You signed in with another tab or window. Reload to refresh your session.You signed out in another tab or window. Reload to refresh your session.You switched accounts on another tab or window. Reload to refresh your session.Dismiss alert
This is the first part of an episodic series about "Bob" & the Chrononaut he meets.
110
110
</p>
111
111
<h3>Bob, When The Future Goes Dark</h3>
112
-
<div>
113
-
114
-
</div>
112
+
<div>
113
+
<p>Bob sat at his breakfast table tapping his fingers, reading NPR and sipping on his synthesized skim milk latte. He knew he should probably do cashew milk…. But well, at least it was skim. And organic.</p>
114
+
<p>Bob both loved and despised his boring life. Just like he both loved and despised the lackadaisical lifestyle which led to his protruding gut. And his teaching job. And his being single. And his students. Bob especially both loved, and despised, the students.</p>
115
+
<p>He scrolled through some holographic news stories, waving his finger casually in the air to flip the pages. Bob wanted ideas for his next writing endeavor.</p>
116
+
<p>He studied the titles, “3D Printed Organs and Other Hacks to Increase Your Lifespan,” “The Ethical Consequences of Breathing Unrecycled ‘Outside’ Air and Other Things You Should Probably Feel Guilty About,” “As Divorce Skyrockets on Earth, Why Marriage is Earthifyingly Increasing In the Mars Colony.”</p>
117
+
<p>Nothing useful. He thought.</p>
118
+
<p>Then, it happened.</p>
119
+
<p>With a giant WAAAH a yellowish greenish hue exploded into his living room. The rush of scorching wind alone nearly blew his doors off and burned the sides of his walls. Not to mention, causing him to spill his latte all down his favorite shirt.</p>
120
+
<p>A woman stood there wearing a full suit. It was a skin-tight metallic blue covered in strange, flexible-looking metal piping. Yet, her face was exposed.</p>
121
+
<p>Bob’s jaw dropped to the floor. He wanted to say, “Who are you and what are you doing here and why did you light my curtains on fire?” But all he could get out was, “Howawroar?!”</p>
122
+
<p>She caught her breath and leaned against the wall. She had to steady herself. Bob noticed her hand shake, and realized she might be ready to collapse. Bob was already standing brushing brown milk from his shirt, but he took a few steps towards her hoping to assist her. Then, he jumped away reflexively. Something sparked on her chest and it was like her heart resuscitated. She jerked upright and stood there for a minute, just breathing and shaking.</p>
123
+
<p>As her posture relaxed, she rubbed her ears like they had just popped tenderly. As she pulled her hands away, he noticed both had a glowing metal device like hearing aids.</p>
124
+
<p>She turned to him.</p>
125
+
<p>“Hi.” She yelled over the roar of the fire, as if she couldn’t hear him very well. She stomped on a burning stack of student homework, which the gust of wind had turned into a blazing campfire.</p>
126
+
<p>Bob hadn’t noticed that she had lit this recently graded homework on fire. Bob wasn’t too happy with that, but he was experiencing too many emotions at once to know that he was angry. And he didn’t have time to pop open his holographic meditation app to calm himself down.</p>
127
+
<p>“Sorry,” she said. “I’m here to help. I’m here because of the end of the world.”</p>
128
+
<p>Bob screamed like only he could. He sounded like a terrified little girl. Of course Bob shouldn’t think that kind of thing anymore, that a girl child would scream differently than himself. It was transphobic, species-phoboc, planetist, and masculinist. But it felt true. As true and real as the space-woman in front of him.</p>
129
+
<p>“It’s the end of the world?”</p>
130
+
<p>“No,” she looked at her watch as if to check the time.</p>
131
+
<p>“Not yet. It’s the end of the world where I’m from… the 2190s.”</p>
132
+
<p>“So... so... so, you're escaping... he-, he-... here?”</p>
133
+
<p>“No. I am coming here to keep all of you,” she gestured around her as if she were referring to the whole world, “from making some terrible mistakes. To keep you all from messing it up.”</p>
134
+
<p>Except she didn’t say messing.</p>
135
+
<p>“You’re from the future?”</p>
136
+
<p>“I’m from our future,” she corrected. “Yes. Not too far ahead of you really. Plus or minus fifty years.”</p>
137
+
<p>She looked around again. Bob’s toaster was no longer connected to the electrical socket. The cord was burning and severed.</p>
138
+
<p>Bob had liked that toaster. He had had it since his college days.</p>
139
+
<p>“Oops,” she said.</p>
140
+
<p>She saw Bob was too shocked to do anything.</p>
141
+
<p>She quickly threw open his cupboard and found his fire extinguisher, and began spraying it on the toaster.</p>
