* * *

Lancaster’s next email arrived late on Friday. “Hey, Caleb. I sense you’re a guy who loves adventure. I can get you a discount Chrono BnB circa 1850 (prairie pioneers) for your next one-week vacay. Here’s a link to some more info on the special nature of Chrono BnB.”

I stared at the date and thought: sodbusters. Stern, sad people. Little House on the Prairie. Could I cope with those dudes for a week?

I read the article he attached.

7 Dos and Don’ts for Chrono BnB

Science has finally solved the problem of the fourth dimension. Along the way, there were a few kinks to work out. Now we can travel back in time just like we zip to Las Vegas for the weekend. But take it from me, the best way to time-travel is through a spin-off of the AirBnB model.

The bed-and-breakfast arrangement overcomes the difficulties the earliest time-travellers experienced. Chronoporting only moves your DNA, not your clothes or other stuff. Eyeglasses, tooth fillings, pacemakers: none of these time-travels with you. A chronoported person could theoretically materialize in the middle of, say, a crowded marketplace. They would have no clothes, no money, no place to stay. Worst of all, they would have no story to explain their abrupt appearance.

Let’s think about this from the historical person’s standpoint. Why should you accept a stranger who has suddenly materialized from out of the blue? Especially if that stranger shows up buck-naked and babbling some incomprehensible language? “Give me take-out and charge it to my credit card.” What does that mean to an ancient Roman?

The results, as we saw in several early time-travel incidents, were tragic. Depending on the era, a chronoported person could be beaten, run out of town, or tortured to death.

Fortunately, the ChronoPort Retail Development team got busy. Marketing liaison people went back in time, decade by decade, smoothing the way for ordinary time-travellers. They persuaded enterprising inhabitants of different eras they could make a few shekels on the side using the AirBnB model. They would just have to welcome the occasional time-traveller into their home, provide the amenities, and give safe cover.

Here are seven dos and don’ts for maximizing your medieval mead-swilling in a responsible and time-sustainable way.

Bone up on the language. Bone up on the era. Thanks to time travel, Classics professors are seeing a 700% increase in the enrolment in Latin, ancient Greek, and Sanskrit. Salve, sum amica!

Don’t try to show off. Sure, you can say, “I think someone’s hiding in that fancy Trojan horse” but then some guy will look at you funny and say, “Really? How did you happen to know that?” just before he points you out to the mob.

Don’t try to make money. Think you can short-sell the 1929 stock market? Wrong; it was a completely different regulatory regime. Just “be in the moment” and save your money-grubbing ways for present life.

Don’t be fast to pass judgment. Yes: sexism, slavery, homophobia, classism, colonialism, and so on should bother you. Paradox: you descended from a long line of that stuff going on all over. So just be an observer. If someone hands you a musket, politely refuse.

Don’t f*** with the locals. Also, don’t f*** the locals. Impossible to list the number of ways this could mess up. Just don’t do it.

Stay safe. A broken leg nowadays is manageable. During the chaos of the French Revolution? Not so much. Note: if you have been exposed to smallpox or bubonic plague, let your healthcare provider know immediately upon your return.

In the words of Dale Carnegie, “Do not complain, criticize or condemn.” So the food isn’t what you expected, and the beds are lumpy lice-ridden bundles of straw shared by many, and even the good-looking folks have pox-scars and rickets and dental monstrosities in their mouths. You’re just visiting! Soak up the vibe and be glad you’re just passing through.

The enthusiasm of the travel writer was contagious. I’d had enough of gambling in Macau and gator wrestling in Florida. I wanted the experience of time travel… done while keeping safe with an intermediary. I signed up with ChronoBnB and went to their company headquarters. First I had to complete an online tutorial that went over all the things in the article, in a much more ho-hum way.

Then I had to sign a lot of forms pledging not to spill the beans about the terrible war coming in 1861.

They said my BnB “host” in 1850 would be similar to me—a young man named Wilbur.

* * *

The next thing I knew, I was swimming through a tunnel and bobbing up in a group of four young men, who were crawling out of the swim-hole. It was a hot day and our naked bodies glistened in the sun. Theirs: lean and ripped. Mine: not so much. Lots of chuckling and teasing as they got dressed. The fifth pile of clothes was claimed by no-one, so I took it. The clothes weren’t the cleanest and they were scratchy. No elastic in my underwear! No zip in my pants—instead I fumbled with buttons and drawstrings.

“Hello, Cousin Caleb. I am Wilbur.”

I was relieved to meet my ChronoPort contact right away. He was about my age, with freckles and a wide-open friendly face, blushing as fiercely as he was smiling. I instantly took a liking to this 1850s early adopter.

