade approached. "Now!" the voices hissed. He rose and aimed his weapon, but bullets hit him from behind. The President looked up as bodyguards fanned out. Bob lay scared. He'd failed. "No," said the voices, "You did just right." Their light enveloped him.

Most people who time travel to get rich quick, let's face it, don't show a lot of imagination: usually, they take advantage of "real life" opportunities they otherwise couldn't. Livingston, however, paved his own way, altering the economic landscape to provide Continental investment options and four extra years for their maturity, before the (postponed) Crash.

Author's Comments: This is, amazingly enough, a very belated payoff for having to sit through the movie _TimeCop_, I think

When the CIA got their mitts on time travel technology in the early Sixties, it was obvious that their fancies would turn to muzzling the Russian Bear. Jack Steele volunteered to engineer historic events to prevent the Soviet Union from becoming a superpower. On the bright side, it meant less taxes going towards nuclear weapons.

Author's Comments: Note: 1945' is ANY 1945' Yes, Steele and Arkady are kind of a matched set. I started out with Steele, though, based on Bill Andel's note: my beginning was, "what do those 3 patches have in common?" and what I got was that they would affect the USSR's dominance in the postwar world. With Steele, 1969 *could* be substituted for 1933' (which is more about the USA than the USSR, but still would change the balance of power), but I thought it would be better to have 2 patches in his mix.

When the KGB got their mitts on time travel technology in the early Sixties, it was obvious that their fancies would turn to muzzling the American Imperialists. Arkady Gregorovich volunteered to engineer historic events to prevent the United States from becoming a superpower. On the bright side, it meant fewer workers' resources towards nuclear weapons.

Author's Comments: Arkady was engineered to be the flip side of Steele. Once again, if WW2 paved the way for the Cold War, how might it have been different if the US had been less involved?

Angelo Mortis was a hired killer who found himself in the employ of the Timestream Individual Removals Consortium. They have a specific mission, which they believe noble, but he just enjoys rubbing out famous historical figures, at least as much as the lavish pay. Toward the end of his gig, he'll make a fine Brutus.

Author's Comments: *: (1865, 1914, 1936', 1963, 1980, 1981') I got stuck on this "Angel of Death" idea. I know that Angelo uses Linchpins, not Ripplepoints, and six of them, but I couldn't get this idea out of my head, once I hit on it.

The Aliens were hardly pleased when the monkeys of Sol III started venturing beyond their planetary orbit, because it would jeopardize their own operations. Furious with themselves for not seeing it coming, they turned to their last resort: temporal manipulation. But while they were at it, they replaced their 1947 pilot with a sober one.

Author's Comments: 1969*: Paradoxed This was another one where I started with a concept, and stretched the Timeline to fit it. The trouble was 1969, since neither the True History nor the patch really serves their needs (and 1969' already appears on the timelines of Yuri and Betty). Only the paradoxed version works, which is kind of fiddly, but I couldn't let go of the original idea.

Ralph was a peaceful guy; he was part of the dregs of humanity. He was a scavenger, and Ralph was no fool. Imagine his surprise while searching the ruins of a secret lab, to find a time machine. It was originally designed to prevent WW3, but to Ralph, survival came first, which meant world war.

"I'm not really a genie," the mustachioed apparition said. "Just a construct from the future that has the ability to grant desires." But when Klaus made a wish, the response was: "I'd love to do that, but that'd lead to a future where I would not exist." The next thousand wishes elicited the same result.

He was whisked to the far future, preventing his death at the hands of trenchcoat-wearing, gun-toting maniacs. "You are the one," they told him, "who is destined to save the world." Yet something just felt... wrong. "This isn't real!" he screamed, waking up in his matrix algebra class. He regretted ever taking those red pills.

Let me tell you my story. I am research physicist at Kyoto. My family has been fishermen for centuries. I am only one of family to ever leave Nagasaki. My family-- all dead. I not can allow that. They must have honor. So I must sacrifice my own honor and steal University's secret project. Banzai.

Author's Comments: Any 1945' patch must be in effect.

