Forum: Story Ideas

Time travel with a twist.

Nuff_Said 🚫

A group of kids from USA of 50s find a crashed truck with 2020s-30s computers and electronic toys (anything - drones, power tools, 3d printers with supplies, advanced rifle scopes - FLIR and their kind, whatever else. It is a big truck, 18-wheeler, loaded to the top). Also, computers are not just 'blank from shop shelf', but from different people, and mostly have their hard drives full of something. To make the plot move, the first one they find belonged to author writing about ISOTs and do-overs exactly about late 20th-early 21st century. With tons of actual info, so, while not exactly Google, since they have to find information in more traditional way, looking from file to file, with small help of computer search engine, there is probably just as much info as they might need.
I know that right now, movies, music, and many other things have long gone to online services, and property rights is a serious thing. But there are places in this world, where online piracy is alive and well and some people store whatever they have on hard drives. Lets assume that was what an anomalous congregation of torrents and ftp fans' computers.
These kids manage to get the truck running enough to get it off the road and hide (it could be a rural area, and they had an empty barn at hand), and keep the knowledge from families and authorities.
Now they have tools and information from the future, and it is up to them how to use it. Plus, it is a group knowledge, and there is a high chance of secret spreading around, and more people getting involved. They do their best to keep it under control, and with some luck (also known as Author's Will) they manage, only getting right people into their circle.

What complications they have? About a million, I think. They are schoolkids and have to go to school. They have families and have to do their chores and can't just disappear for hours. They have to keep it secret. They have to find ways to get electricity running - buy fuel for generator, for example, or handle solar panels they found in the truck, since they can't automate everything or leave it out in the open for strangers. They have to learn themselves how to run computers and to use them, and all other electronic toys. They are limited with time and 'information output' - how much they can get out in given time. They have problems with not knowing what to look for and have to get through millions of gigabytes of everything (including very alluring stuff like movies and videogames).

The truck driver dies in a crash at the moment of ISOT (didn't buckle his belt and went flying through the windshield, breaking his neck?), and he has some cyber-implants too. The truck is some near-future full-electric thing, with autopilot and other fun options (can use its huge battery to run computers, and charge it from solar panels of fuel generator).

Replies: irvmull shinerdrinker Vincent Berg LupusDei Pixy blackjack2145309 Nuff_Said Nuff_Said

irvmull 🚫

@Nuff_Said

Very interesting!

shinerdrinker 🚫

@Nuff_Said

I wanna read this story!

Vincent Berg 🚫

@Nuff_Said

A better premise is their NOT finding the truck sitting in the middle of the road, as it's a time travel road, the 2020 road could just as easily cross their personal farmland, making it fairly simple to hide what they've found from prying eyes, at least initially. Once they start making inquiries, then people would start asking questions.

Of course, any crash severe enough to instantly kill the driver would likely destroy the vast majority of delicate electronic devices. Plus, each would only be useful as long as their lithium batteries remain charged, which would be problematic, as no one in the 50's would have any understanding of lithium battery's capacity of limitations (i.e. their tendency to catch on fire and explode when exposed to heat).

Thus, most of it would be a brief view into the future, rather than a 'printed' reference they could study over a prolonged time. Still, it seems like a viable story premise. The rest is all in how you'd execute the results in your story.

LupusDei 🚫

@Nuff_Said

One thing that immediately comes to my mind, what if it's all a deliberately assembled cross-time delivery package, but apparently at least somewhat failed one -- it's highly unlikely (albeit not at all impossible) that it was originally addressed to the actual receivers. It could add a level of believability of the items and information assortment, simultaneously adding anxiety about the original addressee showing up announced (it could even be limited to reader exclusively, keeping protagonists delightfully ignorant of such possibility, even with just descriptions of stuff included, without directed foreshadowing).

Replies: akarge

akarge 🚫

@LupusDei

OR deliberately sent back, but missed the target location/ time.

Pixy 🚫

@Nuff_Said

I think the elephant in the room is that they wouldn't know what to do with any of it. Some would argue that we live in a technological world, yet a large percentage of the present population still can't use computers, has issues just using a ATM etc etc.

We know (mostly) what to do with the tech on offer, but would kids of the 50's really know what a solar cell from mid 2020's was, let alone how to even use it? To them it would just be a slightly rubbish mirror. Would they really know how to drive a semi? A semi that would most likely be electronically advanced? Have you even driven a recent semi? I can't, admittedly, speak for America, but trucks/semi's in Europe are electronic, with coded ignitions, digital tachographs and breathalyser enabled starts (you have to breath into a tube and if no alcohol is detected, the engine starts) and have more electronic parts than were in the first space shuttle. You're not going to be repairing that anytime soon unless you also happen to have a chip fabrication plant handy...

