Hypothetical: Get your time travel assignment here.

[Rain Man]

Here's the situation: you show up for work on Monday morning, and as you're drinking your initial cup of coffee or Dr. Pepper, an e-mail arrives from your CEO with one of those red exclamation points on it. You open it up.

In a surprise move, your company is moving all operations to the Central African Republic. You can relocate there at a wage of 50 cents per day, plus the company will cover the cost of your first 100 rounds of self-protection ammo, or you can get laid off. You take the second option.

You start browsing through the job ads and come across this one:

Local community college seeks documenting historian. Must be open to new cultures, foods, and experiences.

You answer the ad and you get an interview immediately once they see your resume line item about proficiency in the Microsoft Office suite. You go to the interview and they ask questions about how much you need coffee and electricity and indoor plumbing. They seem satisfied with your answers.

A few days later, you get the nice e-mail that you’ve been accepted into the Twin Pines Community College Time Travel Project as a documenting historian. As it turns out, one of the dental technician students wired some machinery together oddly and created a time machine, so now Twin Pines is the world leader in time travel.

Your assignment will be to go back into the past, live for a year, and document what you see. You can pick your landing location anywhere on the earth. The only challenge is that the time machine picks a random year and no one can control it. You’ll arrive on January 1st according to the Gregorian calendar and depart on December 31st, but no one will know what year until you arrive. The machine overweights more recent years, so the odds are 50 percent that you’ll be more recent than the year 700 AD, and 80 percent that you’ll be more recent than 1,100 BC, but conceivably you could go all the way back to the earth’s beginning.

If you accept the job I’ll randomly assign you a year, and you’ll have to report back on where you would go and what you would try to document. Assume that you will be equipped with a translation device and that you will not change history if you interact with it. Any people or creatures will merely see you as an oddity and minor annoyance, kind of like Michael Strahan on TV shows.

Who wishes to enter the Twin Pines time machine? Volunteer in the thread and I’ll assign you a year.

[Bugeater]

Doesn't seem like a whole lot went on in 927 BC other than a couple of solar eclipses. Think I'm just going to throw on a leisure suit and catch up with Dartgod in 1973.

[Rausch]

Originally Posted by Bugeater

Doesn't seem like a whole lot went on in 927 BC other than a couple of solar eclipses. Think I'm just going to throw on a leisure suit and catch up with Dartgod in 1973.

Both of you better stay away from my Mom...

[Bugeater]

Originally Posted by Rausch

Both of you better stay away from my Mom...

Is she hot? I could be your father...

[ptlyon]

Originally Posted by Rausch

Both of you better stay away from my Mom...

I think they are going to target PB's mom just so they can come back and post threads about it

[FlintHillsChiefs]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

691 BC. There has to be a lot of cool stuff happening then. You should consider going Olmec to figure out those big stone heads.

Babylon was sacked. Interesting. But I'd have to go to Iraq. No thanks!

Going to need to do some research here!

[Hoover]

I'm ready to go, but need to comeback for a few days for the U2 concert in September.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by FlintHillsChiefs

Babylon was sacked. Interesting. But I'd have to go to Iraq. No thanks!

Going to need to do some research here!

I bet there weren't terrorists there then, though.

Oh, who am I kidding? There's probably always been terrorists there.

Of course, you didn't have Islam so they were probably blowing up stuff for some camel god or something.

[Rasputin]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

It might be even more perverted for Dartgod to do it.

1331 seems like a good year if you like seeing medieval battles.

Nah haven't came across any battles but I did find a few places that take coin for sex. My research adventure continues...

[Dartgod]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

You will enter a time of great turmoil and bad fashion. 1973 AD. You'll be able to see the development of cars such as the Pacer, Gremlin, and Pinto unless you opt for other areas of study.

Really? I was kind of hoping for something before I was born.

If I was allowed to change history, the Miami Dolphins would no longer have the only perfect season in the NFL.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Bugeater

Doesn't seem like a whole lot went on in 927 BC other than a couple of solar eclipses. Think I'm just going to throw on a leisure suit and catch up with Dartgod in 1973.

There was a solar eclipse that year. You could watch all of the tribespeople freak out when you make the sun disappear.

And King Solomon was alive at that point, so you could hear him espousing wisdom. But maybe that's not as good as understanding the life and times of a 26 year-old Farrah Fawcett.

[ptlyon]

Originally Posted by Dartgod

Really? I was kind of hoping for something before I was born.

If I was allowed to change history, the Miami Dolphins would no longer have the only perfect season in the NFL.

You'd beat out Jan Stenerud as our kicker?

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Hoover

I'm ready to go, but need to comeback for a few days for the U2 concert in September.

How does 2287 BC sound? I bet you could find some free time to bop back for Bono.

That sounds like good pyramid-watching years.

[Eleazar]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

1482 BC. We're getting some good traffic in that century. I hope you find something interesting.

This is pretty fascinating.

Thutmose I, Pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty of Egypt, died in 1482 BC. He is one of the more popular candidates for the Pharaoh of Egypt depicted in the Bible.

The Battle of Megiddo is thought by some to have occurred in 1482 (though this is not the most mainstream date, apparently). This was the first military engagement formally recorded by history and the first reported use of the composite bow. (This site is traditionally considered synonymous with the valley of Armageddon)

Thutmose I may also have been the first Egyptian ruler buried in the Valley of the Kings. You could go and perhaps see pyramids being constructed.

[Beef Supreme]

Originally Posted by Cochise

This is pretty fascinating.
You could go and perhaps see pyramids being constructed.

I bet it was aliens.

[Amnorix]

I'm sure my skills as a lawyer and with no mechanical aptitude whatsoever will be of tremendous use in whatever year you put me in. Hopefully I can bring an assistant -- someone that gives me at least some chance of surviving more than three days -- but assistant or not, I'm IN!

(more adventuresome than smart, at least here on Fantasy Island...)