Featured work for 20 February 2025
In the Chocolate Bar
- by Jody Lynn Nye
- Short Story
- Mystery and Crime
- Adults
- Definite Time Travel
- English
- “In the Chocolate Bar” by Jody Lynn Nye, in Three Time Travelers Walk into . . ., edited by Michael A. Ventrella (Fantastic Books, June 2022).
Steven Mentzel discovered that the original recipe for Abelard chocolate has been removed from the safe where it is kept. He asks for help from Jacques Pepin, and a somewhat unlikely trio show up to help him.
—Tandy Ringoringo
“Who are you looking for?” Steven asked.
“Myself,” she said, peering up and down the busy Boston street.“It’s not a good sign. I usually come back to reassure me that we’ve succeeded. I wonder what's holding me up?”
“Maybe it’s just a delay,” the clerk suggested concerned by the look on the tall woman’s face.
“You couldn’t get back in time?”
“It’s time travel,” Julia corrected him. “There’s always time to get back where you started. ”
Tags
(13)
- Time Periods
- Ancient History (3000 BC to AD 476: Bronze/Iron Ages): Imhotep’s home time: circa 1620 BC
- Circa AD 1600 to 1699: the time of the recipe
- Circa AD 1900 to 1929: possible home time of Carver (at Tuskeegee from 1896 to 1943); also the time of the Chocolate bar in 1910
- Circa AD 1970 to 1999: probable home time for Child during her time at PBS; also probable time of the story’s opening
- Time Travel Methods
- Pocket Time Machine: the rings, although no indication is given of how they work
- Themes
- Acting on Knowledge from a Self-Visitation: Usually, before Julia Child goes off on a mission, she meets her returning self to receive reassurance that the mission went okay.
- Language Difficulties: You must eat the universal translator!
- Time Cops: There appears to be a separate division that deals with law enforcement vis-a-vis time travel. Someone will have to work out how he got a hold of a travel ring, but that's a job for enforcement, not us.
- Time Sherlocks: The trio uses time travel to solve crimes.
- Real-World Tags
- Groupings
Variants
(1)
- “In the Chocolate Bar” by Jody Lynn Nye, in Three Time Travelers Walk into . . ., edited by Michael A. Ventrella (Fantastic Books, June 2022).