142
+
<p>“Sorry about that, too. I think I had an “off-by-one” error when I set my location… Is this house pretty new?”</p>
143
+
<p>“Yes,” he said. “Finished this last month.”</p>
144
+
<p>“Sorry,” she said. “I promise, this really looked like a field on my map. Fields are hard to find in the 2090s. And they only update the maps with a few snapshots per year.” Bob nodded, as if he knew what she was talking about.</p>
145
+
<p>“Well, thank God I didn’t manifest between those two doors over there. Or with my hip in the middle of your table. I might have exploded into a human soup on the floor. I’ve got to be more careful next time…”</p>
146
+
<p>“So you’re here to stop me from making decisions so that our… your world doesn’t end in the next few years?”</p>
147
+
<p>“Well, so that my time doesn’t end in the next ninety days or so, yes. But no, not to stop you. To stop several people.”</p>
148
+
<p>“You weren’t sent for me?” he asked.</p>
149
+
<p>She shook her head and laughed.</p>
150
+
<p>“So… You were sent here?” he asked.</p>
151
+
<p>She blushed.</p>
152
+
<p>“Erm… not really. Look, Bob, I’ve got things to do. People to stop. Worlds to save.” She marched towards a door and threw it open; behind which was excess cat food and his stacked washer and dryer.</p>
153
+
<p>She blushed more. “Where’s the door?” she asked.</p>
154
+
<p>Bob finally shook off his shock and took a cup of water he had set aside for his succulent and splashed it all on a napkin stand that was burning a hole into his grandmother's table. He hadn’t realized it was still smoldering.</p>
155
+
<p>“Wait! Look, it's very nice you're here, but the least you could do is give me a few answers.”</p>
156
+
<p>She stopped and sighed. “Fine, but I need to go in ten minutes.”</p>
157
+
<p>On its own accord, her watch started a countdown that faintly hovered six inches above her wrist regardless of how she turned her hand.</p>
158
+
<p>She furrowed her brow. “Shoot.”</p>
159
+
<p>Bob ducked. He only assumed she was about to shoot him.</p>
160
+
<p>She laughed, a big belly laugh. Which he hadn’t expected. Then she adjusted her ears. “You know, hearing aids won't get any better in the future by the way. It’s a shame, We’ve got all the technology for it. You go deaf pretty quick with enough interplanetary and interdimensional travel.”</p>
161
+
<p>Bob nodded, again acting like he understood what she was talking about.</p>
162
+
<p>“What’s your name?”</p>
163
+
<p>“Katherine. Katherine Solaris Avander,” she said.</p>
164
+
<p>“Really? Nothing special. The Names don’t change, I guess.”</p>
165
+
<p>“It’s a revival of old names. Moms do that every 70 years or so. My middle name is still new. Spacey.”</p>
166
+
<p>Bob nodded.</p>
167
+
<p>“Okay, well you said you’re here to stop some decisions. Which decisions?”</p>
168
+
<p>“That’s classified," she said. Looking as stern as she could.</p>
169
+
<p>“Okay,” he said. “I don’t see how I could be of much help then.”</p>
170
+
<p>“You can’t,” she said. “Unless you are some secret intelligence agent or something.”</p>
171
+
<p>Bob thought for a moment. Then he waved his hand to open up the Desktop on his computer. He flipped through until his hologram displayed some documents.</p>
172
+
<p>“I study Tweets!” he said.</p>
173
+
<p>“Good Lord, is that still a thing? I forgot about the social media craze. That really stops in about ten years once everyone realizes that the majority of social accounts were basically robots. Or, robots getting real people to post by influencing them enough. Well, not robots, what y’all are still calling AI. Robots who don’t have bodies yet. Or guns. Lots and lots of guns…” She shook her head and made a face like she had a bad taste in her mouth.</p>
174
+
<p>Bob caught himself before panicking, as he started to imagine his personal assistant AI (which did most of his teaching prep for him now, anyways) gaining bodily form and chasing him with a machine gun for not submitting homework on time.</p>
175
+
<p>“Guns? Well, okay. But I study these things and aggregate the data – then I look at trends. I’m a history professor.” Bob liked saying professor because he taught one night a week at the community college. But his day job was a middle school history teacher. And he only had an English degree.</p>
176
+
<p>She glanced at his aggregator code on the screen.</p>
177
+
<p>“Your code kinda sucks. Have you heard of a loop?”</p>
178
+
<p>Bob glared towards her, but she changed the subject.</p>
179
+
<p>“History professor? Do you know history well?”</p>
180
+
<p>Bob nodded quickly.</p>
181
+
<p>“Hmm,” she said.</p>
182
+
