After a history graduate student has her research proposal dismissed by her professor, she runs into a woman who offers to put her ideas about Pompey the Great and the Roman Civil War to a real-world test.
And then I told her that if I had been there, I could have steered Pompey toward saving the Republic.

Variants

(1)
  1. “A Word in Pompey’s Ear” by Christopher Nuttall, in Synchronic: 13 Tales of Time Travel (edited by David Gatewood, David Gatewood) May 2014.
  2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . written by Christopher Nuttall