Re-posting - My 'Time Travel' story from some 20 years ago.

ASHOOR

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Staff member
I accidentally came across the post below which I had made to the Assyrian Voice Emagazine section. I found it a bit cheesy, but still decided to share it here, and how things evolve over time :)


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My Meeting with Ashur Panipal: Using a TimeMachine to Explore our Past! ( Part 1)
By: Ashur Sada. July 1st, 2005


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It is a hot summer afternoon, and I am sitting in my room doing nothing. I go to Assyrian Voice, and there is nothing exciting to do; I guess everyone has gone to a local picnic. I pick up an Assyrian magazine to read; same thing, all boring stuff. I open my satellite to an Assyrian TV channel, and all I see are some Assyrian politician arguing about nonsense. I sit there wondering, "what should I do, this is really boring?" An idea strikes me: how about if I go back in history, using time travel, and visit my Assyrian ancestors? that would be really cool. I would be the first and only living Assyrian to go back in history and see how our civilization looked like then. Moreover, I could meet the great king Ashur Panipal, after whom my parents named me!

Ok, sounds like a good idea, let me get going. Problem is, I don't have a time-machine, but a neighbor had built one in his basement but didn't tell anyone else about it, except for the lucky, yours truly, myself! Problem is, not sure he will let me use it. I will give it a try, he may let me use it. I leave my house, cross the street, knock on his door, and he opens the door:

-"Good after noon Mr......."
-"Good after noon Mr.Ashur, come on in..."


I enter the house, and after talking about life for a few minutes, I go into the subject right away. To my surprise, he agrees to let me use it (his time machine.) But since a time-machine requires a lot of energy to work, he asks me to pay for its fuel, which I didn't mind. The machine has to accelerate at, or beyond the speed of light, which will require it to burn literally hundreds of thousands of litres of a special energy fuel This costs me in the thousands, but I don't mind it; I am sure I will get richer once I come back from the past into the present. .


I go to the bank, withdraw the money, and then call in on a big tanker to deliver the require fuel. I ask the driver that he leaves the tanker outside (so he doesn't find out about our time-machine) My friend teaches me how to use the machine, and he agrees to stay outside to refuel and maintain it while I am inside it. After the training, I am so eager and excited to start the engine and get going. But before I do that, my friend looks kind of hesitated. He asks me:

-"You didn't tell me, if you are going to travel to the future or the past?"
-"Oh good question, and it is the past I am travelling to..."
-"Interesting, but what point in the past? Going too far in the past may not work well with this machine. But I can't go into the details of why this is the case..."
-"Oh but my destination is only about 3000 years back, to the period where the Assyrian empire was in its peak and power"



Mr......... does a little mathematical formula, which doesn't look like anything I have seen before. A few number crunching here and there, he looks at me with a smile and says:

-"Good news, it is possible to use this machine to go to that period you mentioned..."

As I was about to thank him, he followed by saying:

-"But I am interested to know, why you are going to this particular period, are you an Assyriologist by any chance?"
-"Actually, I am an Assyrian myself!"
-"Oh, wow, that is a shock to me. This must be a privilege to you then, to be traveling to a period where your empire was in control of the entire world."
-Indeed it is Mr........, now let us get going please, I am too excited"


And excited I really was, because as you can see, I forgot to even thank him for letting me use his machine.





Coming in part 2: Next, I will sit in the time-machine and officially launch myself into the past. I arrive at Nineveh, Assyria, very puzzled and confused: everything looks different. At the same time, people look at me with a confusion mounted on their faces because I look different from them too...
 
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My Meeting with Ashur Panipal: Using a Time Machine to Explore our Past! ( Part 2)
By: Ashur Sada. July 15th, 2005




I am now about to sit in the machine to go back in history. As I am about to sit down, my friend remembers something: the setting was wrong, and had he not remembered, the machine would have taken me to the future instead of the past. It takes him another hour to fix this problem, and we are finally ready. I sit down, press a few button, pull a lever, and the journey starts. I am not going back in history. Different places and eras are passing by my eyes, each one taking less than a few seconds to disappear before the next one comes on. This is taking me seconds, but think about it: I am traveling thousands of years back!

