You kicked the machine in frustration, then howled in pain and jumped up and down on one foot when you managed to nearly break all your toes.
You had been overjoyed when your time machine worked... up until it stopped working.
The display panel went out in a hiss and flury of sparks. Smoke billowed from the machine. None of the knobs or buttons had any effect as you tried them all frantically. (Stupid, considering the immense power you were playing with over space and time itself.)
You weren't even able to determine what time you'd arrived in with all the machine's indicators malfunctioning. You could guess that you had some bugs to work out and had overshot the date you were aiming for. You'd meant to travel just a handful of decades into the past, but judging by the cave you now found yourself in, a wide clearing for miles around with not another soul in sight, you could have traveled more than a century. Possibly even millennia.
You collapsed beside your machine and caught your breath. Now was no time to panic. You had to focus. You needed tools to tinker with your machine. Unfortunately, you weren't able to bring anything with you except the clothes on your back and the items in your pockets. You'd have to ascertain what era you were in and how far technological advancement had come. You'd make do with rudimentary stone tools if you had to.
You also had to get your hands on some contemporary clothing to better blend in, and as quickly as possible, before you attracted attention. The clothes you wore, with their synthetic materials and references to pop culture from the time you'd just come from, would raise too many questions. And without knowing the level of general ignorance around you, any answer you gave to those questions might risk you being burned at the stake.
As you stood up, you also reminded yourself that you needed to try really hard to not alter the timeline in any significant ways so you wouldn't risk creating an irreconcilable paradox.
Little did you know the level of temptation you'd be facing to establish one or more bloodlines that hadn't formerly existed, and possibly even leave your time travelling days behind you. (Or was that, ahead of you?)
You hid the machine the best you could with some nearby sticks and leaves, then left the cave, picked a random direction, and started walking.
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