I wake up on an empty stomach, as usual. I’m not surprised. Nobody has ever really had enough to eat, not for hundreds of years. These past few months, though, things have been getting worse. Food is harder to get. Murders and riots are more common. I stretch my arms and roll out of the pile of leaves and straw I call my bed.
I live by myself in a small garage in an automobile repair shop in the outskirts of the city people used to call Chicago. Not too great of a home, but it’s better than the streets. Living by myself in this world is hard. Every single day is a struggle.
I decide that today will be the day.
I’m tired of the hunger, the poverty. I’m tired of seeing small children dying by the side of road because of some disease.
Today I will go back in time.
I will find the man who caused this, and I will kill him.
I don’t know his name, or what he looks like. What I do know is the time and place of his mistake. The New Jersey sized crater that sits over the former city of Washington, D.C. says it all.
I slowly walk over to the machine I had been preparing for 9 long years, since I was 8 years old. Nobody has ever been able to create a time travelling device before, but my father always said I had a gift for things like this. I won’t even bother trying to explain how it works. Nobody ever understands it well.
Well, I say to myself, I’m not gaining anything by waiting. I start it up, and even I am surprised at the results. It runs beautifully. All the lights in the building that are run by my homemade generator flicker briefly, and die. The windows tremble, ready to shatter. I hear distant shouts and yells.
“Open the door!”
“What’s going on in there?”
“What’s that kid think he’s doing?”
I glance up briefly. Through the windows I see a crowd starting to gather, drawn by the sound, nearly as loud as a jet engine. They attempt to break down the locked door, and loud sounds like gunshots echo through my head. I don’t give their actions a second thought. Nothing, not even if bullets started raining through the windows, can disturb me now. My attention is focused on one thing and one thing only: the machine that I will use to finally bring peace to the world. In a few short minutes, I will be gone without a trace. My hand shaking with excitement, I reach for the handle and swing open the door. Stepping inside, I punch in the time and place: Washington, DC, 2846. I vanish with the machine just as the wall crumbles, and the crowd pours in.