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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.
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IkeSalvador
72 reads

Here we go Reagan

Quickly, even more so, frantically I shove the phone in my phanny pack and start sprinting for the back of the convention hall. While scanning for an exit, it is clear this place is riddled with eyes in the sky. Security cameras have been an after thought given the time's lack of technology, but clearly my futuristic insolence has been noticed already. And to some scrutiny given the intensity of the chase. They may have caught a glimpse as I snapped a photo of the current president's massive rally with an alien device, but something tells me they have been looking for this guy. The Secret Service members are gaining, gotta figure something out fast. Who knows the ramifications if my cover is blown? Exploding out of the building like the Koolaid man, I duck into a crowd of protesters. I start weaving through the masses of neon colored garb with little hope. Then it hits me strong. The familiar smell of my sister getting ready for a night out 40 years ago. It's a Guess perfume I haven't smelt in decades, the one that comes in a little black and white exclamation mark shaped bottle. Coupled with the blaring sound of Wham!'s "Wake Me Up", my senses collect this as a beacon of hope. The poofy hair and bracelet scene has been my cover for the last 9 months. This duo of freedom seems to be vibrating from a bar smack in the middle of the protest.

Finally with some sense of anonymity it's time for a breath once inside. The bar is quite full from all the day's excitement and is easy to disappear in. The young people have taken over this normally dark and dingy place. The room was painted with color for the moment. After scanning for a rear exit I feel at ease that i have a moment. I take a seat not far from my possible escape, and order a beer.

"Thank God for contingency plans." I think as I dial my emergency extraction number. "9 months of collecting data should be enough, and have been somewhat discrete." I quietly vocalize to myself, as if to give it some more weight... makes myself almost believe it. With the last sip of beer the call is placed to my team, and I'm out.

It's a strange sensation. Like getting electrocuted through your eyes and right through the back of your head. But home at last? I come to in the middle of a full sprint.

"What the fuck is going on!" As I clear my foggy mind. Similar looking men are half the distance of before giving chase. The world seems modern, or what I would perceive as my original time. Mashing the call button again as I sprint, frantically trying to place where I am, I exit the building. Duck into a crowd, it smells worse, like people that haven't taken very good care of themselves. "This is fucking insane" I think to myself mashing the button on the phone. Everything looks the same yet different. Out of the corner of my eyes I catch campaign banners for Reagan Jr. They look to be more of a reminder than a suggestion. "What is this modern world different than my own?" I think to myself. I ignoring my suspicion of how it came about. I really fucked up, it's clear, despite my false inquiry.

Boom, electricity right into my eyes and out the back of my skull. I am running yet again at full steam, and getting tired from the decades of sprinting. I drop to my knees in an even newer world, whatever that means, this can't continue. "I've lost" I think to myself. As that train of thought ends, I am obliterated by suited men. They tackle the fuck out of me, as if they've been chasing me for decades.

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