That is it, the machine has stopped, signifying its arrival at its end point. I open my eyes again after briefly closing them. What I see now is beyond belief: I am actually in Nineveh now! WOW, this is so amazing and wonderful. Let me pinch myself to make sure I am not dreaming. Ok enough of my amazement, now let me unpack myself and leave the machine. I do so and leave the machine. Ok, not surprised, everyone is looking at me. Ok now this is getting serious, as I see Assyrian soldiers coming towards me...and they start talking to me in an old Assyrian accent:

-"Klay pshopokh, mani atet, mot wathaa alakha..."
-"Ana shemi ele Ashur, Atourayan makh dyoukhon, etyan men shetet 2005, yan qorbet 2500 shene men dya..."


They look at me confused, understanding neither my accent nor where I come from. Someone suddenly jumps from the crowd and seems to understand my modern Assyrian accent. Could he too be a time traveller? He talks to me and asks me who I am, and where I come from. It takes me a few minutes to explain it to him, but he doesn't get it. He thinks I am lying. He tells me:

-"maset azet men dokta l'dokta, ena takhi maseta azeta men dana l dana? len dayawa"
-"haly dana besh raba qat malpenoukh but daha mendy..."


Apparently, this is not easy for them to understand. At the time of the Assyrian empire, there was only some very primitive ways of transportation; no cars, trains or air-planes, let alone a time machine. So I was in for a hard day. But then, faced with the difficulty of understanding how I got there, they now ask me why I came there for:

-"mothya bayatina...?"
-"Etyan lakha qat tapqen bet Malka Ashur..."



As I told them about my wish to meet the king, they become even more suspicious and start to think that I am from an enemy, there to spy on the Assyrian nation. But then I assure them that I am not. Then I go on telling them about my being Assyrian just like they were, and I go on talking about Assyrian history, and the fall of the Assyrian empire. I then realize what a mistake I just did: by telling them about things that happened, they will think I am predicting the future rather than telling the past. In other words, they have no idea that I come from the future; to them I am just a normal person who is trying to predict the future, which makes my presence there even more suspicious. So I just change my conversation to something else. And after a lengthy discussion with the guards and other civil servants, they agree to let me see the great king Ashur Panipal. The meeting was going to take place after one week. The officials already told the king about me, and where I come from, but had some difficulty understanding the concept of "coming from the future." He then asked the best Assyrian scientists to meet with me and try to understand to the best of their grasp, where I had come from and how that was possible.

The following day I was taken to the great library of Ashur Panipal, the first library ever built in history. This is where the idea of a library was first born. It was very big, and surrounded by beautiful water fountains, flowers and trees. There was big space for people to sit and read by the river. But I was more interested in going inside and see who was in there. As we entered the library (me along with other guards who were accompanying me), I was astounded to see what I saw: it was a place full with Assyrian scientists, mathematicians and other academicians. Apparently, the top Assyrian scientists, some brought all the way from Babylon, were waiting for me. We sat down, and first thing they did, was to try and test my knowledge to determine if I was for real or just a fool, trying to fool the public. I was able to answer most of their science questions, although I was puzzled by some of their other harder math questions.

By now, the scientists were convinced that I was for real. Now the hard part comes, to try and explain just who I am, where I come from and how I got here. The problem was, they were thinking of me in religious/mythical term rather than on actual scientific basis. That is, the only way they could understand how I came there with them, was to link it in their mind to a spiritual or a power from a higher being. So my first goal was to convince them that my ability to travel through space and time was aided by science and not any mythical or spiritual power. After three hours, I was finally able to explain my position to them and have them comprehend some of what I was all about. But there was more work to do. I now had to tell them about where I came from (at that time, even Europe was within a far reach of the middle east, let alone North America where I came from) So I started giving them some lessons in geography about where North America was. As I was explaining this to them, one of the scientists, with his feather pen on cuneiform , started asking me a few questions about distance, and other related concepts about where I lived in relation to Assyria. He kept asking and jetting down my answers. He then started consulting with two other scientists about the numbers I gave them. My answers seemed to make sense to them. They had now come into grasp with the idea that I come from a place where no one had gone before. Now to the even harder part: explaining to them how I time-traveled!
 
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