Also, how old are the kids? Most likely they would freak out upon seeing the dead driver and probably run off, or end up trashing the kit in the back because, destruction is fun...

Replies: StarFleet Carl

StarFleet Carl 🚫
Updated:

@Pixy

have more electronic parts than were in the first space shuttle.

The first space shuttle was obsolete LONG before it ever launched, as far as electronics were concerned.

Your nanny state semi tractors don't quite exist that way on this side of the pond. This is the dash from a Peterbilt 567 Vocational Truck. Lots of switches and buttons that might be confusing, but ... you're talking American kids in the 1950's. Kids then knew how to build hot-rods, and did. If you didn't live in a city, then you for damned sure knew how to do maintenance on farm equipment, and could drive a manual transmission anything. (That could screw them up if it was a new Peterbilt 579, since those now have automatic transmissions!)

As for freaking out because of a dead body? In the 1950's? What planet are you from? All of the kids then had relatives that fought in World War Two or Korea, and we played Cowboys and Indians, shot cap pistols and every kid owned a BB-gun.

I could see them breaking a laptop or two trying to figure one out - but don't forget, this was both the Golden Era of Science Fiction, where Tom Swift and his Rocket Ship were on every boy's bookshelf, and when boys actually took shop class and LEARNED how to work on engines and equipment. Computers existed then, just not like we know now. But they'd been DESCRIBED in ways similar to what we have. Remember, televisions DID exist then.

Also, to the OP, it might not mean much, but you can store all of Wikipedia - including images - on 150 GB of HDD space.

Replies: Pixy

Pixy 🚫

@StarFleet Carl

As for freaking out because of a dead body? In the 1950's? What planet are you from? All of the kids then had relatives that fought in World War Two or Korea, and we played Cowboys and Indians, shot cap pistols and every kid owned a BB-gun.

Just because you fired a BB gun and played cowboys and Indians is absolutely no way going to prepare you for the unexpected sight of a (possibly) mutilated body. In fact, I would even go so far as to say it's a pretty ridiculous statement to make, especially having seen grown men throw up and go to pieces upon the sight of such. Especially when you take into account the smell and the flies.

Replies: Pixy Dominions Son StarFleet Carl

Pixy 🚫

@Pixy

Peterbilt 567

That picture reminded me of something I had forgotten. Unless one of the kids parents drove semi's and the kid rode with them, I doubt many kids would understand the use/working of the aux and trailer brakes. I don't know, maybe one of the older members here could clarify if they existed in the 50's?

Also, American truck cabs look weirdly narrow...

Dominions Son 🚫

@Pixy

Also depends on how fresh the body is.

Coming across a mangled body that's barely dead is one thing, coming across a mangled body that going putrid is something else.

Replies: Pixy StarFleet Carl

Pixy 🚫

@Dominions Son

Exactly.

StarFleet Carl 🚫

@Dominions Son

Coming across a mangled body that's barely dead is one thing, coming across a mangled body that going putrid is something else.

Ever come across a cow that died in the woods and was half eaten? It's pretty nasty, but simply part of life. Again, we're not talking today's sissy boys - we're talking real 1950's kids, that were raised by parents that would beat their butts for backtalk. And a huge number of boys belonged to the Boy Scouts of America, so they were actually taught stuff.

The actual only issue with the whole scenario is whether or not the kids would consider it all a part of the UFO craze that was going on at the time, along with the general anti-communist rhetoric, and end up reporting it to their local police/sheriff instead of hiding it themselves.

Replies: Dominions Son

Dominions Son 🚫

@StarFleet Carl

Ever come across a cow that died in the woods and was half eaten? It's pretty nasty, but simply part of life.

Again, half eaten is not the same as half rotten.

StarFleet Carl 🚫

@Pixy

Especially when you take into account the smell and the flies.

So? Again, most American kids in the '50's that did not live in the cities - which means they lived on farms - had seen animals butchered, maybe even done some of it themselves. It's rather gross the first time you have to carefully slit the belly of a hanging cow open to get the intestines to fall into the tub that you drag out to feed the pigs - by the fifth time you've done it, it's no big deal. (And the reason you have to be careful is so you don't rupture the intestines, and flood the inside of the hanging beef.)