"What kind of a looney mission was that one?" Ron said as he and Anne returned to Time Police Central. "When you said 'the bomb will go off in two minutes,' I expected exactly two minutes! Not (what was it) 117.56 seconds!" Anne's complexion showed no hint of contrition: "At least our watches weren't synchronized."

On a futile quest to erase his own apocalyptic future, it was important for him to take an active but unassuming role in every presidential conspiracy of the late 20th century. But he failed with the Kennedy administration. For how could he have guessed that Castro had been secretly working on a time machine too?

The sheets felt comfortable as the lights dimmed. "Explain to me," he said bemusedly, "how is it possible that changes in the past could lead to the creation of you, who is completely identical to me except in sex?" "Silly boy," she said coyly, "it's not possible at all. But gender, on the other hand..."

"You're telling me that this virtual reality program simulates all of human history in the space of a few minutes?" "Well, yes," the professor replied, "but only to an objective observer. If you are in the program, it will feel like real time to you." "So, manipulating it internally is no different than time travel?"

"Zort! Zort!" Sounds of two more of her ancestors getting vaporized. Just then, a communiqué came in. "Be right there," she said to herself. Seconds later, she was being castigated. "How the heck are you, er, I, ever going to get promoted to Time Sergeant if you insist on creating these paradoxes?" The response: "Zort!"

Author's Comments: For Kristine to win, there must be 13 (unpatched) paradoxes in the timeline; nothing else is necessary.

"Welcome to Crazy Joe's!" he said as I walked in. But where else was I going to go? Since the collapse of Time-Space, there's not much left. TRAHQ is still investigating who could have done such a thing. "Give me a JavaHut, Joe. I might be here a while." "Boy, is this place busy!"

Author's Comments: 13 unpatched paradoxes to win.

I remember the stories. Russia got rich in the early half of the century, funded their space program after the World War, landed on the moon while America was dragging its feet. But they spent too much. I don't see any other way America could have won, so I'm gonna make sure we do. USA!

Gadzooks! Professor Panic has created a time machine and set out to destroy our world… before it exists! Team Terrific was unable to stop him. Only one hero can foil the dastardly plan, and ensure the continued survival of our ever-vigilant society: Red Ratchet! There he boards his Time-Dirigible… and off he goes!

Once you swear the oath, you're required to heal and help people no matter where… or when… you go. This is true even if you join the Anti-Paradox League. But sometimes it gets you stuck… if you travel in time, and heal certain people, it can create a paradox. Which oath do you uphold?

Bill looked at the creation that sat before him. It cost him some of his fortune, but would pay for itself a hundred times over. As soon as he activated it and went to invest in the past, his fortunes here, uptime, would skyrocket. Sure… he was already rich… but somehow, he always wanted more.

Studying to be a history major, I was horrified to learn that most of human history is defined by war and violence, ideas that barely exist in my time. So many volatile points in time are defined by death. Joining the Time Preservation Society, I discovered that guaranteeing my safe future is very difficult indeed.

"As you can see," continued the professor, "a person has a different effect on history when they are not killed, in keeping with Denton's Temporal Potential Theory. Your assignment is to demonstrate this principle by saving an important historical figure, no earlier than 1750, and writing a 1500 word essay on the results. Class dismissed."

Now that they have found the time machines, Unclean Ones are spreading across all of history... something must be done. Reality must be purified. I shall destroy the festering time that has been corrupted, and remake the universe the way it was meant to exist! Then we shall see who truly needs medication...

Author's Comments: 13 unpatched paradoxes to win.

I built this time machine to fix history. Yet now I find it already fixed. This does not seem right. I must be able to know exactly how it is fixed. The only way I can think of to do that is to unfix history and then refix it. That should work. Well, I think.

I AM CYBPHILO13. UNABLE TO ASSESS LOCATION. ANALYZING TIMESTREAM: NOT ORIGIN. SEARCHING NEW HISTORY: WARNING! SYSTEM OVERLOAD! SYST- I AM CYBPHILO13. WARNING: TIME MACHINE'S PROBABILITY TRAVEL DISABLED. SUGGESTED SOLUTION: ALTER HISTORY TO MATCH ORIGIN TIMESTREAM, IF POSSIBLE. I guess that is all I can do. But of all the timestreams to get stuck in...

