Timmy the Time Traveler

My name is Timmy Spearman, and I’m from the future.

To say that I am a ‘time traveler’ might be a stretch; but I did travel through time to get here and you can’t deny that Timmy the Time Traveler is a pretty great handle. The problem is, now that I’m here, I’m kind of stuck.

My story starts back in the twenty-fifth century. In July of 2435. That was when I became the first human being to travel through time.

It was July 4th and I was swinging my legs over the edge of the old windmill. I watched the sun setting over the golden fields of genetically modified wheat with Samson, my stuffed green hobgoblin. The endless farmland stretched out for hundreds of miles in every direction and I felt infinitely small. But, with Samson by my side, I knew that I could face the world. I didn’t bring him with me to school anymore or to stay at a friend’s house. That would be kids’ stuff. But he had stuck with me for a decade and I couldn’t help thinking about how much worse things had gotten over the years.

My family was pretty normal growing up. We went to church on Sundays and had ice cream for good report cards. Mom, dad, and two kids in a single family home. Since the exodus from Earth in the 24th century people had more room to spread out; so, like most people, we lived in a small town. I guess it was normal, too, that by the time I was eight years old my parents were divorced. The rate of marriages ending in divorce hit a high of 86% back in the 2350’s and had settled to around 70% when my parents gave up on their marriage.

Two years later, I sat up on that windmill and wondered if I would ever be happy again.

“I just wish that I could go back in time.” I said.

I used to talk to Samson when I was in my treehouse or reading under my blanket at night. Anytime I got scared, he made me feel like I wasn’t alone. I told Samson everything. But he had never talked back.

“I could make that happen,” Samson said. His voice was low and gravelly and I screamed louder than I have ever screamed in my life.

A second later, I was falling 30 feet to the hard dirt. The fall dazed me and the impact knocked the wind out of my chest; but I was alive. Laying there paralyzed by the shock, I watched as Samson rushed down the ladder to check on me. His green body was slick and scaly and the long claws at the end of each of his fingers wrapped around the rungs of the ladder as he climbed down.

“Timmy!” The foot tall hobgoblin rushed towards me. “Are you okay?”

I couldn’t speak. I wasn’t even sure if I was breathing.

“It’s fine. It’s okay,” I remember the hobgoblin saying with a slight lisp. “I’ve got this.” As he moved, he wobbled from side to side, causing his long, pink tongue to flop around.

Samson checked my pulse and walked frantically back and forth around where I lay still on the ground; but I couldn’t move my neck enough to watch what he was doing.

A moment later, there was a flash of light in the sky. It was as if a comet had entered our atmosphere and it was headed directly towards me. The object got bigger and brighter until finally it was all around us. Rather than flattening us, it swallowed us whole. I could tell that we were in some kind of craft or vessel of some kind, and it seemed like it had come from space; but even the most outlandish explanations I could come up with failed to unravel the mystery of what was happening.

Inside the vessel, Samson continued moving about. After spending years carrying him around, I was amazed to see that he was a very active hobgoblin once he got going. After making some adjustments - to what, I couldn’t fathom - Samson jumped up and used his full weight to pull down a long lever that protruded from the wall.

I didn’t know it yet; but at that moment, we started our trip through time.

There were no windows in the vessel, and I don’t think my brain would have been able to explain what I would have seen anyway. Still, laying there on the floor, I knew that my understanding of the universe was about to change. Samson was getting further and further away, the floor between us was stretching out like melted cheese when you pull out the first slice of pizza, and the top of the vessel seemed to be closing in on us. I had never felt claustrophobia until that moment.

When we arrived at our destination, things didn’t spring back to normal - they just were normal. Samson was standing near me, the space had returned to its original size, and the roof was an appropriate distance from the floor. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was still reeling from seeing my stuffed toy come to life and having a spacecraft crash into my stunned body at full speed. They say that you never know what you’re going to do in these types of situations until you’re there. And, as it turns out, I am extremely adaptable.

“Did we just travel somewhere?” I asked, standing up and taking a look around.