Replies: Pixy

Pixy 🚫

@StarFleet Carl

And again, there is a big difference between an animal reared for slaughter and a human being.

My parents lived in the city and I was 'reared' in the country. One of the kids at school's parents reared cows and sheep for slaughter, so in your definition was used to seeing animal carcasses, but when he saw his father's corpse caught up in a PTO, he was most definitely NOT 'okay', nor was he 'okay' for years after. However, he was a child of the 80's not of your roughty toughty 50's, so I asked my father about the blitz. And do you know what? He wasn't exactly 'okay' about the sight of corpses either and even now, 80 years on, he refuses to talk about the sights.

Granted that's a pool of only two people, and some people are quite happy with the sight of dead bodies, which is just as well, as we wouldn't have surgeons, pathologists, morturers and psychopaths. We could most definitely do without that last, but sadly we don't have much choice.

On the basis of probabilities, I'm going to respectively disagree with you that a bunch of kids in the 50's are going to be all Famous Five about the discovery of a dead body. One might be, but the rest are not and are most likely going to think that the one(s) who is(are) are going to be serial killers when they grow up and that's going to have repercussions to the group dynamic.

I should probably mention that I am also a combat veteran, so I'm used to working within a small group (gang) of people and I know first hand exactly how people tend to react when they see a dead body, and like most things in life, it's the ones who shout the loudest about how tough they are, how 'unaffected' they are, that seem to suffer the most after the fact. Also speaking from experience, it is most definitely the 'quiet' ones that you have to look out for, as it always seems to be them who are the ones caught with hands (not their own) and fetuses in their MFO luggage on return from combat zones. And a few years later, it always seems to be the 'tough' ones who you hear about on the veteran's Facebook pages who consumed a pharmacy worth of pills and a distillery's worth of alcohol, and drove their car into a tree at 80 mph.

Me? I sleep remarkably well at night....LOL

Replies: StarFleet Carl awnlee jawking

StarFleet Carl 🚫

@Pixy

One of the kids at school's parents reared cows and sheep for slaughter, so in your definition was used to seeing animal carcasses, but when he saw his father's corpse caught up in a PTO, he was most definitely NOT 'okay', nor was he 'okay' for years after.

You know, I wonder if possibly the emotional connection he had with his father MIGHT have played just a LITTLE bit into his being upset. And my sarcasm button is set to 11 on this one, because that is such a trolling remark, you actually beat the Grinning Dick.

Keep in mind I didn't say that it wouldn't be emotionally upsetting to come across a dead body in the cab of a semi. It's simply a case of whether or not the person would let it bother them to the point of it scars them for life, or they would go, huh, and continue with what they were doing.

When I did my law enforcement internship, we were second on scene for a multi-fatality accident. A car had missed the curve on the interstate - drunk driver - gone through the median and hit a car head on going the other way. This was in the days before airbags, so both the drunk driver and the driver of the car he hit had the steering column in their chests. Nobody in either car was wearing seatbelts, so front seat passenger's head went through the windshield, shoulders stopped, and her head kept going. We found it about 80 feet away.

Did I puke? Of course. The deputy I was with puked, too. Then we continued with the accident investigation. It is what it is.

Keep in mind as well the situation the OP described is not what your father experienced - the continual smell of death, mixed with terror - or what anyone who serves in a combat zone experiences, either. It's a single, isolated dead body - the kind you find when you go mushroom or deer hunting. You're going to smell some blood, but the pervasive smell of death simply isn't going to be all over the place. He doesn't say how LONG before the kids find the body the accident happened, either. He mentions the driver went through the windshield - they may see him laying there, and DEPENDING UPON THEIR AGE AND MATURITY, try to help him first, or they may go screaming in terror. If they're six year olds, then they'll go screaming and run away, even if they are kids of the '50's. If they're teenagers - probably not.

Replies: Pixy

Pixy 🚫

@StarFleet Carl

It's a single, isolated dead body - the kind you find when you go mushroom or deer hunting

You need to find a different mushroom/deer hunting spot...

awnlee jawking 🚫

@Pixy

roughty toughty 50's

I would have thought that in the 50s, educationists and religionists would still have been teaching the sanctity of human life and that animals were non-sentient and put on Earth for humans to do with as they wished. So a dead human would attract greater feelings of revulsion than a dead animal.

How times have changed, with humans losing their lives because of wearing the wrong colours, and stray cats and dogs getting airlifted out of Afghanistan in preference to Afghani translators and security guards.

