Perhaps beaming myself into a public place wasn’t the best idea. In my defense, these people weren’t supposed to be here.
The old guy kicked my knee. “How are we supposed to believe you’re from the future?” he asked.
They’ve been asking me this for about an hour. Only a few people saw me enter this timeline, but one of them had a camera. Soon, I was tied to a garden bench encircled by a small crowd.
“I’ve been a light harvester for my whole life. Okay, since I was thirteen. When y’all ruined the Earth in 2020 during the flu, or what was it called? The Pandemic. Right. The American government nearly ruined the Earth, killing millions of people. There was some sort of explosion, forgive me, history isn’t my best subject.
“Anyway, Americans were allowed outside during the Pandemic just as people were starting to feel better. That was in May 2020. Then, millions of people died in a week.”
The oldest of the group gaped at me. “Then let’s stop that from happening! May 2020 is only six months from now. We have time!”
I laughed and shook my head. “I’m not here to stop the pandemic. That’s a great example of what we call a Fixed Event. Something so important to history that no matter what anyone does, it’ll happen again and again.”
“That makes no sense, if we just told the government-”
“Gonna stop you right there,” I said. “The government doesn’t care. Your government and people have been molded in place for hundreds of years just for the event to occur.”
Everyone was silent. I knew I shouldn’t be telling them all this. But I just couldn’t help myself. “Once it became clear that humanity would overpopulate themselves at too fast a rate, mass extinction was inevitable.” There are other reasons, but let’s just say I don’t know about them.
“If you’re not here to stop the pandemic,” Someone asked. “Then why are you here?”
I sighed. Everyone back home was right. These people were really dumb. Maybe it’s just Americans? “I’m here to stop the Peace Treaty of 2020.”
to be continued
Eva Moe 