Fantasy Trope: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Clarke’s Third Law (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ClarkesThirdLaw)
Current Event: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/magical-technologies-just-over-the-horizon/ “Real tech magic is simplicity plus awe.”
The Most Magical Cities on Earth (https://www.ranker.com/list/the-most-magical-cities-in-the-world/island-hopper-dan)
Yosef Halabi, youngest captain of the revived Palestinian Liberation Army, stared at the whirling vortex even though it made him feel like he was going to throw up. The elders, every one a general or higher ranking, stared on in unconcealed anger. The most honored among their members had tried the vortex – and every one had died, writhing on the floor of the lab. Their shame was so great that their compatriots had simply shot them in the head.
The scientist – the lone survivor – had told them that only the young had the plastic brain engrams necessary to allow time travel into the past. He resisted flipping off his elders, instead, jumping feet first into the maelstrom. It was time to end the stalemate. The plan was to land a hundred years in the past, but his secret questioning of the survivor had let him know that it might in fact be a century, though it might be more, maybe less. Frankly, he found that he didn’t care. He jumped a flipped them off anyway, shouting…well, he’d wanted to shout, “Alahu akbar!” – because the crazy old men funding the project clearly only one God – Power – in their hearts. He would shout it “because it would strike fear in the hearts of the non-believers.” But the whirlwind cleared his lungs with a solar plexus kick.
Noa Avital sighed. Among the volunteers, she’d drawn the long straw. She was supposed to feel honored to leap blindly into the time vortex and happily agree to be thrown a hundred years into the past; possibly more, maybe less. She didn’t know and frankly, after fruitless negotiations with the leadership, she didn’t care. She jumped and as she did, began to shout, “F….” but the whirlwind cleared her lungs with a solar plexus kick.
Noa and Yosef materialized together, dropping thirty centimeters to land on their feet, then stagger ahead. Both of them also threw up immediately, though managed to remain standing.
Noa was first to recover. She looked at the young man standing across the room from her and said in sequence Hebrew, Arabic, French, English, and Spanish.
He looked up and said, “English will do.”
She nodded and said, “Palestinian?”
He took a breath to calm his roiling innards, admiring her iron constitution if she felt as crappy as he did, and said, “Yes. Israeli?”
“Of course. You’re here to kill me?”
“Not you specifically, but something like that.”
“The same, though I also happen to be a temporal scientist.”
He nodded and sighed. Of course. Every woman who had intrigued him in the least small way was bound to be a hundred times smarter than he was. He cursed, “Allah sayukhti min aldhy yardi…”
Noa added, “…waman hu biliasith 'anah sawf yadae fi altariq alsahih, Swarat 6:39.” – “Allah will lead into error whom he pleaseth, and whom He pleaseth He will put in the right way” (Sura 6:39)
He said, “You know Koran?”
She shrugged, “I know a lot of things.” She looked around, “What I don’t know is where we are.”
“In the past…” he began, but gulped back a surge from his stomach. He noticed she was adjusting better than he was. Fine then, smart woman, iron constitution – and Jewish as well.
“Obviously. But how far?”
“You’re the scientist.”
“Didn’t your scientists send you back?”
“‘Scientist.’ Singular. They shot all the rest.” She used very vulgar Hebrew, which he understood quite well. He couldn’t help but smile.
“What are you laughing at?”
“Nothing. I’m trying not to throw up on your feet.”
He saw the twitch on her lips before she said, “You’re awfully…not radical…for a time-traveling terrorist.”
He shook his head and countered, “You’re awfully not radical for a time-traveling terrorist, too.”
She paused for a long time, took a quick look around the room and said, “There’s nothing here I’d recognize as coming from the 21st Century.”
He did the same survey and frowned. “There should at least be a gun or knives – maybe a radio. This is supposed to be somewhere around 1948 or 1949.”
She nodded, pursed her lips, then went to a window and said something vulgar in all of the languages she’d tried on him to begin with. He held his breath to move as smoothly as he could to keep from jostling his queasy innards. He echoed her when he looked out the window – though he noticed for the first time that there was no glass involved here. It was cut from the stone or bricks and had no covering but a curtain pushed to one side.
They were in a city, that much was clear. But there were no antennae, and, his gaze flicked upward to confirm that there were arrow-straight contrails. It was silent below them and with a glance, he could see that there were no cars, bicycles, or scooters. Certainly no jets, motorcycles, automated mobiles, hoverboards, or gMod disks. “Where the hell are we?”
Pressure in the room seemed to peak abruptly, as if there’d been an explosion. When they both spun around, a bluish being floated above the ground. It said, “I have summoned you from the future – a future which has none of the problems of this cursed place!”
This time Yosef was the first to speak, “Where are we?”
“The same place you started from.”
“Not…”
The djinn, for that was clearly what it was, down to the ancient lamp sitting on the roughly carved floor, laughed and said, “It is possible; but this reality diverged from the one you are used to shortly after Creation. In this reality, science is a poor and suspect cousin of magic.” Abruptly, he djinn swelled and grew darker as the light in the room seemed to be sucked into it, “And in this reality, you have been condemned to death for your heretical beliefs in science…”
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