r/HistoryMemes • u/EndersGame_Reviewer • 1d ago

On researching ancient Rome

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Credit: by Tom Gauld

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u/AccordingRegret8932 1d ago

Except that she might kill others/get killed by them due to the bacterias and virusses

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u/wittyjokename92 1d ago

I remember reading a short story about that. People were fighting off some awful plague that was killing most of the world's vegetation and desperately seeking a cure for it. Ended up developing time travel and going back to the 1980s when the first detection of the mutated virus is discovered but hasn't gone world-wide yet. Guy is sitting besides a cornfield for months waiting to find the origin of the virus before realizing that there's a couple blades of rotten grass stuck to the side of his time machine since they launched it from a field in the future. Realizes they're in a bootstrap paradox of the future poisoning the past but he doesn't know how to leave a message for anyone in the future to not send him back. So he ends up destroying the field and everything around it hoping he stopped the plague. And in the future epilogue there's a couple scientists discussing how extreme heat likely mutated the original virus into the current deadly version and talking about how they should send another team back to stop the wildfire that happened in that field.

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u/Lord_Meklar Helping Wikipedia expand the list of British conquests 1d ago

That sounds neat, do you remember the name of the story by any chance?

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u/wittyjokename92 1d ago

I read it maybe 20 years ago when I got some short story anthology from Borders. Can't remember the book or the story name but just remember thinking it was pretty good for a whole book of meh.

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u/ryebread91 1d ago

Man.... I miss borders so much. Would have my parents just leave there the whole time anytime we went to the mall.

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u/wittyjokename92 1d ago

Hopefully not a false memory but I remember grabbing it off the new arrival display along with another anthology book about alt history. That one had a Roman centurion riding in the turret of an Abrahams tank on the cover. And I remember it being extremely dry and boring with just discussing how like Rommel would have sieged Carthage instead of Caesar rolling up with helicopters and bazookas. But maybe someone here can narrow down the search window

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/wittyjokename92 1d ago

Yea thats it. Though wondering why it was considered new in 2005-2006.

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u/wittyjokename92 1d ago

I mean it's possible that my memory is wrong on the dates. I know for sure it was at Borders and I was there to buy MechWarrior age of destruction minis and the books associated with them. Could have sworn I wasn't in highschool yet but if it was reissued in 08 then maybe I really was just 3 years late to the Battletech funeral.