Continued from the July 2018 edition of Nonahood News…

After the cloud of smoke settled, I stood there in awe. My cat was nowhere to be found. My time machine worked!

My mind was racing rapidly. Both of my hands were shaking from adrenaline. Now that I knew my creation was capable of executing its function of placing objects into the past or into the future, it was time to test it on myself.

I clutched the remote in my hand that operated the system and made my way through its metal sliding door. The door sealed shut. I was its nucleus, controlling its blast that would send me flying through time with the remote I held. However, I was vulnerable to its mercy. The one flaw in my gadget, I suppose, was the fact that I couldn’t manipulate whether it sent its subject in the future or back through history. It was like rolling dice.

I took a long and deep breath, glanced down at my remote and hit the green button. The machine began to shake violently. The laser gun above me lit up. Power surged through its generator. Before I could make another move, I was struck.

I couldn’t tell if I was alive or dead. I saw blackness. Darkness filled all the space around me. I couldn’t feel my arms or legs. I was numb. I could still breathe, though. It felt as if I was floating in a vacuum of some sort. Could this be a black hole? No, I said to myself. That’s impossible. But was I even on Earth at this point? Maybe, maybe not. Suddenly, a strong exhaustion fell over me. No longer was I conscious.

I woke up to a loud thud and a pounding head shortly afterwards. I opened my eyes and looked all around me. My body had floated all the way up to the roof of the capsule. There was a light coming through the crack of the door of the time machine. I guided my body down to the door. Where was I? A red square flashed next to the door. Pushing it would retract the steel slates, revealing to me my mysterious destination. I pressed it.

Boy, did the curtains fold back, my friend. A billion stars were all around me. In the distance, I could see the moon and I could see Earth. I hovered out onto a rusty red dust. As soon as my body was no longer sheltered by the machine, I sank to the ground.

I was not alone. The beings around me were no aliens. They were humans. Hundreds of humans were everywhere. It looked like a New York City scene. There was a bustling crowd walking to and from places and tall buildings erecting toward the heavens with automobiles zooming back and forth. The only differences were, there were no roads or pavement, just red clay. There also lacked a blue sky. There was no atmosphere.

A colossal billboard stood the tallest over everything in the distance. It read, “WELCOME TO MARS: WHERE ALL LIFE FORMS ARE WELCOME.”

I was speechless and confused. It felt as if this were all a dream or something you saw in a thriller film. I was a hair away from pinning it to be an episode of The Twilight Zone. No, no. This wasn’t a figment of my imagination. This was real! This was the future.

I proceeded forward into the crowd of people. I bumped into several until I finally collected myself. My brain was so scattered and lost. I was in shock as to what humanity had become.

There was a building that read “Info Center.” There was nothing futuristic about the building. It appeared normal, as they all did. When I walked in, a poster had bold blue letters that spelled out, “PHOBOS: THE CAPITAL OF MARS.” Under it sat a stack of newspapers. I took one. The first thing that my eyes read was the top right corner of an article on the booming population. Above, its header had a publication date. It read, “Year 3005.”  

Tune in next month for Part Three of the A Million Miles Away series.