Wet-haired and shivering, the five of us guys ran to a homestead in the middle of the prairies. Wilbur gave me a tour of the yard, including the outhouse. The rough wooden farmhouse was full of clanking and women’s voices. We seated ourselves at the table where I counted 18 people, from Baby to a 60-ish patriarch. One girl sawed pieces of coarse bread and another ladled meat and gravy on it. Darn, I forgot to ask about vegan alternatives. After everyone received a plateful, the old guy recited a rambling prayer of thanksgiving.

Wilbur announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and gals, please welcome Cousin Caleb, who is visiting us for a week from down east.” There was some snickering and jostling that quickly subsided as I looked around, nodding, saying “how-d’you-do” a few times. Then we fell to the serious business of eating. A woman said, “Cousin Caleb, you have not touched your pot roast. Are you feeling poorly?”

“Um…I’m still full from my morning smoothie and avocado toast,” I said. From her look of bewilderment, I might as well have breakfasted on eye of newt.

Wilbur said quietly, “If it be not to your liking, may I have your beef?”

After lunch, every guy and a few gals bolted outside. Everyone knew what they were supposed to do, even the five-year-old girl carrying the slop bucket out to feed the pigs. Not wanting to look clueless, I grabbed what I thought was a hay rake. I wished I had my sunblock SPF 50 and my Ray-Bans. I started off for the meadow, but Wilbur approached me and said, “With two, this will go faster.”

“With two, many things go faster,” I said.

He blushed. But the joke was on me. It was not a hay rake but a stable rake, designed to collect manure from barn stalls. After ten minutes I had blisters. Wilbur was startled when I asked for Band-Aids.

“Bandages? For what injury?” He stared at my soft white palms covered with red polka-dots.

The slop-girl Rachel came over to look. Her hands were lean, nut-brown, with toughened pink palms. “Yer socks kin proteck yer hands,” she said.

I untied my heavy shoes.

“Be you Shadrach’s brother?” Rachel asked.

“Caleb is what you call a shirt-tail cousin,” Wilbur said. “Now, git!” As she sauntered away, he muttered, “That one is too curious for her own good.”

“Curiosity is natural,” I said, smiling.

“Maybe ‘bout some things,” he said and quickly looked away.

“Curiosity is no sin,” I said. I put my woolen socks on my hands, feeling thankful no cameras were there to record Caleb the Sock-handed Softy. I held the rake and continued mucking out the stable. The thick leather shoes rubbed on my bare-skinned feet and I could feel blisters forming there, too. I aimed to keep up with Wilbur, and soon we were hot and sweaty. I kept thinking about that swim-hole. The day wore on. Despite my regular gym work-outs, the burn of my shoulder muscles began to outweigh the pain of my blisters.

“Good job!” Wilbur said when the barn was clean at last.

Supper consisted of savory slop and lumpy dumplings followed by heavy pie, which we ate right in the middle of the gravy-smeared plate. Not anything Instagrammable, that’s for sure. Mirthless women took up sewing or knitting by the kerosene lamps. Grim-faced menfolk carved or repaired jingly harnesses. Wilbur read aloud from Papa’s Bible. I began to worry about sleeping arrangements. From what I’d seen, guys were in one room, gals in another, and the marrieds and babies would be in the lean-to. Good-bye, privacy!

After a lull, Rachel said: “Cousin Caleb, kin you tell us a story?”

I tried to remember a fairy tale, but I only came up with past episodes of The Simpsons.

Rachel yawned. “Brother Wilbur said you had an innerestin’ dream o’ the future.”

“Well… yes… I dreamed that in the future people weren’t using horses to get around. They have horseless carriages called ‘cars.’ I dreamed that our country and Russia had a mighty contest to see who could send a man to the moon first—”

“Who won?” a kid’s voice piped up.

“We did! Things became very, very good for us—doctors learned how to cure some diseases and fix the pains in our teeth. People invented all manner of things—moving pictures, instant music, and… and….” I tried to stop, but I was seized with—dare I say it?—a nostalgia for the future. “I lived in a building that had 30 floors stacked on top of each other!”

Wilbur guffawed. “Who in God’s creation would want so many stairs?”

“It would take all day to git up to your bedroom,” Rachel said.

“No, in the future, there will be, like, a vertical ‘car’ that runs up and down the side of the tall buildings,” I said. “The car is called an ‘elevator’ because it can elevate you—”

“Ell-eh-vay-tor!” People tried out the word. “Elevator? Elevator!” They chuckled and brayed; the shoulders of even the sternest folk were heaving with laughter.

