Author : Sean Austin Murphy
I was 19 when I first heard them. I thought I was crazy. They assured me I was not. I told my family. My family agreed I was crazy. I went to the doctors. The doctors gave me pills. The pills don’t work.
They said they were from the future. They said I was the only one they could contact. They said I was a mutation. I believed them. They said the sun was dying. They said I was the only hope.
They told me to build it. The device. I was given clear instructions. I gathered the materials and I began construction. Every piece fit. Everything was perfect. But then the others came.
The others tried to stop me. The others said not to trust them. The others said they were evil. I was shown images. Horrid tortured by visions of the future. The others said they were responsible. The others said they were invaders. The others said they came from nowhere and attacked for no reason. I almost believed it. But the others made a mistake.
I don’t think they could hear the others, but still they knew. They knew when I stopped working. I was almost done, one more piece was all. But the others had given me pause. They guessed what was happening. They told me who the others really were. They told me the others were people. They explained that as the sun faded humanity went mad. They said the few still coherent were zealots. Survivors believed this was gods wrath. They said the others believed to interfere with god was wrong. They said they were only here to save what humanity had once been. They showed me images.
It’s a powerful feeling, to decide the fate of your world. I almost believed the others. Then the others showed me an image. It was of the others counter attacking the invader’s ships, to drive them from our world. But I had already seen this image. They had showed it to me. They had showed me how the madmen had destroyed their outpost, murdered the families inside.
As I finished the device the others begged me to stop. When I asked the others didn’t even know what it would do. The madmen even tried to claim it was a bomb.
When the final piece was in place the voices stopped. No more images, no more arguing, just quiet.
The others still don’t know what it is. I tried to tell them, the others that is, but they think I’m crazy. All they know is that the invaders are talking to someone in the past, planning something, and that they have to stop it.
They’re in the other room now, the others. They are all I have left, the only few survivors still fighting the good fight. They have their theories as to where the invaders came from, but they don’t really know. I do.
It’s not a bomb the invaders are building in the past, it’s a beacon.
The 365 Tomorrows Free Podcast: Voices of Tomorrow
This is your future: Submit your stories to 365 Tomorrows