An Apology for Timeline Disruptions

October 12, 2024,

St. Ambrose University

Hillcrest, Pennsylvania.

Dr. Charles Grayson, a historian of modest repute, stood at the podium of St. Ambrose University’s lecture hall. His tweed jacket felt unusually heavy, and his tie choked him like a noose. Before him, rows of curious students and faculty awaited his presentation on “Obscure Medieval Mystics and Their Influence on Modern Theology.”

Instead, he cleared his throat and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, before I begin, I owe you all a sincere apology.”

The crowd stirred. Apologies were uncommon in academic settings unless someone had misattributed a Latin phrase or offended the Thomists.

“I’m terribly sorry,” Charles continued, “but I accidentally disrupted the timeline last night.”

A beat of silence followed. Then laughter erupted.

“Oh, I’m serious,” Charles said, raising his hands. “It was an accident. I recently obtained a relic—uh, I mean, a device, quite old—during my research on 14th-century mysticism. One thing led to another, and I… well, I may have caused a few, shall we say, historical overlaps.”

More laughter. A student raised his hand. “Are you saying you’re a time traveler, Dr. Grayson?”

“Not intentionally!” Charles shot back. “I was experimenting with what I thought was an ordinary medieval artifact—a beautifully carved hourglass said to belong to St. Vincent of Saragossa. Turns out, it was less of a symbolic relic and more of a… functional one. A catalyst for time.”

The crowd chuckled again, though a few furrowed brows suggested some were taking his words more seriously. Charles noticed Dean Randall’s scowl from the back row.

“To be clear,” Charles continued, ignoring the rising skepticism, “if you notice anything odd—dinosaurs in traffic, Roman soldiers at the grocery store, or, God forbid, anachronistic saints showing up unannounced—please understand that I’m doing my best to repair the damage.”

He adjusted his tie and began his lecture, though most of the audience remained distracted by his bizarre apology.

That night, Charles sat in his dimly lit office, staring at the object that had started the mess. The hourglass, encased in ornate gold filigree, glowed faintly in the moonlight. He had acquired it during his latest research trip to Spain, where it had languished in a forgotten monastery archive. The monks had insisted it was a relic of St. Vincent, but Charles had dismissed the claim as hagiographic embellishment.

Until last night.

Out of idle curiosity, he had turned the hourglass upside down. As the sands flowed, the world around him seemed to shimmer and blur, like heatwaves distorting the horizon. When the sensation passed, he found himself standing in a medieval village.

It had taken him hours to figure out how to return to his own time, and even then, something had clearly gone wrong. He’d glimpsed too many things that didn’t belong: a knight wearing sneakers, a monk arguing with a dinosaur, and a 21st-century convenience store nestled next to a Gothic cathedral.

Worst of all, Charles had seen flashes of what he could only describe as sacred moments in history—St. Augustine writing Confessions, St. Francis taming the wolf of Gubbio, the martyrdom of St. Thomas More—flickering and fading as if they were fragile threads unraveling.

The next morning, Charles awoke to an unsettling calm. He turned on the radio, only to hear the morning host frantically reporting sightings of a Viking longship in New York Harbor. Grimacing, Charles dressed hurriedly and made his way to the university, clutching the hourglass in his satchel.

The lecture hall buzzed with chaotic energy. A Roman centurion was speaking to campus security outside, gesturing wildly at passing cars. Inside, students whispered about an apparent sighting of Joan of Arc near the cafeteria. Charles felt a sinking weight in his chest. “It’s worse than I thought,” he muttered.

By mid-afternoon, Charles found himself reluctantly addressing an emergency meeting of faculty and staff. He explained, in the most academic terms he could muster, that the timeline had become “porous.” Events and figures from various eras were slipping through.

“Do you expect us to believe this?” Dean Randall snapped.

“Believe what you like,” Charles replied, holding up the hourglass. “But this object has a connection to eternity—a glimpse into God’s perception of time, if you will. I think the saints understood this, which is why they preserved it. And I think… I might have broken something.”

“Are you suggesting divine intervention is needed to fix your mistake?” someone asked, incredulous.

“I’m suggesting divine intervention may be the only way,” Charles admitted.

As the day wore on, Charles noticed an odd pattern. Though the timeline disruptions caused confusion and chaos, they also seemed to carry a sense of providence.

The Roman centurion, for example, had stumbled into the chapel and knelt in prayer, claiming he’d had a vision of a man crucified under Pontius Pilate. Students flocked to hear his testimony.

In the library, St. Catherine of Siena had appeared and was calmly discussing virtue ethics with a philosophy professor. And on the campus lawn, a medieval friar began preaching on the Beatitudes, drawing a crowd of skeptics and believers alike.

Charles observed these moments with growing awe. Despite his blundering, it seemed as if something greater was at work. The disruptions, chaotic as they were, had a strangely unifying effect.

That evening, Charles returned to his office and turned the hourglass over in his hands. “What do you want from me?” he muttered, staring at the relic as if it could answer him. In his frustration, he turned it again, letting the sands flow.

This time, the shimmer around him felt different. When it faded, Charles found himself in a quiet, candlelit room. Sitting at a wooden table was a man in a simple robe, writing with a quill.

“St. Augustine,” Charles breathed.

The saint looked up, his expression both amused and kind. “You have caused quite the stir, my friend,” he said in Latin.

“I didn’t mean to,” Charles stammered. “I only wanted to understand the hourglass. To learn from it.”

Augustine nodded. “And yet, in your fumbling, you have revealed something profound. Time is not yours to command, but a gift to be received. Each moment is woven into eternity, guided by the hand of God.”

Charles bowed his head. “How do I fix this?”

“You cannot,” Augustine said simply. “But you can surrender. Place the hourglass in the hands of its true Maker.”

When Charles returned to his own time, he knew what he had to do. He carried the hourglass to the chapel and knelt before the altar. “Lord,” he prayed, “I offer this back to You. I’ve meddled with what I do not understand. Please, heal the wounds I’ve caused in the tapestry of Your creation.” As he prayed, a light enveloped the hourglass, and it disappeared.

The next day, the disruptions ceased. The Roman centurion, Joan of Arc, and other figures vanished as mysteriously as they’d appeared. News outlets declared it all a mass hallucination, and the university returned to normal.

Charles, however, became the subject of endless mockery. Students joked about his “timeline apology” for years.

But among a small circle of faculty and students who had witnessed the strange events, Charles was regarded as a genius—a man who had glimpsed the divine and learned the humility of surrender.

In the quiet of his office, Charles smiled. The ridicule didn’t matter. He had seen the threads of grace, and that was enough.