Who in the year 1014 might be smart enough to figure it out?
That’s what I don’t know.
Maybe if we view thru a quantum tunnel for a while, we can find someone.
It would have to. It doesn’t take anything as dramatic as killing your great grandfather to make sure you (and probably he) don’t exist. Almost any change a thousand years ago is likely to propagate enough differences into history to guarantee no one currently alive will exist in the alternate timeline.
Our existence is fragile–If your mom and dad had had sex just a few seconds earlier or later, you wouldn’t exist.
Or maybe they did…and that’s the reason you do exist. It’s possible that the history we are now experiencing is the result of someone else’s meddling. Remember poor Al on the show “Quantum Leap”-at the end of every episode the world he knew was changed, and he was the only one who knew it.
As far as who or where to send innovative items in the year 1014, I can’t seem to find anyone of note alive in that period that would have a inkling of what to do with whatever is sent back.
Then maybe you should have said so in the OP and not expect us all to read your mind.
Then maybe you should have said the italicized part in your OP and not expect us all to read your mind.
Why can’t we send made up things in your made up time machine?
For the same reason that if someone starts a thread titled “If you could pick a single hair color for everyone in the world…?” it might be considered rude if people popped in with a bunch of imaginary colors.
You know, if you want to start a thread titled “If you could send anything, real or imaginary, anytime real or imaginary and/or anywhere real or imaginary…?” it might be vague enough to stop efforts to gum up the works.
But I doubt it.
A very young (therefore small) breeding pair of Morlocks?
Oh yeah, they’re living organisms. Never mind.
Note to Drunky Smurf: I also didn’t say that the place you sent the item had to be real, but I’m still going to disallow any items sent to Oz, Wonderland or the Big Rock Candy Mountain.
Deal with it.
A scale model of Hitler’s invasion of Poland.
They might be able to recognize what area of the country the diorama is showing. What else do you think they would get from it?
Invent the game Risk 942 years earlier?
Thus supplanting chess has the intellectual game of choice throughout the rest of history? I like it.
Yeah! Too much thinking in chess. Solve conflicts with the luck of the dice and then simply pour more and more troops into a battle.
That would have far-reaching consequences throughout history, as nearly every dictator bent on world domination would begin by attempting to take over Australia and Indonesia.
I think spinky wins the thread, then.
For using a diorama of Hitler taking over Poland to eventually cause the constant subjugation of Australia? Definitely hard to top, Butterfly Effect-wise.
For the fun of it I did some research to figure out what the likely consequences would be, and found the following
So I think it would be a pretty clear signal to one and all that the idea of crowning Henery II as Emperor was opposed by God, and that they should make Gregory VI pope ASAP.
As for my choice: a working clockwork model of the inner solar system with the sun moon and planets represented as statuettes of their respective gods. I’d have to research who to send it to but I bet I could find someone who could figure out its significance and become an early Copernicus.
I’ve got it!
A Jack in the Box, complete with music.
May we assume you don’t mean a Jumbo Jack burger, complete with jingle?
From what I’ve read, they’d still be “fresh” if no one found the box for 1,000 years, so you could eat them or send them back a second time to discover whether they’d be edible after 2,000 years. I’d bet yes.
I’d pack the box with eye glasses of various strengths, after sterilizing them and the box. Wouldn’t want to send some old but mutated disease back to plague them all over again.