Tales of a Time Voyager

The Forbidden Fruit of Knowledge

I wake up, startled by the loud sound of a tiger's roar from a distance. Upon my awakening I notice there's a lake not far from where I'd been laying, I haven't showered in a very long time...I smell horribly and look even worse, I run to the lake to wash the brown of dust and dirt, and crimson red of dried up blood that inked my skin off. I cut a sleeve off of my Iron Maiden T-shirt and use it to scrub myself, I wash the rest of the shirt and set it to dry on top of a rock, along with the rest of my hand washed clothes. While I wait for my clothes to dry out, nude out in the wilderness, I sit down on a rock under an apple tree. I am starving, I pick an apple off the floor and take a bite. Such a peculiar taste this rare apple has, is this even an apple at all?

I hear the roar again...I hope it's coming far from where I stand, this is not exactly how I anticipate my death to be like. Coming from the same direction as the noise, I see a kid running in fear and desperation. He looks like that same kid from last night; and the closer he got to me the more I realize it was indeed said kid. Is he being chased by the tiger? If so, he had better run fast enough to shake him off if he intends on coming anywhere close to me.

Unable to catch a breath the kid comes forward, and with the motion of his arms he asks me to follow him. I'm not exactly wearing any clothes but neither was he, garments seemed to have only been used while hunting or gathering to keep insects away, other times however, it seemed more common to not wear anything at all. He walks me back to the wall which we drew on last night, and on it there were now four drawings of a tree, all of which had lines and circles drawn around them, and all but one had been marked with a red line made of blood. He points to it; it's a map...and in that thought I realize how much I may have underestimated the intelligence of these species, could he actually be pointing me to my place of arrival? He then points west and starts walking and I follow right after his footsteps.

Minutes later we arrive, the Ultravoid is all tangled up in vines and on the ground next to it shrooms had been growing. I remember I had brought psilocybin spores and LSD tabs with me, some of the spores seem to have spilled on the ground. I run to the machine to scavange for things I can still make use of. I also try to see if it can be rebuilt to take me back to my time, but in the absense of advanced technology, I don't exactly see how I could, let alone will. I grab all my things and stuff them inside my backpack, weaponry, compass, drugs...inside a baggie where my tabs and weed had been I had another ziplock bag, I took it out, yanked all the shrooms off the ground and put them inside the bag. I look up at the tree which I'd been under and sitting up there, was a young girl; may just be another nearby villager foraging for fruits. Something seems a little off however. She's swinging her head from left to right and in her hands she holds what looks to be the stems of a mushroom. I yell at her to come down from the tree and when I do so she starts to panic, and as a result the kid that brought me here also starts to panic and scream uncontrollably, he snatches the bag of shrooms from my hand and runs with them up to the tree. I try to persuade them to stop eating this substance, for all I know they aren't mentally prepared for such an eye opening experience. Or who knows, maybe the eye opening experience is what lead way to human intellectuality, maybe enhancement drugs have been traditionally consumed for as long as humanity has existed, maybe the fruit of knowledge, the garden of eden and the talking snake were nothing but the experience of an acid trip; a story that tells not the creation of man, but that of human consciousness and self awareness. Whether or not that's the case, I need to start planning on ways to prevent myself from altering the course of our existence, I don't want this to result in many uncalled for events that will later build even more unpredictable results.

They won't come down. Yelling only scared them to their deaths and I'm not exactly great at climbing up trees. They might be undergoing a terrifying bad trip experience and if so it's all my fault. Why didn't I plan more carefully before coming here? I should watch every single step I take while I'm here because each and every one of them will become part of—and shape the history of humanity.

Then, slithering down the tree there was a serpent, rapidly making its way out of the scene.