I was just one of the hundreds of unemployed movie executives. My biggest film was "Titanic the Unsinkable." Nobody saw it. Nobody cared. Music had died with Lennon. Suicides were up. I considered it myself. Then I got a note and a time travelling wristwatch from myself in the future. I figured...what the heck?

*ka-click* "Here we are in Ancient Egypt; you can see them building the Pyramid in the background." *ka-click* "This is the signing of the Declaration of Independance. That's Norman getting an autograph from that nice Mr. Hancock." *ka-click* "This is me and Norman at a parade in Dallas. Mr. Zapruder took this picture for us..."

"Psst - hey buddy, wanna buy a watch? It's the one Kennedy was wearing! No? Washington's false teeth? I know what you need - a genuine religious artifact! I got the Spear of Longinus right here, and a bottle of wine from the Last Supper! Wait, come back... darn. ...Hey mister, wanna buy the cure for cancer?"

All that extinct game hunter Harry Knoll wanted was a genuine stuffed dodo, mounted in his den. But, on his way home after the hunting trip, he made an unpleasant discovery: Communism was dead, and guns were illegal! "Well," he said, loading his 6.5mm Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, "A hunter's gotta do what a hunter's gotta do."

Shortly after the 1919 Black Sox scandal, The Brain won a mysterious wristwatch in a poker game with a confused German tourist. Upon discovering its amazing capabilities, he immediatly travelled to the future to purchase a sports almanac. Back home, he became a multi-millionaire, and was eventually arrested for illegal book-making at the 1944 Olympics.

Now that the Chief Science Officer has mastered the "Slingshot Effect", allowing us to harness the Sun's gravity to propel the ship forward or backward through time, we've been able to search out even more new life and new civilizations. Of course the crew has a non-interference directive, but let's face it -- accidents do happen.

Bred and raised to enforce the sanctity of the one true timeline, Jarrod found he could no longer resist the temptation to meddle. After erasing his own birth, he committed one final act of rebellion against his totalitarian superiors, then found inner peace as a teacher.

The First Prince stepped down from the dais, his blue robes still gracing the steps. "One of our circle, Rikardo, is missing. As a test of entry into the inner sanctum, find our errant brother." Mandias arose from the altar. Such a task was a great honor. After all, Rikardo was the Khabalan's own son.

Time travel could tip the scales against the Nazis, but not today. Five minutes came and went. An hour. The monitoring army scientists assumed the experiment merely failed, that the time module completely disintegrated. They scoured their formulas to determine what went wrong. They didn't count on one factor, however-- Private Porter actually went AWOL.

Logfile Entry 79812.4: Stranded on a primitive planet with only time slipstream intact. Coerced natives to build distress signs to be seen from space. Weary of waiting, I've decided to subtly influence their technology to build spaceworthy vehicles earlier than they might have normally. It might be my only hope of ever leaving this rock.

Me and Rufus were hunting, and Rufus barked. I asked, "What, boy?" Then I saw it: a shimmery curtain, the trees dancing behind it. The shimmering turned into bright light, swallowing Rufus right up. I searched and searched but never found him. Such a good dog. Smart, too. No, Lucille, I swear I ain't drunk!

Travis Belc was a universally famous time-travelling daredevil. He was famous for doing insane time-altering stunts. Unfortunately, when he got too close to WW III, even he couldn't escape. To save him, I must prevent the nuclear war, get him to a hospital, then slip away inconspicuously during the Titanic explosion.

Rome and Atlantis had warred for decades. When Rome had beaten the Atlanteans to their city beneath the waves, no one thought that they would attack again. But they did, for they had unlocked the secrets of time travel. Two millenia later, Atlantis would rise from the ashes of atomically obliterated post-Roman empires.

