Cobblestones and gaslamps, old brick buildings back when they were new.
Fog-filled alleyways, whores in corsets and skirts,
The time machine is like a glass-bottomed boat, a window into the past.
A keyhole into history.
The danger is, if there’s too many watchers poking holes in the fabric of time-space… the birth of Jesus, D Day, Jack the Ripper… the fabric will rip apart.
There’s no way to sew the fabric back together, so we turned our time machines to one moment:
The invention of the time machine.
History repaired itself quickly, but the future broke apart like shattered glass.