Back to 2020

The year is 2050 and Mike was once again tinkering with his new time thruster. There was always something going wrong it seemed and no matter how much he studied and worked on his time travel techniques he could never seem to get it right. He had dedicated the last 10 years of his life to studying space and time to finally be the first person to make it successfully to the past. There had been many attempts and many theories were made about how time travel would affect life here on earth.

Mike had founded a community around these ideas with other time travel enthusiasts and scientists. His goal was to create a set of rules and regulations to help protect the very essence of time as the possibility of time travel became a reality. So far his list contained simple rules like don't interfere with major events that could alter time, do not kill people of the past, do not be in the same time as your past self, and whatever you do, do not return to 2020 the year of hell on earth.

We have all read stories about time travel and just how delicate time is and Mike was afraid this was one thing everyone had right about time travel. Just last year he was able to send his pet rat Sam back an hour in time which was huge for the whole community. The excitement was growing as they were nearing the completion of their first human time travel machine.

Today was supposed to be the day to do the first human test but Mike continued tinkering with the time thruster because he did not want anything to go wrong when he revealed His invention to the public. It was going to be a huge press conference where he was going to go back 100 years and pose for a picture in a newspaper and see if he could appear on it in front of the media's eyes.

It was time. People were gathering into the auditorium when the time thruster had been set up to demonstrate that time travel was now possible. Mike was pacing back and forth behind the makeshift stage nervously awaiting his cue to climb aboard his invention. He had decided it should be him to test it. He did not want to put anyone else's life in any danger. This was going to be a piece of cake he was confident he had all the settings right and would go back 100 years for just long enough to appear in a newspaper photo.

"Ladies and Gentleman, we want to thank-you for taking time out of your busy days to join us today for a time-altering announcement. We are thrilled to announce the new possibility of time travel." As the announcer continued to explain why this press conference was taking place Mike approached the time thruster and climbed in. As he sat down at the control panel he could hear the crowd chanting his name. His heart was racing and he had lost all sense of time and space. The door began to close with a creak as Mike began typing commands into the control panel. He hit the enter key and everything went black.

The crowd and the entire auditorium began to shrink and finally disappeared all Mike was able to see were lights blurring as he flew through time. It was working, he was really time traveling and there was no going back now! That's when everything came to a sudden halt. Feeling nauseous Mike struggled to get himself out of the time machine to see if he had landed in the right location. According to his calculations, he should have 5 minutes to get to the photoshoot. As he climbed out and looked around something seemed wrong. He was in an alley of downtown new york and he saw LED street signs and big moving banners. This couldn't be 1950 with all this technology, but where was he. As he left the alley and approached times square he had a gut-wrenching feeling. It was mid-day and time square was quiet. Not a single soul was to be seen. New York was a city of life and hustle. Times Square always was packed with people except for one year. The one year he had vowed never to visits. It dawned on him he had crashed into the year of hell. He was here alone in 2020.