Member-only story
My Best Friend’s Dad
There’s more to the past than you think…
When Mika told me about the time machine, I thought she had taken one too many hits of synthetic weed.
“No, no, June, it’s true!” Mika had a way of dramatizing every little thing, so she waved her arms in free-flow motion as she spoke. “Why would I lie to you about something like that?”
Because you’d think it’s better than the boring lives we lead now.
But I bit back the words. How could we help it that our lives were far from eventful? We were living in a dome city that had been built to sustain civilization after the last Great War. Mika and I worked in communications, trying to reach out to any last vestiges of humanity that may have survived beyond the safe zones, but most days we came away with nothing but white noise.
I sighed and crossed my arms. “If you have access to a time machine, why don’t you try to go back and prevent the wars?”
Mika let out a sigh of frustration. “Because there are rules — obviously! You can’t go back and mess with something big like that.”
“Then what’s the point?”
My best friend chewed on her bottom lip. “Don’t you ever wonder what it was like? Before all — all of this?” She waved her hands again to gesture in the air.
