The Voyage That Changed My Life

We were trapped. It was like we were birds, captured and put into a cage. I wasn't sure
how exactly we got into trouble. Being undersea in a sunken ship doesn't happen by accident.
So who am I, and how did I get into this unfortunate death trap in the first place? Well, let me
start at the beginning. I am John Wilkinson, a very famous diver and treasure hunter. I dive
with my wife, Penny. When we heard about this wreck, we knew it was just waiting to be
explored. We came out here expecting the dive to be easy. As it turns out, what happened
during and immediately after the dive would challenge us more than anything else ever could.
Being trapped in the shipwreck was only the start.

Since Penny and I were trapped, we decided to see as much as we could before our likely
deaths. An old sailing ship is amazing to explore, as there are always surprises around every
corner. It's great! This ship, though, would hold for us a secret that you never would guess.
Most of the action began once we returned back to our entrance. If I wouldn't have bumped into
the center mast, the adventure would never have begun. Too late now. We couldn't just go
through the mast, and we couldn't move it. Our air was running low. I knew that our deaths
were imminent, but Penny kept her hopes up. If we could just radio to our boat, someone could
rescue us. I just knew that help would never come. And that's when something happened that
I'll never forget. Time seemed to stop. A portal opened, and the ship began to move. Not into
the portal did it move but up to the surface. And that is how the great journey began.

The mast stood up again, and sails unfolded. Why was this all happening? We were lost in
time and space. We had a house, and we had kids! This fate seemed much worse than death,
because it was death in a way. Going missing and never returning constituted as being dead.
You can escape a kidnapper's lair, but you can never escape time itself! That would be absurd!
I knew, though, that it was better to live happily on a ship than to be dead underwater in the
same ship's wreck. I had a feeling that if I knew the ship's name, I could predict when and how
it would sink, and we could just not be on that voyage. Fate, though, had a different plan.

That plan was revealed to me when I asked Penny what the date was. She told me it was
September 16, 1885. Then I asked what the ship name was. Penny didn't know, so I asked a
nearby sailor. He said, "Well, how can you get on a ship and not know the name? This ship is
the SS Burgundy, by the way. My name is George." I tried to remember when the ship sank.
That's when I realized something truly frightening. The SS Burgundy sank on September 20,
1885. Everyone ended up dying in the wreck. That was only in 4 days! What would we do
now?

Our simple solution came just a moment later. George came to me and asked, "Why are you
wearing something really weird? Are you human? Are you a monster? What are you?" We
were wearing diving suits, which weren't around in 1885. For some reason, I found George's
comment really funny. My only response was to laugh uncontrollably. That was how we
became friends with George. Our problem was solved.

The problem was solved because George's comment made me remember time travel. If I
could just figure out a way to travel through time, Penny and I could return to the future, and
none of this ever would have happened. Even if we couldn't get back to our time, at least we
had George. Our short time on the ship wouldn't be miserable, and if we died, we would die in
peace. With the end of the first day approaching, not much time was left for the ship.

On the second day of our journey, something special happened. George came to us and
said, "I have a surprise for you. Can you guess what it is?" I had no clue. Penny guessed it
was some sort of money. What the gift was actually surprised me. George gave us a plate. He
said, "It is a sign of our friendship." This plate turned out to be just that. It was a sign of our
travels with George and always would be. However, it became much more than just that to us.

The afternoon of the second day passed well. We saw amazing things and beautiful lands. I
never would have noticed these sights if we weren't trapped in time. George told me, "You
know, in all of my time on the sea, there never has been more beautiful weather." I didn't know
what to say. The ship was going to sink in a storm in about two days. Beautiful weather
shouldn't have even been a thing at the time. When I thought about time, I realized that time
was probably at the center of all of this. Could we warn the captain and avoid the storm? I
mean, we wanted to save George. Why not save more lives? Being obsessed with science as I
am, though, I realized that we would have to create an impossible loop in time to save
everyone. If the ship didn't sink, we would never have had to dive to it. Therefore, we never
would have gone back in time. The ship would sink, and we would time travel, stopping the ship
from sinking. Then, the loop would repeat. Could we save George, though? It sure wouldn't
cause a time loop. A great friend would be worth saving. So why couldn't we try?
 As the second day ended, we were very close to Florida, right where the ship sank. I was
out on the deck with George, and Penny was asleep. George asked me, "What do you like to
do?" I was unsure why he asked this. I asked him, "Why do you ask?"

"Well, I'm just curious. You don't have to respond," he replied. Since he had been kind to
me, I decided I should tell him at least something. I was uncertain as to how I should respond,
so I thought for a moment. Then I knew what I could say. I said, "I like to study the underwater
world. I am curious, just like you, so I look for new things under the water." George seemed
very pleased that he had met someone like him. He must have thought he could open up to
me, because he admitted, "I really like water and anything in it. Can you show me anything you
find?"