AJ

Replies: Pixy

Pixy 🚫

@awnlee jawking

Aye.

But dogs and cats are cute....

Replies: awnlee jawking

awnlee jawking 🚫

@Pixy

But dogs and cats are cute....

Who cares! Which make the best meal? ;-)

AJ

blackjack2145309 🚫

@Nuff_Said

Just to put in my own two cents on this topic, i think you should consider something along the lines of a certain star trek enterprise episode (the series with scott bakula as the captain)

Anyway the episode i'm referring to involves the crew finding the archaeologist's time ship and then all the interested parties coming after it the suliban and the tholians for questionable reasons.

Nuff_Said 🚫

@Nuff_Said

Holy "half-slaughtered-in-the-woods" cow, see what happens when someone with a taste for necrophilia bumps up a year old thread.

About poor lad driver. It takes a certain experience to distinguish a certainly dead person from a blacked out. So, my guess was: kids (I think it was a small gang of 3 to 5 12-15 y.o. kids, and not necessarily only boys) walk down the road (it is some dirt road only used by loggers, or something like that) - see the truck appear from a flash, probably a meter above the ground, fall down on its wheels (suspension doing its job, mostly), and a driver take off like a rocket through the windshield. The truck then (electronic gizmo), sensing the pilot absent, hits the breaks and stops. The driver is laying on the ground, and - only the author knows that he's dead. In my belief, and I might be wrong, kids would rush to help, and it will take some effort and time to decide he's dead.
And I see something like that
b1: "B2, help me with this guy, B3, get in the truck and check the breaks, we don't want it start rolling on us."
B3 climbs in and Truck Autopilot starts talking to him trying to find out what the hell. Since it is well-made AI, it offers to do most of the job. Since it is a half-hacked AI - 'cause driver was the kind of person who breaks the rules just for breaking them, and some security measures got bypassed, the kids manage to make it do what they want - drive where they need it and not ask many questions.

#blackjack2145309
Have no bloody idea about Star Trek - probably saw one episode and vomited. As an excuse for being a barbarian, I normally can't stand any serials and 9 of 10 movies.

But speaking of it, why would the driver fly through the windshield? Cause he was laying on the back shelf (or how is it properly called, the place behind the seats where truckers sleep and do their immoral truckers things), watching a flick on a laptop. It could be an episode on Time Travel, just to add some spark to the plot.

Replies: Dominions Son blackjack2145309

Dominions Son 🚫

@Nuff_Said

It takes a certain experience to distinguish a certainly dead person from a blacked out.

That depends on the condition of the body. If it's badly enough mangled or mangled in the wrong place the person is unlikely to be just blacked out and that doesn't even take any medical training.

blackjack2145309 🚫

@Nuff_Said

My point is in reference to the original post, let's say there's a "thermonuclear exploding grelvin device," basically a device that could be anything you want it to be to an author.

Suppose these kids from the 50's find it and start monkeying with it causing group from the future A and B to come after it.

Group A's purpose is to prevent any temporal energy from leaking out and/or protect the timeline from contamination

Group B's purpose can be for any number of purposes, ie forcing humanity to evolve or destroying it.

And the T.E.G.D is in the hands of kids from the 50's that don't know any better....

Yea, that's a plot line up there with "the nude gun" series....

Nuff_Said 🚫

@Nuff_Said

As for, "why would 50s kids grab themselves a truck from the future, take it apart and assemble back", or any other things - I have only one reply. "Have spacesuit - will travel". And a billion of other books that tell storied about schoolkids going on adventured that would leave a trained SEAL run away shitless. Cause they are kids, and no one told them they can't.
As for "Why won't they tell the parents?" - again, they are kids. And "those parents are too old to understand". Or, as it also happens too often, their parents are those arses who manage to kill any trust to all adults by the kid's 10th birthday. Or it is the local pastor who gropes them, because he is that kind of arse, who made church notorious for pedophilia, and that kind of arse who knows that boys won't go complaining.
Or the local sheriff is the kind of arse, who made the image of "bad sheriff", ruining any trust to adults and government.
Choose one for the plot.

Ok, I see where it is going - too much fantasy elements. Smart, intrepid, lucky kids, making "plot-proper" conclusions about adults and government.
The truck from the future is just a decoration.

Replies: StarFleet Carl

StarFleet Carl 🚫

@Nuff_Said

"Have spacesuit - will travel"

PeeWee, this is Junebug. PeeWee, this is Junebug!

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Forum: Story Ideas

Time travel with a twist.

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