A time traveler comes to the Helix bar where he’s flabbergasted to discover that the Great War on Earth from nineteen fourteen to eighteen was still started in exactly the same manner as before his trip in time. And that’s not the only chrono-intervention gone awry.
He looks at me, looks at my look, looks at his bag, opens his bag, looks in his bag, takes out a gun. He does not look as if he is about to use it. Instead, he breaks it open. “Look!” he says, and I am looking already. “It hasn’t been fired! How can Princip have laid his hands on another gun so quickly? The car went by thirty seconds after I stole this from his pocket. He didn’t have time! How is it possible?

Variants

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  1. “A Small Diversion on the Road to Hell” by Jonathan L. Howard, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March/April 2015.
    2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . written by Jonathan L. Howard