The young time traveler's son pulled a crisp five-dollar bill from his pocket. "Hey, isn't that President Lincun or somebody?" his friend asked. "Yup! I visited this one place last week where he actually died! So they put him on the money there." "Wow! They kill their presidents there?" "All the time!"

For only a trifle sum, YOU can start a war! And not just any war, but THE biggest war of all time! Brag to your friends! Operators are standing by to place you into the role of a European prince's assasin, starting the biggest war the world has ever known! Void where prohibited.

My first mission was simple: Save JFK. But my time machine malfunctioned, and I ended up stranded, four years too late and with no way to return. I drowned myself in cheap liquor, recounting things to come for anyone who would listen. I don't think I said anything too revealing. But I do remember some reporters....

The wizened old man had won the game show's grand prize--a trip to the past for two! He and his wife settled on a week at Lakehurst in 1937. Another time traveler decided to go there, too, but to blow up the Hindenberg. It was the most exciting vacation the two had ever seen.

As a member of the Historical Observation Society (Olympics Division), I enjoyed my job. My newest mission was to go see the historic long jumps of Jesse Owens and Luz Long.... But this was dangerous territory for a Jew, even one from the future. I decided to bring a firearm with me, for protection.

The scientist began the first-ever time travel experiment. Her machine hummed, then the apple within disappeared, transported to the past. She was hailed as a genius in a big ticker-tape parade. However, seeds of that apple grew into a shady, concealing tree on a grassy knoll. The scientist's timeline was ripped from existence.

"Mark, the bombs are dropping! Quick, activate your time machine, take us to the past!" Mark activated his untested model, not sure when they would end up. A soundless flash of light later, he looked up to see Luke speaking. "Mark, the bombs are dropping! Quick, activate your time machine, take us to the past!"

Gregor and Julius were bored. Suddenly Gregor asked, "Julius, pick a month." "Uh, September." "Now a number." "...seven." "And a year?" "How about 1752?" "All right, let's go!" So, they hopped in Gregor's TimeTripper 5000 and took off. No one ever saw them again. If you see them, contact the Time Agency at GTHX-1138.

Author's Comments: *Note: _Gregor_ is a very obscure bit of trivia. In England and her colonies, September 7, 1752, never existed.*

Shan Frelton, the eminent physicist, brought his time-car to a stop. Tentatively, he checked his watch: 12:04. "Sucess!" he cried, "When I drove here in a normal vehicle, it took me an hour and a quarter. But in my time-car, it takes only 75 minutes!" He became rich beyond imagination.

20th century exploration was something I always wanted to do. So, when I had the credit, I bought a period-disguised time machine. The seller said it would blend perfectly into any common laundromat. It was a great deal! Now I'm clean and tidy after every trip, if only a little dizzy.

I've always enjoyed playing practical jokes on people, until I found a corpse in my bed! An autopsy revealed it to be me, forty years later, in the last practical joke I ever played. But I got the last laugh. I rewrote my will, stating that my body should be sent back two hours earlier.

I had tracked an elusive time criminal to an abandoned mill. After a brief struggle, I had caught this masked woman. But under the mask was me, five years later! My duty was to uphold the timestream. So, I put my older self in prison and went on a five-year crime spree.

"I have finished my theory of time travel!" the brilliant scientist proclaimed. "One must travel West at a speed of 1,670 kph!" His assistant chuckled to himself, being an anthropologist from the future. He was studying primitive time travel, before people realized it would be faster to go around the North Pole than the Equator.

Little did people know that cats had always been able to travel through time whenever they pleased. That's why cats seem to disappear whenever you turn your head. In the future, when cats were once again elevated to godhood, they let humans join them on the trips. The Egyptians had done that for years.

Bob invented the world's first time machine. The first thing he did was go back a split second in time to talk to himself. Then, both of them went back another second to meet a third Bob. After doing this multiple times, Bob was everywhere. Every human alive was Bob. Nametag sales plummeted.

"What would you do with a time machine?" It's my favorite party ice-breaker question. "Argue your wife into not leaving you?" "No," replied Belford, and stood. He twisted something; reality began disintegrating. "I've *got* a time machine, and I've destroyed timeline after timeline where she left me. But I've never found one where she stayed."

