As I reached toward the time machine, my fingers tingled with excitement. The largest step in mankind, a leap beyond what was ever thought to be possible, was just in front of my hands. The light blue swirl of the rift illuminated my face and the rest of the laboratory. With my photogun carried on my belt, my nitrogen explosive in my pocket, and my oxygen ventilator on, I prepared myself to enter the doorway.

“Dr. Hulis, are you sure about this? It’s common sense that messing with time is dangerous.”

“Silence, Lovitt!” I hushed. “Would you rather continue living with the smog, the war, the famine? Or do something to fix it? I must destroy Basin before they ruin our planet!”

“But, we don’t know what changing the past will—"

“I said shut it! I have to do this. The future of mankind is at stake.”

With my heart pounding out of my chest, I reached into the time machine. After 30 long years of research, work, and money spent, I couldn’t stop shaking. My masterpiece was finally complete. I enveloped myself in the pale blue light, and readied myself to save the world.

The first thing I noticed was that I noticed nothing. There was no ground beneath my shoes, no smells entering my nostrils, no voice to pierce my ears. The only thing I could rationalize was the endlessly expanding pool of empty, with the familiar blue hue swirling and coalescing like a stream around me. I looked to my left, and noticed something I found to be quite odd; a stream of red light off in the distance.
But that was absurd! I was the first man to ever time travel. How could there be other streams in time? My trail of thought was cut off by a screeching sound, and a bright flash of light.

I was hit by a solid wall of fuzzy matter. It took me a second to realize that what I made contact with was the ground. I opened my eyes to see soft, green spikes as far as I could see.

“Is this what grass is?” I softly stated, the wind sloshing through the green.

Behind me, a strange noise chirped. I whipped my head around, only to see a large brown statue with a small feathered creature on it. The books I read as a child really were true! The statue must have been a tree, and the creature a bird. Taking in my surroundings, I slowly took off my oxygen mask. I could tell from the plethora of life around me that I would not need the artificial oxygen of the year 2213.

Rage bubbled up inside my chest. How could these people treat this illustrious world with such disregard? Did they not realize the harm they caused to our planet? I knew I would have to set things right. Picking a random direction, I engaged my jet boots, and began toward finding the closest sign of civilization. Trees whizzing past me, my jet boots flung me forward. A small city started forming in front of me, and I turned off my jet boots. I knew I wouldn’t want to stick out; I would probably be stripped of all my equipment and arrested, and the fate of the world sat too high on my shoulders for me to risk it.

Wandering around the simple tar streets, I knocked on the first house I saw. A rather small, buff man opened the door and peeked through. “Greetings, Mister!” I kindly acknowledged. “Would you happen
to know any information about the company Basin?”

The man let out a stifled laugh. “Isn’t that startup company I heard about in the local news?”

“I am trying to find where their building is. Could you give me directions?”

The man pulled up what looked like an old rendition of a phone. “If you don’t have anything to view this on, I can print it out for you.”

“Yes, please.”

The man nodded, and walked back inside. After about two minutes, he came out with a stack of white sheets. “Here you go, I hope you get the job!”

“Oh, I’m not applying. I just need to visit someone,” I retorted as I walked away.

Turning my jet boots back on, I flew to the location the man listed on the map. The location was about 15 miles north. I knew relatively where it would be, as there is a statue commemorating it nearby, so I had already configured my time machine to bring me close to where it is. The original Basin company was in a small building with about three or four rooms. Accelerating down to a walking speed, I pulled out the nitrogen explosive from my pocket. This would be the day Basin was destroyed. They would not become a large political power, they would not waste all of the world’s materials, and they would not make everyone a wage slave for them. I would destroy them before they could get to that.

I pressed the button on the explosive. It was currently working hours, so I knew that everyone who worked for Basin would be in the building. As I tossed the nitrogen explosive near the building, a faint smile crept up on my face. The man who ruined the world would die that day. The explosive went off, and a flash of white ensconced my body.

When I could see again, I realized I couldn’t. I felt the same lack of sensation as when I was traveling back in time. “You had to play God, didn’t you?” an omnipresent voice echoed into my brain. An entity appeared in my vision – a being resembling everything, yet nothing, exuding light, yet absorbing it, too.

“Who are you?” I squeaked out.

“Who am I? That is a good question,” the voice reverberated back. “I do not have a name, I simply do my task, and my task is to enforce the laws of time. I guess you can call me the Time Lord, if it puts your mind at ease.”

"The laws of time?”

“That is correct. You seem brilliant enough to have discovered how to bend time. Did you not think that what you were doing would break reality? What you have done has completely corrupted your reality!”

“What!? What do you mean by that! How would me going ba—”

“If you destroy your reason for going back in time, what reason would you have gone back for in the present?” The Time Lord calmly questioned. I felt the blood rush from my face. How did I never think about that?

“But, I had to destroy Basin before they—”

“Is that an excuse to play God? Just because you’re not brave enough to combat your issues in the present means you’re powerful enough to change the past. If you are genius enough to travel through time, surely you could’ve used your intelligence to fix whatever atrocities were committed.”

I couldn’t feel my knees. I had been so focused on my work with going back in time, I never even considered how I could save the present without it. I thought back to all the research and discoveries I had made, and envisioned all the ways I could have made things better. After a short silence, I murmured, “What’s going to happen to me?”

“Well, I can’t keep you here. You’ve committed one of the worst crimes: The destruction of a reality. I shall punish you accordingly. You will indefinitely live your mistake through.” A low hum shuddered
through my body, and another bright flash enveloped me.

As I reached toward the time machine, I could feel my fingers tingle with excitement. The largest step in mankind, a leap beyond what was thought to be possible, was just in front of my hands. The red swirl of the rift illuminated my face and the rest of the laboratory. With my photogun strapped on my belt, my hydrogen explosive in my pocket, and my oxygen ventilator on, I prepared myself to enter the doorway.

“Dr. Hulis, are you sure about this? It’s common sense that messing with time is dangerous.”

“Silence, Lovim!” I hushed. “Would you rather continue living with the smog, the war, the famine? Or would you rather do something to fix it? I must destroy Sahara before they ruin our planet!”

“But, we don’t know what changing the past will—"

“I said shut it! I have to do this. The future of mankind is at stake.”

With my heart pounding out of my chest, I reached into the time machine. After 30 long years of research, work, and money spent on it, I couldn’t stop shaking. My masterpiece was finally complete. I
enveloped myself in the pale red light, and readied myself to save the world.