If you time travelled 20 years into the future, what would be the first thing you'd do? Just curious to see how your responses compare to the character in a short story I'm writing!
The first few things I would notice is fashion trends, cars, buildings, etc. These are things which you would see anyway, even if you didn't want to. Then I would probably just have a little wander - you know, walk the streets to see how different everything is (although it wouldn't be terribly different). If you are looking for reactions to time travel, though, I suggest you watch the first episode of Futurama, where the main characters travels 1000 years into the future, and the first episode of sci-fi series Continuum, where the main character travels backwards in time. I'm not saying this is exactly what you want, but it's just to give you a couple of ideas. You can watch Futurama free online, but Continuum might be a little harder to find online, seeing as it only began in 2012. Hope that helps.
I probably try to find something familiar either a landmark or a person. Then after I'd gotten over the shock I would start looking at whatever was new or make comparisons. Or sleep because I'd be tired from the traveling (seriously).
If I could come back, I'd pull a Biff Tannen and figure out what stocks to buy Also, Futurama and Continuum are both on Netflix. So are Farscape and Battlestar Galactica.
I sorta did that, recently. Went 'home' after living abroad for 18 years, back to a town I used to live in. I also visited my home town for the first time in 35 years. The 18 year gap wasn't all that startling. New shopping malls, etc, but not much else had changed, and still saw the same people as well. Walking the streets of my home town, after 35 years, was a very strange experience. The houses along my old street were more or less all there, but they'd all been painted different colours. What was REALLY strange—the trees were all different. Many of the large old monarchs had died or been taken down. Many of the saplings I remember are now large old monarchs. That kind of thing can really make a street look different!
It depends a little on whether your character intends to go back- then I think it would be like going abroad to a country that speaks the same language, and you would want to find that burger and a room, and you would spend time comparing everything to back home. If your person wasn't expecting it, i think they would be trying to find someone official to ask for help.
I love those movies. I think the first thing I'd do would be to look around and get the lay of the land. How currency has changed, how people are dressed, what sort of vehicles they're using, laws, etc. I would be very thorough because I wouldn't want to land myself in a difficult situation inadvertently. haha
Check to see if the Cubs had won a World Series in the intervening years, then have a laugh that they hadn't.
Buy copies of by best-selling novels, and bring them back to the present to save time rewriting (is there a law against plagiarizing my future self? No matter - I won't press charges.)
My first instinct would be to find out what my family is doing...but then I would try and resist the urge to "respect" the flow of things. Wherever I was, I would want to know whether Italy (my home country) is in a better political/social and economic state than it is now... I assume you would have ways to access the internet at any corner so it shouldn´t be hard...
If it happened to me, I would go to a place that is familiar and dig the ground where I buried the time capsule. I would also check what's trending on comics nowadays or find out what kind of food are made 20 years into the future.
I'd probably see how technology had evolved in the twenty years as it seems to be advancing every year, that and what I suppose is the clichéd answer of checking up on those near and dear to me.
