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Challenge of the Week XXXIX
You took your smartphone and moved back to 1984. For the sake of the plot, your phone works perfectly, but a condition of your year-long relocation in time is no one can see it, or know about it. You are to report back to 2023 the contrasts: With people, music, overall humanity, anything. Send texts, pics, videos, undetected. The elite group with whom you work has cracked the code of time travel and intervention, and while the race to colonize Mars rages on, your group has decided to instead go back to 1984 to reset the world, so to speak. Before that power leaves a seamless, yet indelible mark on the future, the group has to decide if it's for the better, or to go ahead and let it all run the course it's on, and start looking skyward for continuation. Make it funny, make it deep, make it dark, make it yours. Entry with the most likes takes the $25 wire. Go.
Cover image for post What Remains, by dustygrein
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dustygrein
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What Remains

Transcript: VOICE_001.M4A audio file.

———————————————————————

“Today is July 5th, 1984, or 2024, depending on how you look at it.

“Shit. I might have fucked up.

“I need to get the SD card from my phone into the safe deposit box I was told to use as a drop. This Galaxy 5 seems to be working fine… well, at least the installed apps still work. If the worse happens, and I don’t make it back, at least my message will. At least I hope so.

“I know that jumping back in the timestream doesn’t stop it from flowing. Every day I spend here is a day gone by there, so I don’t have to worry about feeling older when I get home. I also know that the big red button on my phone’s screen is supposed to initiate the Tunnel’s homing mode. I’m not sure how that works, since there are no 5G towers here. Like Elton John’s Rocketman, I don’t understand all the science behind the Tunnel, it’s just my job.

“Like I said, I think I fucked up. When I landed here, I discovered that there are some problems with our assumptions. My memories have now changed, but I’m not sure if they are subjective, or actual. This shit hurts my head.

“Anyway, I needed to know if I could influence anything that mattered, but I wanted to do it carefully. I remembered a softball game I was in on the 4th that year, or this year, or whatever. I decided to see if I could change one small play by distracting the biggest jerk I ever knew, Tommy Wilkers. He scored the winning run against my team that day, and gloated about it all year.

“When the big asshole started to swing at the last pitch, I screamed “MISS!” He checked his swing and missed the pitch, but every eye on the field looked toward me… including my own. I jumped up and bolted down the bleachers, pushing people out of my way and making one little girl cry after spilling her popcorn.

“The thing is, I now remember that day and the weird guy in the baseball hat and sunglasses who made that little girl cry. The pitch had been BALL 3, and Tommy had smacked the next one out of the park.

“I ran for at least 15 minutes.

“The weirdest part was the black van that showed up after that near the alley I was hiding out in. It was still there this morning, so I ducked through the Chinese restaurant, but that same van seems to be following me. Maybe I’m paranoid, but I think there is someone, some group or something, monitoring the timestream.

“I hope not, because I could have put us all on their radar. If so, I am sorry. I just pray I can pick this card up myself, in about 40 years.”

————————————————————————————

NOTE: Agent Salisbury was lost on Tunneling Mission 4. No sign of him was ever found, but this SD card appeared on the drop box on August 3, 2024. All records of that mission are being scrubbed, and his family will be compensated by anonymous donation.

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