“Somewhen.”

I was lost. “Somewhen? Is that a word?”

“It’s a bit of industry terminology. You’re part of the club now. Keep up.”

“So, did we just travel through time?” I asked, despite the growing feeling that I wasn’t going to get any real answers.

“A bit,” he said. Samson was once again darting from place to place, flipping switches and checking gauges. “Not very far at all, really.”

“What’s the date, then?”

“What was the date it was a moment ago?” He was starting to sound annoyed.

“You’re saying you just went through all the hassle of coming alive, bringing down this time machine and traveling through time and we’ve just ended up on the same day as before?”

Samson finally stopped moving. “Kid,” he said. His tone was solemn, but it still sounded like he was talking with a mouth full of nails. “Back there, you were dead. Here, you aren’t.”

“Dead?” I took a couple of steps back. “I wasn’t dead. Paralyzed, maybe. But I think I was just in shock. Like when someone scares you real bad and you freeze up.”

“No, you were dead. Or about to be.” Samson didn’t seem to have time for my existential crisis. “Look.” he flipped a switch and the walls of the vessel became transparent. We were close to the windmill and I could see my feet dangling from the platform at the center of the wheel.

Samson stared up at the windmill. “When we were sitting up on that windmill, you asked to go back to a time when you were happier. If you changed your mind between then and now, then say the word and you can continue to live a normal life. I won’t scare you off the windmill this time, and you will go along as if this never happened.”

“What’s my other option?” I asked. God why did I ask that?

Samson smiled a wide, devious smile. “You can come with me. We can go back to any time you want. We’ll go to a time when people were happy. You can be happy.”

I was such an easy target back then.

“When are we going?” I asked.

“There is no time to waste. We have to leave now.”

“No,” I said. “When are we going?”

The little green hobgoblin leapt in the air and clicked his heels together. “Now you’ve got it!” He said. “We can go to whenever you’d like!”

Samson flipped the switch back and the walls became solid again. He moved so quickly at times that I could hardly see him going from place to place. He would make a couple of adjustments to one machine and then race to the next. It was incredible to watch.

After a minute, Samson joined me back by the big lever.

“Whenever you’re ready,” he said.

“I don’t understand. How do I choose what time we go to?”

“Just focus on the time you want,” Samson said.

“Right,” I said more to myself than to him. “Just focus.”

Running through the sprinkler in the backyard. Climbing the apple trees at the park. Swinging as high as I could on the playground and letting go. Making blanket forts in the living room. Family dinner around the dining room table.

It took every ounce of effort that I had; but I pulled the lever down. Let me tell you, going back in time three years is nothing like going back three minutes.

The simultaneous stretching and shrinking of the vessel defied every law I knew and then some. For a moment, the ground stretched out so wide and the roof came so close to the floor that the only comparable sensation would be to imagine the feeling a fly has when it suddenly splats into your windshield. Then everything was back to normal. And when I thought it was finally over, the roof stretched out so far above us that I couldn’t make it out. The walls stretched up endlessly, then I stretched up endlessly. The foot tall hobgoblin standing next to me was the size of my big toe, and then he stretched out too.

Unfortunately, I don’t know what happened after that. The next thing I knew I was waking up with my back against the ground and a hobgoblin standing over me.

The vessel was gone, or transparent, and Samson was staring at a strange wooden watch on his wrist. It appeared to be a small sundial with a leather strap.

“After a jump, we usually have ten minutes before the vessel jumps again,” he said. “Now you have nine minutes 34 seconds.”

I didn’t know what he was talking about; so I asked “Nine minutes to do what?”. And that was when I saw his devious smile for what it really was.

“You have nine minutes to decide if you are going to stay here or go back further in time to find a happier life.”

My mind was racing. The house wasn’t far; but I didn’t know exactly what time we had jumped to. I didn’t know where my parents would be. I didn’t know where I was. But I only had nine minutes to figure it out.

“Eight and a half minutes now.” Samson said, still holding his wrist up, although it didn’t seem like he was looking at the sundial.

