The ultimate choice

Todd looked up in fascination at the machine in front of him. It gleamed in the daylight. It contained a portal and he knew where it went. For people like him this is a chance that perhaps only he will ever get. And for his people, he knew where to go to change history.

His people were oppressed, mocked, derided, excluded, ignored or violently opposed. Often all at the same time. People claim that they are a new invention created by bored young people and internet addicts. But in reality, his people had existed since the time of ancient civilizations and their beliefs were found in the classical texts of all these ancient civilizations, ranging from various ones from the far east to the Greeks. It was through the internet that they were able to meet other liked minded people who had known the persecutions they all felt.

He looked and thought very carefully where to go.One wrong date and it would be even more trauma and suffering. He scanned throughout history. One wrong move and it will all be for nothing. He didn't know what would happen to him as part of the butterfly effect if he got the date wrong.Would he be displaced in time?Would there be two versions of him, with twice the suffering?

But Hey, no pressure, he thought. He smiled the kind of smile you smile when you have nowhere else to go. You are in deep, and you might as well as smile at the irony of your situation.

Here he was given one chance to correct the mistakes of two other people,in history whose mistakes he was paying for everyday, but if he himself made any mistake he himself would pay. But at least now he consented to it, he thought and reminded himself that this time around, he himself was responsible , and not these two people, and the millions of people before them who were responsible for the eventual mistakes of these two people.

He realized that he had been sweating. It wasn't any easy decision. Finally he looked at his notes. He had to go back to the 18th of October 1989.He knew what he had to do. It was the only way. He was going to go back in time and stop his parents from procreating. Specifically from creating him.

Life was very unpredictable. One minute you could be a billionaire and the next hit by a car. One day you get win an award and the next day you can get cancer. And the possibilities really very endless and had far more negative outcomes than positive ones.

Being born is a pretty negative outcome. You are born as a baby where you look like a sweet potato. Then you become cute and innocent and society pays attention to you for a while. But forget that because then you must start school where you will have to deal with : homework, bullies, child abuse via teachers, peer pressure, gangs, weapon violence, age inappropriate sexual behaviors, exams and way way more. But you will just have to put up with it because that's just life! Then you might need even more education and then you will be a slave for an employer 40 hours a week plus on average. Then you will grow old and get ill and get hurt and be unhappy and pretend to be nostalgic, but you actually never had anything to be nostalgic about in the first place.

Plus we mustn't forget, he told himself- every human needs resources. These resources come at the cost of the environment and other organisms whether they be from any kingdom: plant, fungi, animal or the two bacteria ones.

I could just erase myself he thought. But then he thought of all of human history. Why just the last century had had three global wars, two of them hot ones.He thought of all the person stripped of their humanity, in concentration camps, and not just Auschwitz .He thought of plagues and how they tore through continents. he thought of revolutions both in the last century and that of beforehand.

He thought of how viruses were introduced to indigenous people in the New World by the colonialists. He thought of the legacy of slavery which had existed throughout the eons. He thought of how even now a virus had only just recently inflicted terror across the globe. Millions of lives in agony and torture and death.

He then thought of why only stopping at humans. If it weren't humans another species could replace them like in sci-fi movies. Other ape species might evolve like humans or so could any other animal really. Plus what about robots and aliens he thought.

He knew what to do. He set the time machine to the dawn of organisms. As soon as he got off the machine he found himself in a mass of a wet water like substance and saw some life forms emerging. They looked like unicellular organisms that still existed today. He marveled in their beauty.

Then without a second thought, he killed them.His job was done. There would be no more complex life.He thought he would return to a world where there would be no life forms such a barren earth. But as he went back through the portal in the machine, he found out to his horror that there was a new world with new complex lifeforms and civilizations.

Only instead of unicellular organisms evolving, there were now new different species that had replaced humans. There were now what looked like animated creatures made of water roaming the land.

"But how?" thought Todd "I killed off all complex lifeforms, hence there would be no more potential suffering , but this happened".

For instead of entities with cells, there were now entities with atoms who had had the same evolution. Life uh,finds a way

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" he screamed. Suddenly he vanished into thin air.