The Chronos Gambit

The first warp drive test resulted in a stranded ship 5 million years in the past.

In 2247, humanity launched its first interstellar mission aboard the starship Aurora, equipped with an experimental warp drive to reach Proxima Centauri. The crew—Commander Bob Loblaw, Engineer Raj Patel, Biologist Mei Lin, and Navigator Alexei Ivanov—were Earth’s finest. The Aurora boasted a fusion core, AI-driven drones, and advanced fabricators capable of crafting anything from quantum processors to habitats. But its warp drive was untested beyond simulations.


During the first jump, the warp drive’s quantum field destabilized, flinging Aurora toward a rogue black hole with unstable temporal properties. The crew survived the passage, but emerged in Earth’s orbit 5 million years in the past, during the Pliocene epoch, due to random time dilation—including backward time travel—caused by the black hole.


Earth was a wild mosaic of forests, savannas, and a forming Mediterranean basin. The Indian subcontinent teemed with megafauna and proto-hominids like Australopithecus. With the warp drive irreparable, Commander Bob Loblaw chose the Mediterranean’s temperate climate for their base. Using Aurora’s fabricators, they built a fortified settlement on the proto-Italian peninsula, complete with solar arrays, hydroponic farms, and defensive turrets. Raj repurposed AI drones for scouting and labor, Mei studied the ecosystem, and Alexei analyzed the black hole’s data for a way home.


Their technology—far beyond 21st-century standards—made survival feasible. They 3D-printed tools, weapons, and mechs, with the AI “Chronos” optimizing their efforts. Proto-hominids watched from the forests, and Bob, pragmatic yet bold, saw potential. “We’re here for good,” he declared. “Let’s shape the future.” Overriding Mei’s concerns about evolutionary interference, they taught Australopithecus basic tools and fire, accelerating their development.


The crew established a second outpost along the proto-Indus River, where fertile plains supported modified crops from Aurora’s seed banks.

Their tech fostered proto-human communities with metallurgy, mathematics, and electricity, creating city-states across the Mediterranean and Indian regions within centuries. Bob’s leadership, tempered by humor, kept the crew united as they became mythic “sky gods” to the proto-humans, sustained by medical nanites that slowed their aging.


But their influence had consequences. Uplifted tribes, armed with steel and solar tech, outcompeted other species, risking an evolutionary bottleneck. Rebellions erupted against the crew’s authority, challenging Bob’s vision. Meanwhile, Alexei’s research suggested the black hole could enable a return trip, but rebuilding the warp drive required centuries of resource gathering.


Generations later, the crew’s outposts thrived as advanced city-states, blending Pliocene wilderness with futuristic tech. Temples glowed with solar panels; warriors wielded laser-etched spears. The Aurora, now a monument, overlooked the Mediterranean. As Bob’s long life faded, he questioned whether they’d saved or rewritten humanity. The crew trained their successors to maintain the tech, hoping for a future jump.


Millennia later, archaeologists would uncover inexplicable ruins in the Mediterranean and Indus Valley, dated 5 million years old, with inscriptions of a starship and four gods led by Bob Loblaw, their legacy a temporal enigma etched in stone.