Percy Grimshaw, Compliance Officer, hadn’t started his Tuesday with time travel in mind. He was simply, per his job description, moving a dangerously loose lead.
No hum of city traffic or sirens, not a car horn, but a nearby bugle call pierced the air. Percy blinked as he saw a young cavalryman appear, sweat-streaked, clambering onto a horse.
Percy’s internal safety alarm shrieked. The rider was neglecting proper three-point contact. “Hie there, young man!” Percy yelled. “That’s a dismount, not a mount! Where is your sense?”
The soldier froze. Percy produced a laminated card. “Safety Taskforce (Reenactments),” it read. The soldier squinted. “You with the government, sir?”
Percy puffed his chest. “Yes! And you?”
“Sergeant Miller, sir. Fifth Infantry reinforcements,” the soldier stammered, gesturing towards distant gunfire. “Urgent dispatch, sir. General’s orders. Can’t be delayed!” He tried again for the stirrup.
“No, no, allow me to demonstrate, young man,” Percy tutted, reaching for the saddlebag, already mentally correcting the ill-secured flap. “Proper weight distribution, stirrup height…”
The horse, with a terrified whinny, bolted. The messenger watched, aghast, as his mount, with its precious saddlebag, thundered away.
Some time later, covered in prairie dust, Percy finally convinced the animal to stop. He fumbled with the saddlebag. Inside, a sealed dispatch. He broke the seal.
His breath caught. The crisp, formal header read: “TO: MAJOR GENERAL GEORGE ARMSTRONG CUSTER.”
Percy Grimshaw, Compliance Officer, stared at the name. He’d only been trying to ensure a safe dismount.
I’ve done extensive worldbuilding in both my fiction and my games. Sometimes this takes an hour or two, sometimes years, depending on the scope of the project. In a micro-story, worldbuilding generally must necessarily be implicit in the story. In fact, micro-stories are a useful practice to hone the writing skills needed for the introduction and exploration of worlds without becoming boring, though balance is needed as to the level of detail.
For me, building the world usually grows out of an interesting character and their journey, though sometimes the world already exists (fan-fiction or as a world-book of a well-established series).
This particular story is set somewhere in the USA. There are three locations or places:
The modern world, a laboratory. purpose: time travel investigation and experimentation. This supplies the doorway and narrative segue between the two worlds. This was where I started working on the story. In the end this whole world is implied by the mention of timetravel, thus we need no visual building beyond a loose cable. Time travel labs are fiction though some failed experiments have been attempted in real life. Percy’s occupation as a safety officer is here.
The modern world, Percy’s reenactment meetups purpose: take part in mock modern live re-creation of (usually) historical battles. These meet-ups occur in real life around the world where amateur enthusiests enjoy taking part in historical style life and fights. This supplies Percy with background as a government-paid person to ostensibly ensure safety at such events, and perhaps his experience with horses. This was a later addition to help tease out Percy’s role in the story, and is implied primarily by the laminated card he shows the soldier, thus no visual development was required.
Montana 1876, the battle of the Little Bighorn. purpose: a historical battle. This was the fights between the Sioux coallition and the US 7th Cavalry. The 5th Cavalry came much later in reality, partly to replace the 7th. I was originally thinking about a British battle somewhere but settled on this one as it’s fairly well known, in the hope that readers would recognise Custer’s name as the punchline. As a historical case, the worldbuilding was predominantly research. For such, the research can be anywhere from half to double the amount of work in actually writing the story, depending on the history in question and how deeply it is used in the story.
Overall these and the development of Percy come together to form the story. In case it’s not obvious, story summary: Pedantic Percy accidentally time travels from his employer’s lab, and in his usual over-officious safety management, causes/aids the failure at Little Bighorn.
Note that this is a work of fiction.