I began to laugh, too.

* * *

The week passed as quickly as a raft over a waterfall. I learned everyone’s name and assigned chore. The pioneers weren’t all the jolly simple folk I used to think they were. They had their own intrigues, delights, and stolen moments of pleasure, chiefly boy-girl kisses in the milk-house. We menfolk were mainly building a cattle-fence. Wilbur arranged some fun things for me like playing with kittens in the hayloft (dusty, scratchy, and better than 100 cat videos) and milking a cow (invasion of the cow’s personal space to do rude things with her mammary glands). And yes, those shy but saucy guys had excellent fun cavorting at the swim-hole. As a visitor, I was allowed the first wash in the shared Saturday night bath. Afterward Wilbur caught some gals spying on me and “gave them a drubbing,” he reported later.

“Did they see anything … shocking?” I said, thinking of my body piercings.

Wilbur was at a loss for words. How I loved making him blush.

On my final morning, Wilbur shook me awake. “Now you’ll see what folks around here do for real fun!” Oh great, the annual church picnic.

We rode there all crammed in a wagon that jolted along a deeply rutted road. And me with my motion sickness and Gravol not yet invented… I could barely keep it together. The ride was made worse by the pinching match that broke out among the women over who would get to sit beside me. I turned my greenish face away to escape the B.O. of Tabitha. (I don’t know how she coped with my B.O.).

I was a head taller than most guys at the picnic, so I expected to win prizes for speed, but this wasn’t like my morning jog. They had wacky events like races where you had to hold an egg on a spoon. Rebecca sneakily clutched at my body and Hepzibah “accidentally” brushed against me. Noah shoved me roughly and Gideon threatened me with a “knuckle sandwich” when I mistook his potato pie for my own.

“No problem,” I said. “Take your piece—and you can have mine, too!” They even had preschoolers trying to ride piglets. The day resounded with giddy laughter, and I felt drunk on sunshine and exhaustion.

On the way home, I volunteered to ride in the hayrick. Picture, if you can, a slow-moving haystack, barely held in place on a wagon with minimal side boards.

“The hayrick? Are you sure?” Wilbur said, forgetting that I was clueless.

“My last night,” I said with a shrug. His face reddened and he jumped aboard, too. There were about ten of us who rocked and swayed while the conveyance bumped over the cow paths. As we bounced on the springy fragrant hay, my mind swirled with thoughts of kitten nests and barn stalls and swim-holes and piglet rodeos—and BANG!

I fell off the hayrick.

I staggered to get up, trying to clutch my elbow, knee, ankle and chin.

“We’ll put Miss Elizabeth there beside you, to keep you awake,” the hayrick driver said, with a wink.

“No, please!” I said. The others laughed. Wilbur crossed his eyes at me. I crossed mine back at him, with a little smile. The hay was so slippery that I had a devil of a time hanging on. Wilbur helped hold me in place. Now there was one sweaty hard body! He tried not to look at me, but we could both feel undeniable pleasure as we moved against each other.

Happiness surged in me, despite my sore muscles and numerous shaving cuts.

“Thank you for visiting, Caleb,” Wilbur said. “I enjoyed hearing about the future. I wonder if all the people there are as … fun to be with?”

“Yes, the future is even better than that,” I whispered in his ear. “Elevators going up and down…”

“You’ve got me real curious now,” he murmured.

Wilbur felt so tempting, as we rode that bumping hayrick home while the sun was going down. If we were men of the twenty-second century, I would have made my move. But I remembered the ChronoBnB instructor saying that we owed our hosts “utmost respect” which meant we weren’t supposed mess with their minds or interfere with their bodies; it could drive them insane “because they have no context for you, the visitor from the future.”

That last night I lay on my pallet listening to the snores and breathing of a roomful of others. I felt more connected to Wilbur and his people than I had ever felt to my contemporaries. I guess I’m just an old-fashioned boy at heart.

Wilbur was a special young man, a rare soul. A part of me feared for his future safety. I also feared the harsh life might suffocate his sensitive nature. I felt so sad at the thought of leaving. I knew, but was prohibited from mentioning, that war that would soon tear the country apart.

The teleportation of my body would occur tomorrow. To disguise my departure, Wilbur would take me back to the swimming hole. I decided to return to this exact locale two years into his future—1852—and tell him to expect me.

In the meantime, I would return to my “home era” and make some radical life changes so I would acclimate faster when I returned. I’d get rid of the smart phone and learn old-style carpentry.

I fell asleep planning to learn to ride a horse. I dreamed Wilbur and I would escape to the territories, and live as a pair of eccentric confirmed bachelors.