Author's Comments: The goal is "13 paradoxes, destroy universe"

Harnessing the great power of electricity, the Potential stored in these Lyden Jars so disturbs the Etheric Fluid that the Electro-motive Tractor may gain purchase and move across time! Of course it doesn't work. Had I known the Ether would dissipate within 100 years I would not have chosen the future for my first trip.

...but I ain't seen it yet. Mostly I clean up after the star agents, sloppy bastards. No matter how many trips it takes, it's always "Johnson! Look what you let slip through!" Sure, thousands die early in Japan to prevent the Great Burn, and I'm getting canned for one missed newspaper issue: "Dewy Defeats Truman!"

It had been a one-way trip. He would be remembered as a murderer. He shouldered the rifle but it vanished in a flash of light. He turned to a familiar face. "Why? I'm saving lives!" "No. Without his example the misery repeats unchecked." It's true. The empire failed but the memory lasts a thousand years.

As he strapped himself in, young Li thought of an old teacher. "Supreme excellence in war is subduing the enemy without fighting." Newer words followed. "Dissipate the power, wound the pride, magnify the fear." His tight grin returned. The West would never know what happened. A gong sounded. And Li was history...

Author's Comments: Any 1945 patch must be in effect.

Once I ran over an old man. When Dr. Argus' TimeCenter opened, I had to stop myself. Too late, I saw my own headlights coming at me... When I didn't return, Argus guessed what happened, came back and told my younger self. I'm now traveling timelines, instituting licensing systems to prevent it from happening again.

Author's Comments: ok, i confess, i got the basic plot from a sideplot in the book "Summer of Love" by Lisa Mason, Bantam Spectra; ISBN: 0553572415. Good book, you guys'd like it.

I've always loved great big ocean liners in history. I've sailed every liner from the Queen Anne to the doomed Lusitania. In fact, I discovered recently that an ancient relative of mine was the lookout for the Titanic on her maiden voyage. I've procured a bottle of wine that I'll share with him to celebrate.

Me and Vladimir had a bet: no matter what happened in history, America's economy would always be stronger than Russia's. So, he changed history by saving an American president who was an incompetent economist. But when I tried to find Vladimir, he wasn't there anymore! So I won. If only I could collect that bet....

"Comrade Alexandre, a capitalist plot is brewing!" "What?" "They are attempting to change history. They seem to be... sabotaging old American weaponry?" "How?" "They are assasinating an inventor named Oppenheimer." "If they want to worsen their position, go ahead. No need to disturb Emperor Castro the VII. How's Sputnik doing?" "Huh? It just disappeared...."

My dad's taking me to get my time traveler's license. When I pass the tests, the first thing I'm going to do is kill Lincoln. With enough assasinated presidents, the hospital should see that my love, John, is not so insane. Then he'll see that I'm so much better for him than that ungrateful Jodie.

I was born in Germany when the bombing in WWIII reached full intensity. The release of energy caused a fluke in time that makes me live life backwards. So I survived, but now all I can remember is what's about to occur, instead of what already did. I wonder what's going to happen yesterday?

The two time travelers were young, and very much in love. But then she disappeared from existence when her progenitors died in Birkenau. He leapt into action and killed the instigator of their deaths only to blink out of existence himself. If only he had known that his ancestors met in the Hitler-Jegund....

To soothe millennial fears, the survivalists held an invention contest in their underground bunker. Nellie the caterer made a food processor out of popsicle sticks; Jim the web designer welded a trailer hitch (cool, if not immediately useful). "But I think mine wins," said Chad the coder, and he switched it on and was gone.

A blond, twelve year-old boy storms outside to pull weeds, penance for a poor Mathematics grade. "Backhoe operators don't study math! I hate math! I hate this town! I wish Huntsville never existed!" Fifteen minutes of digging uncovers a small box. Twenty minutes of time travel eliminates Mr. Swearingen's Fifth Period math class from existence.