<p>“Wait! But look –I write articles based on what I see trending on what could happen.” He showed her a couple of his Word docs open.</p>
183
+
<p>She scanned them quickly. “Look… Most of these are wrong. But it’s not all your fault. A lot of the information you’ve been fed on the news and in these tweets is just factually wrong.”</p>
184
+
<p>“What do you mean?”</p>
185
+
<p>“Well, for example. Bioengineering is being developed by food companies to help with crops? That’s a bunch of bull. It’s developed by these companies and sold to militaries to develop it more, and vice versa. In order to help kill whole people groups, species, and nations faster. It’s so bad that in a few years you’ll be creating viruses to kill certain races. What does that change about your fake article Better Bread?”</p>
186
+
<p>Bob’s mouth dropped again. Then he thought for a minute.</p>
187
+
<p>“Poisoned Bread?” he suggested.</p>
188
+
<p>“Look Bob, I’d love to help, but I’ve got to save the world.”</p>
189
+
<p>Bob stopped for a minute, and said. “One more question. Why did your heart palpitate when you came?”</p>
190
+
<p>She sighed heavily. “Traveling like this has a very serious cost. We wear this stuff preventatively. Most folks go deaf from traveling after a few tries. My ears are getting close to that. The heart stoppage isn't a big deal if you land somewhere where you can immediately resuscitate.”</p>
191
+
<p>Bob thought for a moment. This woman had put her life on the line to help others. It inspired something deep within him he had never really thought about before. It was primal. Instinctual. A deep yearning for something pure. For a passion... And it wasn’t just because she was a beautiful woman. He felt his face and realized he had begun to cry, and he didn’t know why.</p>
192
+
<p>I’m going with her.</p>
193
+
<p>He grabbed a cup of water, filled it and gave it to her.</p>
194
+
<p>“Oh, thanks,” she said.</p>
195
+
<p>“I’m coming with you,” he said. “Want some cereal?”</p>
196
+
<p>She shook her head.</p>
197
+
<p>He looked at the box.</p>
198
+
<p>“Bioengineered?” he asked.</p>
199
+
<p>“Yep,” she replied.</p>
200
+
<p>“Got it,” he threw the box in the trash.</p>
201
+
<p>She slammed the water on the table.</p>
202
+
<p>“Alright, Bob. But go put on some hiking clothes or something. We’ve got a lot of work to do. And you’re going to have to keep up.”</p>
203
+
<p>Bob rushed into his bedroom, throwing on anything he could find. All his hiking clothes were from his college days, and barely fit his pear-like body. He had to slide on the shorts, which sat above his knees. The shirt, which was nice and breathable, exposed his belly button if he leaned over. His backpack needed adjusting, but he’d do that later. He found his hat. Bob was huffing and puffing.</p>
204
+
<p>“So you’re an astronaut?” Bob yelled out.</p>
205
+
<p>“Chrononaut, actually,” she said from the other room. “But no, I’m not one of those. Technically. I’m the principal software engineer on a top secret project. And I get to look at a lot of data. We’ve been testing this technology for fifteen years since we really discovered it. In looking at the retroactive data, I started looking forward. Which was fine at first. And then the map changed.”</p>
206
+
<p>“What do you mean?” Bob asked.</p>
207
+
<p>“It all went dark,” she said.</p>
208
+
<p>“Oh my,” Bob said.</p>
209
+
<p>That sounded bad, and Bob didn’t like bad. Bob readjusted his belt, and stepped back into the smoking kitchen and looked the space girl in her deep blue eyes.</p>
210
+
<p>“In the testing we weren’t making any progress. Just sending melons and books and things like that. We needed to make progress. And everyone ignored my findings. They didn’t trust them. Said we had to test more. Blah. Blah. Blah. But I did that. When I sent a melon with a return hookup strapped to it, it returned. Every. Single. Time. Until I sent it to the Dark time. Nothing came back. No melon. Zip. Nada.”</p>
211
+
<p>“That’s when I started testing with myself. This is my fifth field try. At first I just traveled back a few seconds, and then a few minutes. Then a day. And then a week. And now, a hundred years.”</p>
212
+
<p>“What if this is the wrong time to fix the problems? Do you just go back?”</p>
213
+
<p>She shook her head.</p>
214
+
<p>“Can you go back?” he clarified.</p>
215
+
<p>“I don’t know. But I’d rather not talk about that now.”</p>
216
+
<p>“Okay.” Bob stretched his back but tried to avoid making his belly look excessively fat.</p>
217
+
<p>“Let’s go,” she said, heading to the door.</p>
218
+
<p>“Thanks, Katherine, you won’t regret this!” he said.</p>
219
+
<p>She looked at him curiously, as if she was wondering if she already did.</p>
0 commit comments