“Well, Walter, are you ready?”
“I think so.”
“Do you want to make some sort of inspiring statement before we engage in the longest time travel ever attempted”
“Who would hear such a statement?”
“Me”
“Oh. Nothing particularly interesting comes to mind. How about you?”
“How about ‘That’s one small step for a woman, one giant leap for human kind’”?
“Not bad, not bad at all. Is it a quotation from somebody?”
“Yes, when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon July 20th, 1969, he said something similar, but sexist”
“You wouldn’t want to be sexist”
“No”
“You realize that when and where you are going, you are going to experience much discrimination on account of your gender.”
“I know”
They sat in silence.
“Are you ready to press the button?”, Walter asked.
“Everything is laid in, I suppose I should get on with it”
“Adelle”, Deborah raised her voice.
“Yes?”
“Travel backwards in time 3700 years”
“Done”
“Are we there yet?”, Walter asked.
“Yes, we are.”
“How can you tell?”
“Look at the shoreline of Italy. The Italian peninsula is very active geologically - it has gone up and down several meters in the past few thousand years. Right now, it is down 2 meters from what it was in 2013.”
“Okay, now what?”
“We have to have a language lesson”