LOS ANGELES – The number of Americans signing up for one-way trips to an idealized past surged in April, leaving experts in the time-travel industry to suspect that citizens are becoming concerned not only with the present, but also the future quality of life in the United States.
“We used to have a line out the door filled with optimistic adventurers demanding to be sent twenty, fifty, and one hundred years forward on the world’s timeline,” says Charlie Esquire, a time-travel agent at the popular Eras agency. “Many of them returned claiming that we are on the brink of a beautiful utopia in which medical breakthroughs extend human existence for eons, robots do all of the work, and everyday citizens enjoy unfathomable lives of leisure.”
However, that trend dramatically shifted in 2019, according to Esquire. Since the beginning of this year, time travelers with round trip tickets departing for any date after November 3, 2020, ceased to return to the present to celebrate the coming paradise.
Trans-temporal pods such as the one shown here are used to ferry people and inanimate objects between centuries.
To determine what caused such a dramatic shift to the world’s timeline, time-travel industry experts sent drones in standard, agency-issued trans-temporal pods to record what they see happening in the future.
“It looks like on Tuesday, November 3, 2020, the United States holds its regularly scheduled presidential election, with polls showing the incumbent President Donald Trump with a strong lead, and by the next day, the world is in flames,” said Esquire. “Literally, our drones incinerate upon arrival on November 4, 2020.”
Representatives from Eras and other time-travel agencies started a campaign on social media last month promoting ‘modest’ and ‘pleasant’ trips to the past. They hoped to save the time-travel industry in the wake of the impending doom, even if it meant convincing humanity to resettle on previous points of development on the world’s timeline.
So far, they said, the campaign is working.
Survivalists such as these are taking their skills across the ages to avoid Doomsday.
“Once again, business is booming,” said Esquire. “People, trying to avoid the imminent Apocalypse, are packing guns and cans of Chef Boyardee and how-to books and setting off to make their mark in the Wild West, medieval Europe … as far back as the age of Egyptians. These pioneers are determined to do whatever it takes to make a life for themselves and their loved ones that is as fulfilling and long-lasting as possible. America, to them, is a bust.”
Individuals migrating into history are hopeful that by revisiting the past, opportunities to improve the future still might unfold.
“Who knows?” said Dale Bernard, whose family of five is planning to relocate to Mesoamerica during the epoch of the Aztecs. “Perhaps this fresh start will not only save our lives, but also allow us the opportunity to pass on our modern wisdom to our ancient neighbors and make a brighter tomorrow, for everyone.”
This group of time travelers have their work cut out for them when they return to a rocky past.
News of a mass migration to the past, however, drew suspicion from a wide range of Americans, including those whose voices are rarely heard in public discourse.
Many scientists, historians, and intellectuals – down to recent high school graduates — expressed concern that a nation attempting to flee its problems might only make them worse, no matter what timeline on which such a retreat is felt.
“Time is not static,” said Rebecca Surley, a quantum physicist and professor at California Institute of Technology. “We need to have an evidence-based discussion about the elements of our society that are contributing to its downfall right now to create the world we want before we let everything go to shit by the 2020 election.”
Matu Kinebe, April 25, 2019
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