In 2005, Mateo, a small-town Minnesotan repairman, goes to visit his friend Avi and see his physics experiment involving sending subatomic particles forward in time. Instead, he falls through an accidentally created wormhole into another time and place, where everyone hates him on sight for some reason. While his friends work to get him home, he tries to stay out of trouble and figure out what's going on, but it turns out the people in this strange new time are in serious trouble too and might need his help. Hilarity ensues.
Contains a major First-Episode Twist and several Walking Spoilers, so only click the spoilers if you really mean it. It can be read here: [1]
Driftless Wormhole contains examples of:
- A Friend in Need: Avi is desperately trying to reproduce the freak accident that sent Mateo through time while keeping it secret so nobody thinks he's delusional and takes away his access to the physics lab. A friend of his and Mateo's, Colette, figures out what's going on, and eventually finds evidence of Mateo in the past, which allows them to calibrate and reopen the wormhole. She also puts herself at risk when somebody has to pass through the wormhole to help dial in the time/place it links to, either from a Portal Cut or being Trapped in the Past. Nigel also goes out of his way to help Mateo settle in, and later to find a way to return him to his own time.
- After the End: Where the wormhole comes out. At least Mateo thinks so at first. It's actually a Portal to the Past.
- Alien Geometries : The wormhole. It’s a three-dimensional hole in spacetime.
- Almighty Janitor: Invoked trope. Nigel (a professional nerd from the other end of the wormhole) and the counter-espionage guys from 020 set Mateo up as a simple assistant at Bletchley Park in hopes that his future knowledge of computing will come in handy.
- Ambiguous Situation: When Mateo returns to his own time, WWII ended in 1945 in Europe, before it ended in Asia, and the Curta calculator exists, ie., the timeline we know. Mateo remembers VE-Day being some time in 1946 and has never heard of the Curta despite Avi’s interest in it. It’s up for grabs if his actions in the past as a Spanner in the Works caused the real timeline, or if he’s just remembering the history wrong.
- Artistic License – Physics :The wormhole, repeatedly lampshaded.
- Bamboo Technology : Some of the characters manage to build a computer that can run simulations out of vacuum tubes and paper tape.
- Cassandra Truth: Defied. Mateo isn’t about to tell his captors he’s a time traveler rather than a spy. On the downside, that means he’s stuck telling them increasingly unbelievable cover stories, which only irritates them. Also defied by the people he eventually tells it to — there’s enough evidence that it’s reasonable to take him seriously, and after he manages to provide solid proof, they believe him.
- Chekhov's Hobby : Mateo is mildly interested in analog computers and did a science project on them in high school.
- Coincidental Accidental Disguise: Happens to Mateo thanks to his 2005 clothes and nearly gets him shot.
- Dieselpunk: The most advanced technology on the other end of the wormhole.
- Do Wrong, Right : When Mateo is mistaken for a spy and arrested, the head interrogator is insulted by how bad he is at coming up with a decent lie.
- Entertainingly Wrong: No, those guys aren't in a movie OR a retro-futuristic murder cult , and that cell phone isn't a spy gadget.
- First-Episode Twist: The wormhole came out in the past, not the future.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Mateo. To complicate things even more, he has a good reason to assume at first that he's only been displaced a few seconds and a few miles, so he doesn't react to the local weirdness as quickly as he should.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: When Avi is setting up the spacetime physics experiment, he chats with Mateo about how impossible scifi-style time travel is, and a story called "Project Mastodon," which is about Midwesterners who have a time travel accident and get trapped in the past.
- Giving Radio to the Romans: Deconstructed. Turns out it's really hard. But not impossible.
- Gravity Screw:The way the wormhole warps spacetime means anyone passing through can fall at weird angles for a second before local gravity takes over, which makes going through it even more dangerous.
- Heroic Bystander: The villagers who mistake Mateo for a spy and capture him.
- Historical Domain Character: It would be faster to say who isn't one. Robin "Tineye" Stephens, Captain Short, Goodacre, Tommy Flowers, Alan Turing...
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Deconstructed. It doesn't work and makes things worse for everyone involved, including the interrogators.
- Kafka Komedy: At least at first.
- Lost Technology: On the other end of the wormhole: computers, color photography, velcro, dental fillings — except it turns out they’re not lost at all.
- Low Culture, High Tech: Zigzagged. Tineye seems to think of Mateo like this, especially at first, with his limited understanding of his own technology and some ideas that come across to him as being from the dark ages. On the other hand, Mateo knows a fair amount about science, is able to easily keep up in several conversations about the metaphysics of time travel, and has a better conceptual grasp of computing than anyone on the other end of the wormhole except Turing.
- Morality Kitchen Sink: Even aside from, well, WWII, the characters range from pretty bad ( "the London Cage" is implied to be a Hellhole Prison, at least by another character in an Interservice Rivalry with them) to the likes of Tommy Flowers (a Benevolent Boss Humble Hero who indirectly saves who knows how many lives). There's also Richard, a hotheaded Well-Intentioned Extremist, and on the other hand there's Tineye, a Jerkass with an
Awesome Ego who operates on national Enlightened Self-Interest. Mateo and Nigel are Nice Guys who aren’t perfect but are willing to learn and are serious about doing the right thing, and Avi and Colette are simply trying to rescue a friend from a freak accident. - No Antagonist: Sort of. Despite being set in WWII, the major problems the main characters face are computing limitations, weird physics, and misunderstandings between people who would be on the same side.
- Outside-Context Problem: For the people on the other end of the wormhole, a time traveler suddenly showing up. For Mateo, falling through a wormhole on a normal workday. For Avi, accidentally sending someone through time.
- Portal Slam: The wormhole is unstable, moves in time, and only stays open for a few seconds. Trying to get it to open and stay open long enough to rescue Mateo is a major part of the plot on the 2005 side.
- Science Hero : Mateo, Nigel, Alan Turing, Tommy Flowers... Plus, Colette is kind of a Humanities Hero.
- The Slow Path: Nigel lives long enough to reunite with Mateo in 2006.
- Sustained Misunderstanding — Mateo is After the End, and nobody will tell him why he's been accused of spying. He's actually in 1940, and they can't figure out why this obvious spy keeps playing dumb.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Mateo and Tineye. While they both eventually develop some grudging mutual respect, they grate on each other and only interact at all (let alone work with each other) because they both have the same goal. Averted with Mateo and Nigel, who immediately hit it off.
- The Nicknamer : Mateo, especially at first when he doesn't know what's going on or what anything's called.
- Time-Travelers Are Spies: Happens to Mateo almost immediately.
- The Unintelligible: Mateo has real trouble with the local accent where he first comes out of the wormhole, which means he doesn't get some important information about where he is and what's going on.
- Uncanny Valley: With an actual valley. When Mateo first falls through the wormhole, he thinks he’s a few miles from where he started, in the American Driftless Region in 2005. He gradually begins to have a sense of wrongness as he walks, with everything from birdsong to trees seeming subtly off. It’s because he’s actually in southern England.
- Walking Spoiler: All the historical characters
- Wham Line: "I think the other end of the wormhole may be slipping." and "October 5, 1940, it said."
- You Got Guts: Tineye when Mateo loses his temper and mouths off to him. Combined with Actually Pretty Funny.
