John Titor

What time travel might look like from the other side [1].

I remember a great short story I read about the first time traveler. They decided the first visit would be the Shakespeare. Shakespeare has no problems accepting that he's being visited by a time traveler, and asks what gifts the traveler brings.

The traveler is a bit confused, so Shakespeare explains that the early ones all bring gifts. The traveler has brought some gives, including a nicely bound volume of Shakespeare's plays. Shakespeare looks at it, comments on the nice binding, says something about maybe he can sell it, then decides probably not, and tosses it on a pile of other such volumes brought by other time travelers.

The first time traveler is now getting pretty confused, and says something like "but I'm the first time traveler!", to which Shakespeare answer "but not the first to arrive". This is something often overlooked in time travel stories--just because you are the first to leave for a given destination doesn't mean you are the first to arrive.

Shakespeare mentions that he's frequently bothered by time travelers, but at least doesn't have it as bad as Jesus--that guy can barely do anything without a time traveler showing up. Shakespeare explains he knows because a time traveler thought it would be interesting to take Shakespeare to meet Jesus once. All the great figures of history are frequently visited.

Somewhere in there Shakespeare provides some drink and tries to calm down the inexperienced time traveler, who is freaking out over all this. Shakespeare is an old hand at dealing with newbie time traveler freak outs.

Then a bunch of other time travelers arrive, but not to see Shakespeare. They are reporters from the first time traveler's future, there to interview him about his historic visit to Shakespeare.

[1] https://www.tor.com/2011/08/31/wikihistory/

Actually it was originally a visual novel, not a light novel.

So, in the late 90's I went to a goth convention in New Orleans, where my wife met a time traveller named "Butterfly". I saw her talking to a weird looking guy, and swung by to see if she needed help, but she had that "oh this is going to be a great story" look on her face and kind of shooed me away. Later, she told me he had claimed to be from the future. He made some predictions:

- there would be a war in Iraq, but it was not actually as big as the one that happened later

- after the Big War, there was a disease that forced everyone to live belowground

- he had a computer chip in his hand

- he had a son in the future named Gandalf

This all seemed pretty wacky, if harmless. My wife enjoyed relating it all in our Yahoo Groups email group. Then, in the next few years:

- the implanting of computer chips in pets became commonplace

- we started hearing about new viruses every few years

- we went to war in Iraq

- Lord of the Rings movies came out, which made it more likely someone would name their son "Gandalf"

So, I asked my wife, "what else did that guy say would happen?"

She said, "I don't remember it all now, but I put a really detailed list in my email to the Yahoo Group."

So, we look in the Yahoo Groups history, and...that month was missing from the history.

Oh, well. If he had said anything more significant than a global pandemic and WW3, I assume I would have remembered it.

It was a visual novel (the game on the PS3 [EDIT: +Xbox 360]), then it was an anime, and very recently, there is now a game, Steins;Gate Elite (PS4/Xbox One/Switch) based on the anime.

Actually it was on Xbox 360, one of the few in Japan in 2009.

PS3 and Vita was years later (2012)