An Age Of Wonder

‘What would you do with a time machine?’

Most people on the planet have heard that, at some point in their life.

It’s a good question, there are so many interesting things you could get up to…but at this point, why bother?

You’ve seen movies, you know it just becomes stressful, full of shenanigans and quantum peril. I’m not going to waste my time trying to change the inevitable, but I would like to see how it all pans out.

I think I would go forward about 150, 200 years.

Then, if I wasn’t immediately vaporized by some luciferian, AI spider drone and harvested for my genetic materials, I just take a look around.

I don’t want to speak to anyone, I don’t want any zany future sidekicks or hectic adventures, I don’t care if I have any descendants.

I probably try and find a library, so I could read what the history books were hiding these days. Once I find out libraries are a thing of the past, and all education is received from The Sacred Device, I head for the closest bar.

On the way, I see stray robot dogs, chasing sentient taxis, that are prowling the night, searching for accidents they can cause, for false insurance claims.

I walk in, and I stand, at the furthest end of the bar, and I order a beer.

The bartender, an old man in an Amazon tracksuit, who’s family was once the most powerful shipping and distribution force on this side of the planet, looks at me and says;

  ‘A what?’

In the end, I buy a zero calorie, sugar free, caffeine free, alcoholic water.

The logo on the can reads –

 ‘Get fucked!’

That’s the name of the podcast that promotes the one alcoholic beverage that is still available on the planet, and I don’t care.

I sit alone, a few seats away from a man who has robotic limbs, and a GPS.

He’s just finished his 31-hour shift at the bomb factory, and he is sitting in the kind of comfortable but stark, commiserating, blue-collar silence that time will never defeat, next to an alien.

The alien has only been allowed in bars for ten years. In some, he still is not.

I drink my ‘Get Fucked!’, and then I order another, because fuck it.

It could be worse.