I turned and ran as hard as I could.

By the time I stopped outside my living room window a minute later, tears were streaming down my face. How could I decide if this was the right time? I looked in the window and saw my dad carrying me to my room with a smile on his face. I knew that night. We stayed up late to celebrate after he got an award at work. I could tell by the suit he was wearing and my mom’s purple dress. She always complained that she never got to wear it again after that night.

“Why buy me the dress if you’re never going to take me out?” She would ask. “We looked so good together that night.” And she was right. They did look good together. Like movie stars. It was Friday and we still had the whole weekend ahead of us before they had to go back to work.

A moment later, my dad came back into the room. In the blink of an eye his smile changed to a scowl. My mom stood up from the table and threw her hands up. I could see him trying to tell her to be quiet. She was upset. They were having a fight. I couldn’t hear what they were saying but I wanted to stop it. I wanted to run in and tell them that this was the time to save their family. These were the happiest times in my life and they were ruining it.

“Five minutes.” Samson said.

“How do I decide?” I sat on the ground and leaned my back against the house. “How far do I have to go to make us all happy?”

Standing next to me, Samson came up to my shoulder when I was sitting down. He was visibly uncomfortable with the emotional outburst. After a moment, he put his hand on my shoulder.

“Ow!” I jumped up, forgetting that I was supposed to be staying hidden. “Your claws are sharp.”

“Get down!” He pulled me back to the ground by my arm.

Around the corner of the house, I heard the front door slam open.

“Hello, is someone out here?” It was my dad’s voice.

Samson was frantic. “No more time. Choose now. Run or stay?”

He didn’t wait to find out what my answer was, sprinting wildly back across the field toward the windmill. I could see the seeds of unhappiness had already been planted. My parents were fighting. They were hiding it all from me. Once my mind was made up, I was up from the ground in a second and already sprinting out to catch Samson before he left without me.

“Hey,” I could hear my dad shouting after us. “I see you running, get back here!”

I kept running as hard as I could and, in the darkness, I didn’t see any signs of Samson. Finally, I got to the hill where the windmill was standing and the little hobgoblin popped his head out to show me where the vessel was.

“Thirty seconds left, stupid human!”

I ran inside, terrified. “My dad is coming. What if he finds us and comes inside?”

“No stupid human is gonna find my machine.” Samson scoffed.

“Why do you keep calling us ‘stupid humans’? You’re the one that brought me here. You stuck your claw in my shoulder. Just take me back. Take me to the fourth of July and let me live my life!”

He stopped and looked at me with snarling teeth. “No take backs,” he hissed.

“That’s not fair. I want to go back.”

He checked his sundial. “No time. Pull the lever!”

If I could go back, I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t pulled the lever before the ten minutes was up. He never did explain why that was so important. But I did pull the lever, and we jumped back further through time. From where I was standing, all reality was torn apart. I could see the empty spaces between 3 octillion (that's a 3 and 27 zeros) atoms that made up the foot tall green hobgoblin.

“You didn’t pass out that time.” the cloud of green mist said in Samson’s gravelly voice.

I blinked and he was solid again, looking down at that strange little sundial.

“Your ten minutes starts now.” The walls became transparent again. We were nowhere near the old windmill. From what I could see, we were standing in the middle of a park surrounded by tall, shiny buildings.

“Where did we go?” I asked him. When I pulled down the lever, I had been thinking of the year 2315. That was the year that the International Network for Exploring Planetary Tenancy launched the first fully populated ship into space to explore the universe and find habitable worlds.

“We haven’t gone anywhere, stupid. A lot can change in 120 years,” Samson said.

I was incredulous. Nothing looked remotely familiar.

“You expect me to believe that this entire city is taken off the map and the whole area will be farmland in 120 years?” I asked.

“Believe whatever you like. You have nine minutes to decide if you want to stay.”

