kestrel

kestrel
2021-11-07 19:42:12 (UTC)

Prompt 138: NYC Time Machine

138. After turning down an alley in New York City, you meet a man with a time machine. You can travel to any time period, but only within the city limits. What time period do you choose and why? Would you stay there to live out your days or come home and why?
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Nothing about contemporary life in NYC is attractive to me. So I would avoid it entirely. I'd request that I go back in time to the pre-historic era so I could explore and study the effect of glaciers on the landscape. We're talking like 2.5 million or so years ago, when the edges of glaciers would melt, then deposit all the sand and silt and rock south of Long Island.

Those glaciers basically scraped all the potential soil off the top of the Island, making it easier in modern times to build a foundation for all the skyscrapers that are part of NYC's skyline.

I would spend ten years studying the effect of those glaciers on the landscape, recording as much data as possible, then returning to present time to deliver my findings and collected data to as many scientific bodies as would be legitimately interested.

Nothing about human activity in NYC interests me in the slightest. I find it a paradox of feelings: simultaneously dreadful, hostile, and boring. How can you fear that which at the same time leaves you unimpressed and disappointed? To me, it's just a city full of bad news.

I ____ New York.

(PS: I really don't like "time machine" prompts. I think they're silly.)




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