Menu

Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog
Directory
Contests
Magazine
FAQ

Write a story featuring an element of time-travel or anachronism.

Posted in Science Fiction on Jul 8, 2022

Submissions are closed

Make sure you don't miss our next contest by creating your free Reedsy account.

Sign in with Google
Sign in with Facebook

Or use an email address:

Why not check out our active contest?

✍️ 68 stories

Antientropic Artifact: Plastic Doll's Head, Found Third Millennium B. C. E.

Submitted to Contest #154

              Neela was getting bored watching the pigs when she looked down and saw lying against a stone, a thing with colors different from any she had ever seen. She hesitated; new things could be dangerous. It seemed harmless. It didn’t move and looked soft and smooth.             Neela bent down and closed her left fist around it. She straightened up and brought it near her face to examine it more closely. I...

11 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

The Forward Company

Submitted to Contest #154

A warm glow washed over Steven as he entered the foyer of the Forward Company's launch facility. Images of a happy family barbeque, children playing in a sprinkler and dogs fetching frisbees flowed across the building’s high dome, so peaceful. He’d designed the company’s human interface program to elicit this exact response, yet he could not control his own reactions. The room exuded a sense of infinity; all was possible here. The company motto repeated at the four cardinal points. There is no going back, but the future is always there ...

11 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Sylvia's Time Travel School

Submitted to Contest #154

You can find some incredible stuff on social media.  For instance, my latest discovery was an ad for Sylvia’s Time Travel School.  I checked the ratings and found most of them were extremely favorable.  Lots of thumbs up.   I have always wanted to travel in time, in other directions besides the straight ahead direction most of us are used to, but I found traveling in the accepted direction has bored out of my skull.  After getting fired from my minimum wage dead-end job, my mom told me I should give community c...

11 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Dodona

Submitted to Contest #154

There’s something they don’t tell you about being able to glimpse into the future: that eventually, you start living two imaginary lives. You can see a conversation that will happen in five minutes in the future: you can hear everything that’s said as if it’s happening in real-time, you can formulate your responses as if it’s happening in real-time, but you can’t say anything because it’s happening in the future. And then five minutes later, the conversation will happen, but you won’t say anything, even though you had a perfectly thought-out...

11 likes 3 comments 3
Read story

Cher: The Time Traveling Cow

Submitted to Contest #154

“Give me something, anything,” Mason says, leaning his head down slightly to try and force himself into my eyesight.  My gaze shifts to a bookshelf filled with all types of knick-knacks. The handy thing about having a discussion in an antique store is that there’s a slew of objects to occupy your attention.  “How about at least a season?” he pesters. “You have to have input on that.”   I don’t. I really don’t. “I say we flip through a calendar, you yell ‘stop,’ and wherever my finger lands, that’s the date.” I force a ...

11 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

One Last Dive

Submitted to Contest #154

You never knew why people were so interested in aquariums. To you, it seemed as if someone had just grabbed a handful of random marine animals to see how many of them could be stuffed into a tiny glass tank. People would pay 40 dollars to watch an exotic fish that was nearly on its deathbed swim robotically back and forth for over an hour.  He enjoyed it, though. While he observed a hammerhead shark, you observed the shades of turquoise that gently caressed his soft, round face. You silently wished that it was your palm instead. Every s...

11 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

A Return Trip to the Circus

Submitted to Contest #154

I cannot believe the experience I just had. People will think I am crazy if I share the story with them. I was taking a walk in in the empty field just north of the city. I was feeling kind of sleepy, had been for days. I thought that an aggressive walk might wake me up. But I only got more tired, so much so that I had to sit on the rarely used park bench at the entrance to the empty field. In very little time I went into a state that I first believed was deep in sleep. But when I ‘awoke’ I was not in an empty f...

11 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Your Happy Helper

Submitted to Contest #154

The brown blades of the fan circled over and over as I stared up at the ceiling, a gentle breeze blowing over my skin. It let out a small tick tick tick as the pull cords swung around, clicking the small dice decorations together. I glanced over to the window. My curtains shut out most of the light, but some moonlight spilled over the top, softly illuminating the ceiling. I pulled my teddy bear closer to me and kissed the top of his head. “Looks like it’s just you and me tonight, Bubbles,” I whispered and smiled. He didn’t answer.I roll...