“You know in 2315 everyone goes to college? With a 100% graduation rate. Inventor and entrepreneur are the two most prominent and lucrative career paths. People believe in logic and advancing technology to help the common person. In history I learned that this was the happiest the people on Earth had ever been. There’ll be parties in the streets.”

“Eight minutes.”

“What do you want me to do?” I asked. “How should I decide?”

Samson pointed to a nearby street corner where a swarm of people surrounded a couple of newspaper stands and a hotdog truck.

“You can learn a lot from reading the paper,” he said. “Just take a look at a few of the headlines and make your decision.” I had never seen so many people. “Quickly,” he added and I took off running.

I pushed past the first row of shoulder to shoulder people who were standing on the edge of the walkway eating their hotdogs. It must have been lunch time. Past the hotdog eaters, I got caught in a river of walkers. Most were talking on their phones and the collective unintelligible noise gave me the worst headache I’ve ever had. I think I was about to have a panic attack when a man grabbed me by the collar and pulled me out.

“Shouldn’t you be in school, kid?” The hotdog vendor had picked me out of the crowd and was looking directly at me while he continued to serve hotdogs at an alarming speed from his cart.

“It’s a school project. I need to see the headlines.”

The vendor looked across the sidewalk to the newspaper vendors on the other side. From this vantage point, I could see that there were two lanes of walkers. The lane I had gotten caught in was going down the street towards the intersection. The lane on the other side was moving quickly up the street in the other direction.

“What you’re gonna do, is, you’re going to need to get back in, once you get up to the light you can do a kind of U-turn and come back down this street in the other direction. Or, there’s another newspaper guy down on-”

“No time,” I said. I leapt from the top of the hotdog stand, gliding over as many people as I could. A few people got kicked in the face; but there was nothing they could do about it. We were all moving with the current and while it pushed them on towards the intersection, it was bringing me back towards the newspaper vendors. I reached out and pulled myself into the small space in front of the vendor where customers were standing shoulder to shoulder to buy vape cartridges and magazines. The actual newspapers seemed almost more of a decoration. But the headlines were clearly current. And they were all referencing the impending launch by the International Network for Exploring Planetary Tenancy.

Space, The Final Frontier - Or The Final Resting Place Of The Lower Class?

Sterilization Failed, Now We’re Being Sent ‘Off-Planet’

Populace Politics Force INEPT to Change Space Program

“No,” I mumbled. “No, no no no, no!”

“You a’ight there, kid?” the vendor asked me.

I shook my head. “Aren’t people happy here?”

“Happiness is relative, my man.” He continued to take cash and pass black plastic bags to his customers to hide their various vices.

I couldn’t take anymore. There were dozens of headlines and they all had the same message. The international community wasn’t populating the universe; they were gentrifying the Earth. I forced my way back into the crowd of walkers and kept pushing until I got to the other side. I pushed through the hotdog eaters and stepped back into the park. I could see Samson poke his head out of the vessel and I ran towards him, once again in tears.

I wanted to demand to go home again. I wanted to shout at Samson for convincing me to come with him and for taking me away from my family. I wanted to do all that and more; but the second I stepped into the vessel he was already pulling the lever and my world was already collapsing into its most basic parts to be put back together again in another time.

You really do get used to it.

“When are we?” I asked. I wanted out as soon as possible; but now that we were on this trip, I had to find a time when people were happy. I had to make it worth it.

“It’s twenty sixteen. Four hundred and nine years before you will be born.”

We were still at a park in the city; but it wasn’t nearly so busy. People walked back and forth along the sidewalks. Some were on their phones or listening to music, while others walked together and talked.

“Nine minutes. 35 seconds.” Samson said, looking down at his wrist sundial.

“I suppose there’s still a newspaper vendor near here? Three hundred years earlier.”

“I suppose so.”

I walked to the corner and picked up a paper from the counter.

Finally, I had made it to a time that I felt must be the ‘good-old-times’ everyone was always talking about. There was a woman projected to be the first female president of the United States. Religious leaders were meeting to promote world peace. High school graduation rates had risen to an all-time high. I had made it. The world was ready to be happy.