Aesop wrote:I hide the cash and a small eating knife under robes of the Franciscan Order, avoiding robbery by the simple expedient of appearing to be a member of an order known for their poverty, and enjoy a pleasant stroll through the countryside from town to town as a mendicant friar and pilgrim.
I make my way to Paris and befriend then-Cardinal della Rovere, where under his patronage we discuss art and science at length.
In late 1503, the current Borgia serving as Pope dies, then his replacement croaks in a month, and my patron is elevated to become Pope Julius II, and I explain to him some ideas for painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and suggest a couple of young artists named Raphael from Urbino and Michelangelo Buonorotti from Florence.
In my spare time I look up Leonardo da Vinci in Florence, and pass along some insights regarding this and that. Florence is later defended by a ring of Vaubanesque bastions. In their spare time, their square-rigged men-o-war sweep the Mediterranean free of Ottoman pirates, push the Turks out of Europe entirely, and reconquer Constantinople as a Christian bulwark against the Islamic hordes, saving hundreds of years of Balkan squabbles.
I arrange a similar visit to Padua to visit with one Nikolaj Copernik studying canon law, to explain a bit about actual medicine and heliocentric astronomy.
In later years I travel to Wittenberg, and over a weekly beer or two, egg on a young Doctor of Bible there concerning the scandalous sale of indulgences by Mother Church, and how someone oughta put a note up on the door or something.
Chaos, panic, and disorder, the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment is begun, and my work in Europe is mostly complete.
I spend my later life in England, getting Henry VIII and various nobles to sponsor English colonies in North America 90 years early, and implanting the seeds of treason in the heads of a burgeoning minority of nonconformist sects who travel there to establish them. After pushing into Pennsylvania early, they discover coal and oil, and with some Italian chemists and displaced German metal-workers, the colonies begin a thriving steel and armaments industry. They push the French out of Canada, the Spanish out of Florida, and declare independence from England while a tiny English fleet are still wrangling with Spain over Aztec gold. Between the colonists launching revolving turret ironclad dreadnoughts with rifled breech loading artillery powered by steam boilers, and fielding armored combustion powered tanks mounting Gatling guns, the English forces never have a chance, and I live to see the victorious colonials start the construction of the transcontinental railroad in the mid 1500s.
And thus was born Steampunk.
