
by JB Cross
People have always dreamed of Time Travel. From comics, to Hollywood blockbusters, dramatic novels, and others, we as the observer dream to travel to the past and meet our heroes. To correct a universal wrong. To undo a death that drove a family empire into financial ruin. Science has finally caught up to our imaginations. A team of scientists studying quantum entanglement accidentally discovers the ability to travel to the past and with it the ability for others to profit off of their discovery. One man moves faster than anyone else, building a legacy that he forges through hard work, determination, and a bit of luck. Martin Blackwell's Time Tourism empire has surpassed virtual reality as the medium of the day. People no longer have to dream what it was like to fly an airplane alongside the Wright Brothers. Historians no longer have to guess how the United States receiving the official declaration of war from Japan prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor would have affected the war outcome. All of these scenarios are no longer theoretical; they're just a short drive down to a local TIme Tourist location and an afternoon spent in a world of their own making. Historical and mythical figures alike are now accessible in an entirely unique way. But something seems wrong inside the world of Martin Blackwell's creation. Each quantum time bubble is supposed to be independent of the Base Timeline. Nothing that goes on inside the time bubbles is supposed to affect the real world. Yet the real world is starting to see pockets of time bleed through. Small changes at first. An author's name suddenly changes. The date for a battle in World War 2 changes by several days and the survivors names are altered slightly. Small changes that only the base team monitoring each of the portals and the world-spanning AI can detect. Something has changed but no one knows why. Martin dives into one of his own time bubbles to try and discover the cause, only to find that the situation is so much worse than he could have imagined.
No streak history
One state-enhanced oracle order, filtered by each list. Observed Royal Road ranks remain separate ground truth.
Rank updated 21 Oct 2026, 13:58 UTC
Entry forecast updated 21 Oct 2026, 13:58 UTC
Ranking model: rs-public-oracle-state-v1
Forecast model: rs-model-entry-v1
Chart history contains only this ranking model's runs; legacy points are not spliced in.
Not enough recent follower history to estimate a shadow rank yet.
beats 85% of similar stories
not enough data yet
needs about a week of observations
Benchmarks: 8,060 active Royal Road stories, percentiles within the 2–4 chapters band, cohort of 2026-07-02. Conversion is measured as followers gained per 1,000 views lifetime.