You Were Right, Joe

"You Were Right, Joe" is a 22-page Time travel short story by Scottish writer J. T. McIntosh, published in the November 1957 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction.

An unnamed man has had his consciousness sent far into the future by a scientist named Joe.

He also reports that he is attracting a fair amount of attention because the body that he now inhabits is tall, strong, handsome and athletic whereas in our time he was something of a weakling.

Another observation that the time traveler makes to Joe is that the people of the future must be pretty mature, as they only need two laws: As the time traveler meets people and explores his surroundings his messages to Joe begin to mention strange events where people or creatures from other times (a sabre-tooth tiger, a group of cave men, some people attending a party in 17th century England) appear for a short time and then vanish again.

The future scientists see a way to remove the threat by severing the link, but their solution turns out to have some rather grim repercussions for Joe...