I have strange vivid dreams sometimes. And sometimes they become scenarios for stories that I will likely never write because while I’m pretty good at imagining stories I just don’t have the head of steam to write all of them. Plus whenever I do and I put it out there I get no feedback anyway. Which leads me to believe I’m actually pretty crappy at it. But it’s baked into me to do art and get this stuff out of me somehow someway.

This is cobbled together from a dream I had the morning of October 11, 2025. In it I dreamt I was working in a beautiful but old Victorian mansion that was converted to office space. Lovely wood carved walls and richly patterned wool carpeting. Office desks were beautiful and solid old wood. We seem to have added more comfortable modern desk chairs but made them look like chairs from the period. The computer workstations looked like something out of a steampunk graphic novel.

I had to be careful which doors I used to go in and out because if I wasn’t I might find myself back in the days of Queen Victoria…where it was not a good time for gay men, I would look way out of place, and I couldn’t use my credit cards to buy food anyway.

Sometimes I would see office workers walking around in the hallways who looked to be in period costume, but they weren’t ghosts, they were in their own time and the building just had phase issues with the two timelines that it was touching.

I remember looking out a window to see if the outside was my time or the building’s time…and I woke up.

So I wrote this scenario out of it. I give it to you. Make something out of it if you want…I probably won’t.

It is London, during the reign of Queen Victoria, but in a different timeline from our own. A moment of time compassing Oscar Wilde, Sherlock Holmes (in this timeline he is an actual person, as is Watson), Tennyson, Dickens, Darwin, Faraday.

A three floor brick and stone building located somewhere in London is home to an old and well established company (the exact nature of the business need not be specified, only that it employs many men and women as clerks and secretaries in multiple offices). It is a beautiful old Victorian building, with intricate wood carved doors, banisters, and carved wood paneled interiors, solid floors covered in richly patterned woven wool carpeting.

The business seems prosperous on the outside. But unknown to the public and its investors, it is slowly falling into hard times. Profit margins are down. Competition has denied them new opportunities to grow. If they cannot find a new source of revenue, they may eventually have to declare bankruptcy. Not soon, but eventually if the trend is not reversed.

A letter is received asking for a meeting with the board of directors, to discuss a proposition that might prevent their falling into bankruptcy. The board is alarmed. The financial state of the business was a closely guarded secret. The letter asks if they agree to the meeting to post a notice in the Globe personals, addressed to a Mr. Peabody from a Mr. Sherman.

A discussion ensues…there is worry that a criminal enterprise is making a move on their business. But it is agreed to meet with this Mr. Peabody, and learn what his proposition is.

At the appointed time a gentleman is ushered into the boardroom. No, he says, my name is not Peabody, it is Smith. He tells them he is a time traveler from the distant future.

After the laughter dies down, he pulls out a tablet computer, and proves it to them.

Time travel in the sense that it is depicted in the pulps is not possible, he tells them, and relates the paradox of the grandfather. What the time travelers of the future, or more specifically of our timeline have discovered he says, is what appears to be time travel is actually a kind of sideways jumping into alternate universes. Anything I do in your timeline he tells them, does not alter what happens in ours, nor does anything we do in ours alter yours.

We come from a timeline, he tells them, far forward in time from yours, in which London has become very prosperous. So prosperous in fact, that office space in the heart of London is now almost impossible to find, let alone afford. We desperately require more office space in London, close to our customers so we can grow our business. So we have a proposition for you. We would like to rent your building, in a time swap.

He explains: During your business day you will occupy your space in this building as usual. Ten hours per day will be yours, after which your people must vacate the building…which is usually the case anyway. Then, at a predetermined time, we will swap out your business for ours.

All your business property, the contents of your desks, file cabinets and safes, will be swapped out. We will not have access to into your private business matters in any way shape or form. It will simply exist in a null space between our timelines, perfectly preserved. Then our business property will be swapped in…the contents of our offices and desks, our file cabinets, our safes. Our people will then occupy this building for ten hours.

From the outside your building will seem dark and unoccupied the entire time, but no one must go inside or they will find themselves among our staff, and in a world of tomorrow unknown to them.

At the appropriate time the process will be reversed, such that when your people enter the building the morning of the following day, all will appear as normal. They need not even know this is happening. But you must tell them not to try and enter the building after business hours, or before normal business hours.

To our people it will also seem to be a normal day. They will not be working in the dark of your night, but in the daytime of our own timeline. Though our current office space is very small, we can manipulate the view outside every window of your building to reflect the view outside in our timeline. Our personnel will seem to be working in a lovely old Victorian building, with plenty of space. They of course, will not be allowed to go directly outside until their day is done, otherwise they will enter your timeline. But they will be completely aware of what is happening. This sort of time travel is well understood in our day and age. We will provide our staff the means to reenter our timeline to meet with our customers as needed, and for lunch breaks and other needs.

The important thing for us is we will then have enough office space where we need it, in the heart of London, near to our customers, and in what many in our timeline agree is a beautiful victorian office building (it really is very lovely). From the outside in our timeline it will appear that we have but a cramped one room office in a narrow building among many others, where once long ago this magnificent structure stood, but was demolished in favor of more modern and up to date (and in the opinion of many, sterile) offices. Many regretted deeply when this building was torn down, but money talks in every universe it seems. Once our staff enter that little office place they will be transported here to do their work, in a much nicer place.

We get ten hours each. This will leave four hours every day for your housekeeping or ours to do their work while our staff are away. We can discuss ways and means for that later, if you agree.

We will need to upgrade some of the infrastructure of this building, to make it suitable for our purposes, but this need not be visible to you. The electrical service will need much improvement, but we can do that such that it is unnoticed by your utility company and your staff. There will be vastly less risk of fire with our improvements. Also the plumbing and sanitary services will need refitting. Our staff would want better heating and cooling, and also for our computers…

Computers?

General purpose tabulating machines that in our time have been pressed into multiple uses. All of these improvements will be discreetly hidden from view. Your staff will notice no changes whatsoever. We can instruct certain absolutely trustworthy members of your staff as to what is going on, and what changes we have made in your building’s infrastructure, and the hazards of untrained staff attempting to utilize them. If your staff were to notice anything, it would be how much more comfortable their working conditions are.

Here, Mr. Smith passes a small slip of paper to the chairman of the board.

As to the rent we shall pay you for the use of your building, here is our offer for a ten year lease.

The chairman’s eyes grow wide. He passes the paper around to the others at the table and they see it will put the firm on solid ground for the entire decade of the lease.

Mr. Smith provides the chairman with an envelope containing many papers.

Here is the full text of our proposed agreement. Please look it over. If you agree to the terms please post another notice in the Globe to Mr. Peabody from Sherman.

Thank you for your time gentlemen.

And he takes his leave.

They eventually agree, with minor tweaks to the agreement. And for years it works to everyone’s benefit.

And then one day a clerk who has forgotten something enters the building late at night, breaking the rules and hoping not to be noticed…and enters a world of tomorrow…and is seen by another clerk working in what is his office during normal hours.

This is just a background story for a possible series of stories about two businesses in two different timelines occupying the same building back in the days of Queen Victoria, and what happens when one of the worker bees from that time, discovers others from the distant future also working there. And they fall in love with one of them…

[Update…] Thinking about this a little more…actually this could be a setting for any number of short stories and/or novels, along the lines of C.J. Cherryh’s Gates of Hell stories or Robert Asprin’s Thieves’/Myth World stories, or Don Sakers’ Carmen Miranda’s Ghost Is Haunting Space Station Three.

Could be fun…