10 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

... To The Third Power

Submitted to Contest #154

James McCoy sat in the rain. His ability to care about getting wet had faded beneath the sorrow that bent his lips into a frown so deep and entrenched upon his face that it seemed impossible for a boy of thirteen to feel so deeply that it had aged him. At least it had today, under these clouds and in this storm.  In one hand James held a crumpled and slightly dampened piece of paper. The wrinkles created by the folds nearly thinned the paper to the point of falling apart. He was so sure, so sure that his tender ...

10 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Heather of the Moors

Submitted to Contest #154

Her name was Heather, like the heather that was scattered endlessly across the beautiful moors.The moors of Dartmoor called to Heather, both in her waking hours and in her dreams. They beckoned as she slept in the comfortable bed that had once belonged to her parents, and each morning as she awoke, the smell of heather along with a fine mist seemed to permeate the room. She knew well enough, however, that these things were merely the remnants of her dreams that lingered so.Born in 1928, Heather had been named for the purple, flowering plant ...

10 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

The Grand Finale

Submitted to Contest #154

I’m not from here. Not exactly. But how to explain that I jumped from another time? That my old life ended in 1896, and that my new one started nearly a century later? It’s complicated. In my former life, my brother and I were perhaps the most celebrated circus performers of our day—and not just because we were twins. We were acrobats, most famous for our high wire and flying trapeze acts, although you’d have loved to have seen us on horseback. As kids, we were virtually fearless—always climbing something treacherous; doing aerial backflip...

10 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Time is an Illusion

Submitted to Contest #154

Time is an illusion Strolling the beach with his metal detector Marcus ignores the looks of the evening joggers passing by and shaking their heads at him. The earphones connected to the detector have been unusually quiet this morning not even a small murmur indicating the possibility of loose change or lost trinkets left behind by long forgotten beachcombers. He is lost in thought as he absent-mindedly swings the machine back and forth. In his mind’s eye he is not alone but with this wife Nadine they met on this very beach 70 years ago. S...

10 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Stuck

Submitted to Contest #154

Edison Gates tries to remember what he does for a living, where he lives, and who he loves, but his memory is a scrambled haze. He only knows that wherever he is going is better than wherever he had been. Edison looks at himself in the rear-view mirror. North of forty, he’s hollow-eyed, his skin is blotchy, his dark hair is thinning, and his lean physique lacks muscle. “…Must have a desk job…,” he mutters. The radio blasts Golden Earring’s “Radar Love.” He steps on the gas, trying to ignore the darkening sky ahead. The first crack of th...

10 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

gaps in our lives

Submitted to Contest #154

(note: contains sensitive language)A soft squeak came from my shoe as I entered the hospital room. He turned his wrinkled neck, and with kind gray eyes smiled at me. The sunlight in the room felt nostalgic, aching, old. End-of-life sunlight. The sunlight of thirty years ago. Sunlight of someone receding into memories. I smiled back, and sat in the tiny plastic chair next to the bed. “Hi Dad. It’s so odd seeing you like this. It doesn't suit you.” His eyes seemed to film over as I said this. He looked up at the cream-white ceiling, his mind d...

10 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

Ripples in Time

Submitted to Contest #154

“Professor Delorian, why does it matter which theory may or not be correct?” asked Trainee Patterson, adjusting his tie self-consciously as all the eyes in the lecture hall stared at him, some judging his good looks, others scoffing at the ignorance of the question, while those closest to him nodded their heads in solidarity. Even here, in a place that shouldn’t exist, the cliques of yesteryear still somehow held sway. The professor, a tall woman with short hair just starting to turn gray, looked up from her lectern mid-speech and took off...

10 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

🌟 Similar prompts

Start your story with someone saying, “We’re running out of time.”

Middle School – 77 stories

Write a story about someone who feels increasingly irrelevant.

Sad – 57 stories

Write a story — romantic or not — about two characters who can’t find the right timing.

Romance – 32 stories

Write a story about an object that has been around for centuries or passed down generations.

Kids – 46 stories

How to Write a Novel

Join Tom Bromley for a writing master class and finish your first draft in 3 months. Learn more →

How to Write a Novel