"Why, sure I can!" I replied. George smiled and told me to have a good night. Then, he went
to bed and I was alone on the deck, staring at the starry sky. The stars were diamonds on a
black canvas, the sky. The night was so clear that I could see the Florida coast. Looking deep
inside myself, I knew George had helped me release some memories that I had pushed away.
In that moment I remembered my father, a ship captain. I remembered seeing him sail his ship
into the distance. I remembered a knock at the door, my mother's worried expression, and the
man who came into my house. He told us that my father's ship was gone, lost to a storm. My
father was a man who would have given someone else his spot on a lifeboat. He would have
gone down with his ship. In that moment, my life was changed. I tried to forget my father's
laugh, his love for cooking and the way he found joy in sailing. I never could. Diving was only a
distraction, a way to keep my mind off of those memories. Talking to George made me realize
that I couldn't escape myself. This inability to escape got me thinking. What if the ship sank
and that sent us back to our time? Thinking of this now made me feel sick. I didn't want to
leave this ship. My life here was perfect. I had George here. He was someone I could open up
to, and I didn't have to hide in fear from my memories. Now, I really wanted to stop the SS
Burgundy from sinking. Hope to stay as I might, though, I didn't want to destroy time. As I fell
asleep in my bed, I kept thinking about everything happening in this adventure. I had to find a
way to save George.

As the third day began, I knew what my goal for that day was. Find a way to save George
without alerting the captain to the situation ahead. What I didn't know was that there would be
some action included. This amount of action may have impacted the ship significantly enough
to sink it. While we approached the port, we saw a ship coming toward us. We were scheduled
to arrive in port that day, which had me excited. Seeing this ship now, however, filled me with
dread. This approaching ship had to be a pirate ship. Only a pirate ship could delay our
scheduled port arrival. The oncoming ship raised a pirate flag, and the battle began.

The pirates fired a cannonball over our ship to get us to stop. We didn't stop. This was just
great. Now we would die and really be lost in time. However we shot back, and not over the
pirate ship. We shot at the pirate ship. They fired back. The battle lasted for hours. However, it
ended in a rather strange way. The pirate ship just exploded. One minute it was there, and
then it wasn't. We continued to the port, but a storm was pushing us away to the ocean. The
ship wasn't supposed to sink now! It was supposed to sink tomorrow! It was too late to do
anything. We were lost at sea.

The storm swept us away, but never out of it. Rain pounded the decks all night long.
George was the only reason why I was happy at all. Mostly, I just laid in bed all night. There
were no diamond stars to see, no black-canvas sky, and no reason to go outside in the rain. All
there was that night was the darkness. You couldn't even see the clouds. Even in the rain, time
progressed, and the ship's time sailing ticked down. There was only one day left.

The next day was the most miserable. It rained all day. At about 2:00, a strong wind began
to push us back to Florida. Now I was really feeling dread. This was the storm that would
wreck our ship and leave almost no one alive. As evening approached rapidly, I stood on deck
and watched the land become closer and closer. I knew our second entry would be nowhere
near as nice as the first. This storm was one thing worse than pirates. I was out on deck as the
ship saw the sun set for the last time. Tonight, this ship would be at the bottom of the bay into
which we were headed. In an instant, the storm we were in collided with another storm. With
that, the chaos began.

Terror ruled the ship as it rocked back and forth and rolled side to side. Everyone wanted to
roll up the sails, but the one guy who tried fell from the mast into the dark water. The water
swallowed him up like a hungry monster. At least it wasn't George. The ship was like a pair of
dice being thrown everywhere. All the while, the fatal rocks were shadows on the shore, just
waiting to destroy any ship that dared to come near them. Several sailors screamed in horror
as they fell off of the ship and into the water. I don't really remember much after that. I
remember hitting the rocks, the ship cracking open like a coconut, and the rapid tilt of the ship. I
remember jumping with Penny, hitting the cold water, and standing on the shore, watching the
ship disappear beneath the waves. I was not sure if George escaped or not. There was no
way of knowing. Once the ship vanished, we were returned to our time.

Suddenly, we stood on the shore, right where we had been when the Burgundy sank. It was
still the middle of the night, and we were still wet. By this time, I was tired, so I convinced Penny
that it was time to go home. There wasn't much we could do on a beach in the middle of the
night. We went home, but our adventure wasn't over yet. In fact, it wasn't even close.

The next day, I woke up from a dream. I was in a ship on a table. Why was I on a table? I
couldn't move, but I heard screams everywhere. As the ship sank, I watched water flood the
cabin, and I was lost forever. Waking up, I recognized that I had been the plate. We had
forgotten it. How could we forget the plate? We would have to dive to get it. There were more
pressing matters to attend to, anyways. I needed to know if George survived. If he did, I could
stop worrying that I had failed in my mission. Even at home, I still worried about him. It was
time to do some searching.

While Penny searched phone books, I searched town records. Was there any trace of
George anywhere? The task took hours, and it turned out to be a waste of time. There was no
trace of George. This caused me great concern, because usually it's easy to find someone you
are looking for. There was no trace of George in any other town, either. It was time to stop
searching. We had already found George. Well, we found part of him.

What we found was the plate. We hadn't seen it in the wreck, but we knew it was there. We
just had to get to it. This turned out to not be a problem. Our cabin was not blocked by the
mast. We entered our cabin, where something was very different. The cabin was eerily silent.
The plate was in perfect condition, despite going through the chaotic sinking of the ship. We
recovered the plate rather quickly, since I didn't want to be in the wreck for any longer than
necessary. After returning to the surface, I announced that there was only one more thing to do.

Today, I brought Penny to the cemetery. This seemed like the only place George could be.
Then, I saw it. There was a gravesite for sailors on the SS Burgundy. I looked, and George
was here. He was buried here, right by his other buddies. Something seemed a little bit off.
George's grave said he died in 1983. That was 20 years ago, but I still knew he had survived
the sinking. He had escaped, and besides, he was still with us. We had the plate he gave us.
In that moment, I knew I had succeeded. I would have made my father proud.