The Time Traveler

Atlantis

When I had finished, the time traveler said, "Sounds like this world has become nearly as magical as that of your ancestors."

"Our ancestors?" I asked.

"Yes, your Atlantean ancestors," he replied. "Like me, you are an Atlantean. The Atlanteans – your ancestors, invented the time vessel, and many other magical things."

He gathered his thoughts a moment, then continued, "There came a time when a great disaster befell our people. Our guild of shamans, great scientists whom you would regard as wizards, saw it coming. The foresaw through observation in our great looking glasses that you call telescopes, that a great rock was hurtling toward the earth from the dark, nether regions of outer space. They calculated that this rock would break through the atmosphere at great velocity and crash into the northern region of the Great Ocean with tremendous force, causing an unstoppable tsunami that would inundate and drown our land. They foresaw that if we remained on the Atlantean island, home to our civilization, every one of its million or so inhabitants would be drowned. We had no choice but to abandon our home. To survive, the Atlantean civilization would have to come to a bitter end.

"We only had a month or so to prepare our escape. Most of our people were sent out on sailing ships to the barbarian lands that are now called Europe and Arabia and Africa to the east, and America to the west. For three of us, the shamans built time vessels, and perfected the protective gel inside it. They fed it a message with their magic to awaken we time travelers every seventy-three revolutions of the earth around the sun. The hope was that we'd awaken in a future time when the magic was as powerful as it was in Atlantis. When the time was right, we'd provide the wisdom of our magic to help the people of this future age achieve the near perfection that had been achieved in Atlantis.

"They assigned each of us a caretaker family, whose task it was to protect the vessel, and assist us during our awakenings down the annals of time. Our caretakers and the vessels were then placed on ships and set sail for three different parts of the world.

"The vessel I occupied landed in Egypt, in your year, 10,792 B.C. Hundreds of years later, my caretakers brought me to Macedonia, where I remained until your year, 1917, when I was taken here, to America."

The time traveler sighed. "I haven't been able to learn what's become of my fellow time-travelers. I fear that unlike me, their journey through time has ended."

As Connie cleared the kitchen table, I led the still tired and weak time traveler into the living room. I found the remote and clicked on my father's color television set. The time traveler frowned as the screen came to life. He pointed to the set and, turning to me, spoke a word that I knew must be Atlantean for television.

After he sat down on the couch, I flipped channels to a news show and he watched without comment as the sordid mess of current events and politics unfolded on the screen.

Worn out from the stress of the last few days, I soon dozed off on the loveseat. Sometime later, I woke with a start, and saw Connie sitting close to the time traveler as they watched TV. I also saw that Romal was tenderly stroking her hair. It was soon clear to me that the time traveler and Connie were smitten with each other. Indeed, the second night after his awakening, he slept in her bed.