Her head swam with conflicting ideas about where she was for the last few minutes and when. She opened her eyes but didn’t see anything but blackness. A red light appeared at the edge of her field of view, she turned to look at it and found it moved with her.
“It’s the AI booting up.” she thought, remembering a time outside of now, the future she was actually from. She could recall hazy details, but nothing that stayed nailed down for long. Her impressions of the future were always changing, like everything was in flux.
“93% integrity” said the text hovering at the lower extreme of her vision. She felt herself relax as her sight came back to her. Ignoring her surroundings, she checked a pocket on her vest and found a red plastic handheld device, about the size of a portable game console. Looking closer, she was surprised to find that’s what it was. At least this time. She remembered it being a phone other times, or a small red disc, or just a bar of metal.
At least this version would have some functionality that didn’t require the AI to translate the output. Going back too far before modern technology left the device emitting invisible and irregular pulses that made it a pain to operate.
She booted up the game that was in it. “Temporal Navigator” said the sticker, it was even aged so it looked less conspicuous. She had a quick look around while the game started loading. It was a cemetery, well maintained, but still obviously out of the way.
