It was a mishap, I learned later.

The Time Traveler had tapped in the wrong date and gone backwards 200 years instead of forward.

She emerged from her vehicle and took a deep breath of air.

“Oh hello,” she said to me. I had been delivering vegetables to the next town from mine. She just walked out into the road. Strange clothes. Holding an odd device. Her skin radiated with symbols and pictures they swarmed in and out of focus.

“Could you tell me what year it is?”

I looked at her incredulously. “It be 1750,” I replied. “Why are the tattoos on your skin moving?”

The tall confident woman looked down at her arms. “Oh these things? They aren’t tattoos at all. Or at least, not any more.”

“They’re instructions,” she continued. “I have electrodes imprinted under my skin and I can manipulate them —“

Suddenly the strange woman vanished!

For the rest of the day I thought I might have been seeing things.

Then she came back.