ID-2

"Boo!"
"...am I supposed to scream?"
"Worth a shot."
"So what is it today?"
"Oh good, you're catching on! Today is the World."
"Our World?"
"No, The World. Let's say I want to set something in the past. When and where?"
"Um, okay, Victorian England."
"Surely you can be more creative than that."
"Australia then. During British colonization."
"Now you're getting somewhere. Let's say the story focuses on right and wrong and additionally, technology scare"
"Alright, that's not so bad. You can work in the themes of right and wrong with the facts that the colonizers were criminals. A character, a group, a community emerges which debates the definitions of right and wrong as defined by the rest of the world. It's isolated, there's nobody to tell them otherwise. There are troubles defining a moral sense and there's always the underlying threat of an island inhabited by criminals.

Technology's where things get fuzzy. There's the new technology brought to the island, of course, but aside from that I don't think there was any sort of industrial revolution going on at the time..."
"Are you sure about your assumptions here?"
"Are you?"
"Oh, there's also time travel."
"What!?"
"This isn't about historical fiction, John. Time travel. Go."
"Alright, so one day a kid follows a koala and falls into a cavern-"
"I'm sorry, I thought we were going to be-"
"-original, yeah, I get it. Okay, then, two lovers get lost in a forest and discover carvings in the land itself. Standing in different areas of the carvings affects time, though it's impossible to notice this at first, at least with any accuracy. The carvings themselves are a maze which when understood can be used to accurately navigate time. The discovery of this, of course is divisive and power struggles, across both the land and time start to control the area. This technology divides and unites across borders formerly thought impenetrable."
"Not bad. Tomorrow again."
"Who exactly do you think you are?"
"...Hello?"