Life is strange. We are constantly worrying about the thing we don’t and can’t know and, even worse, the things we have no influence over. Endless scenarios that will never happen. What if I had done this? What if I say that? I can’t remember how many hours I wasted.
But that’s the funny thing about us humans. We know things are bad for us. We know about the dangers of alcohol. We know about the dangers of cigarettes. We know about…I could listen ten thousand things, and I would still not be done. I think my point is clear. We know things are bad for us. But that doesn’t deter us from trying them out anyway. We ignore the warnings. Sometimes we believe the bad things only happen to unlucky idiots. And sometimes we believe that the temporary happiness is worth the risk. We do things even if we know they are bad for us. Often with bad justifications. I never tried alcohol. I stayed clean of drugs. I even helped grandmas across the street. So, allow me to do this one bad thing.
Oh, I forgot to mention I am not talking about thinking. I did that too. That is true. But I realized that it didn’t make me feel better. And I got something better.
It was a normal night. I was wallowing in my bed, thinking about meaningless things. When suddenly a red telephone box appeared. Right before my bed. You know the ones. Those things you sometimes see in London. My first thought was: Holy shit. The TARDIS landed in my room. Doctor Who is real.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
That wasn’t the case. Doctor Who is still fiction. But time travel is not. The box is an actual time machine. The designer was probably a Doctor Who fan. That would explain the design choice. I never found out. Sorry for getting side-tracked. Back to what happened. The phone box opened its door, and a dwarf came out. I wanted to say midget, but he actually looked like one of the seven dwarves. I can’t say which dwarf though. Not because I am blind. But in 2030, our new overlord has enacted new laws against thought crime. So, even mentioning the name means copyright infringement. Our new overlord is very protective of his intellectual property.
But back to the dwarf. He shouted that he had enough of time travel and looked me into my eyes. He said that I could have the machine. It was a stupid thing anyway. He then jumped out of my open window. He wasn’t dead. I live alone on the first floor. I looked after him as he ran away. Doing dwarf things probably. I would actually meet him at a later point in my life. For one hour I stood there bamboozled. After my brain finally got what happened, I decided to inspect the time box.
The door was open, and I went inside. Immediately, a voice spoke from the box. It told me this was a time machine. As per request of the former user, I am now the new owner of the time machine. I can travel to any point in time. I only have to say the date or think of an event.
As I said before, humans do bad things even if they know they are bad. I know messing with the timeline is dangerous. But dammit. The benefits could be so amazing. I never did anything bad in my life. So, let me do something bad. Just this once. And who knows? Maybe I can make things better.