Unredacted Reports from 1546

by Leah Cypess

Release: June 2021
Format: Short Story
Genre: Science Fiction
Audience: Adults
Content: Definite Time Travel
Original Language: English

An 18-year-old history student hopes to show that her research subject, 16th-century poet Lucia of Gonzaga, was a modern woman supressed by her time period, but as the traveling student sends messages back to her 21st-century mentor, she reveals more than just history as she’d hoped it would be.

— Michael Main

You were wrong about my age, though. In the sixteenth century, I’m an adult. I am physically mature and able to bear children, and that’s all that matters. No one cares about the completeness of my frontal lobe.

DEBUT

“Unredacted Reports from 1546,” Future Science Fiction Digest #11, June 2021 [e-zine · webzine].

VARIANTS

1 English variant

TAGS(SPOILERS!)

Time Periods

Early Modern History (AD 1454 to 1600): AD 1546
Circa AD 2000 to 2099: There is some ambiguity as to the starting time, which the narrator refers to as both 700 years after AD 1546 and as the 21st century.

Timeline Models

Single Naive Timeline: Nothing other than a brief mention of sometimes needing to file reports on temporal-stability incidents.

Time Travel Methods

Unexplained Time Travel Methods

Themes

Letters, Texts, Phone Calls, Talking, and Other Direct Communications through Time
Physical Limitations on Who May Travel: Only the young may travel.
Salvaging Lost Art or Literature: The narrator hopes to find other works by Lucia.
Time Historians: Hard to tell whether there is a Time Corps, but there are definitely historians.
Time Travel Sickness, Injuries, and Mixed-Up Body Parts: It’s basically some anecdotal evidence about fewer neuro-injuries in younger people [. . .]

TIME TRAVEL ITINERARY (SPOILERS!)

From an unspecified location, in the 21st century ⋙ to Italy, AD 1546. Round trip. Note: The student travels before the start of the story on 1 March 1546, and she returns after the end of the story.