"Fate" Mark Couvillon (© 1996 by Mark Couvillon)

Created November 04, 1996. Updated April 28, 1997.

My name is Benjamin P. Morrison. The date is January 6, 2380. This will be my last entry in my diary. I was once a brilliant scientist, but I have not aided civiliztion in any way. Instead I fear that I have now destroyed it. Soon I to will die due to my foolishness. For over thirty years I spent my life traveling from one idea to another, but with nothing successful to call my own, until I stumbled upon the possibility of time travel. For a month the answer stared me in the face but I hardly realized what I found. When it finally dawned on me I quickly set uponaccomplishing the impossible, time travel. Within eight years I perfected it with models. Soon I made a full size working model of one, but was struck with a dilmna. A question that has oddly waited in the back of my mind to be asked. If I do go back will time change, or march on without notice of me. I set about reading old newspapers. On the date of July 16, 2376 there was a fire that burned down a family's home in a town not fifty miles from my home. I found a warehouse that was abandoned in that city and set about moving the machine. Once situated I sent myself back to the night of the fire. According to the paper the man and his two kids escaped but the mother died in the fire. A man on the street saved all of their lives but left before they could get a name. I was going to try to save the mother. I waited across the street in the night until I noticed it in the kitchen window. The fire had started. I ran to the house as quickly as possible and burst through the door where I saw a man and a woman on a couch watching T.V. I figured it was the mother and father. I yelled out that there was a fire. They ran to the kitchen but it was out of control. they started for the door but the woman turned back scraming out the younger sister's name. I stopped her and told her that I'd get her and forced her out. By the time I got to her the house was filling with smoke. I was almost out the door when a man burst into the door and knocked me to the ground. I yelled out that I had the child but he ran on in anyway's. My job done I left back to the machine and went back home before I could be spotted. I just couldn't get the thought of that man out of my head. I soon realized that I had dropped my wallet somewhere. When I returned all was as it had been. I did not save the mother. The woman turned out to be the older sister. The man was going in for the mother but failed. This proved that time was unchangeable. I grieved for them, but their fate was already decided. Within a month my machine went public. I gave demonstrations of its use but refused to let anyone us it until the last show. I allowed two volunteers to make a trip into the near future, one minute actually when I received a disturbing message. I was shocked when I discovered who it was from. It was the man who I ran into at the fire. In the envelopy was my wallet and a newspaper clipping that downright shocked me. A year after our encounter the peaple I saved came down with a strange disease. Now it was old news, but the disease still appeared in small areas. I knew this wasn't always so from all of the papers I read. It sooned dawned on me that I too must have the disease, probably caused by the machine's radiation. I cursed myself for not testing for radiation. Reality sunk in when I saw the machine disappear in a flash of light. Now I can barely make out the keyboard, relying on my hands rather than my eyes. The disease not only infected me but all peaple I came in contact with and all people they came in contact with. I am not sure if the human race will survive, but I am sure I will not. The pain is unbearable so I have decided to die at my own hands rather than this disease. I am ready to say goodbye to this world.