Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

Future Me

It's Saturday evening, September 20, 2008. I'm sitting at my computer, getting things ready for the coming week. How do I get ready for the coming week? Well, there are a couple things that almost always happen on Saturday evening...

First, I grade solutions to the brainteasers that I've posted over at TheProblemSite.com, and second, I check to make sure there's a writing prompt set up for the coming week at this website.

I realize that makes for a pretty mundane Saturday evening. Back when one of my life's ambitions was to earn a Nobel Prize, my days were filled with more profound and meaningful activities. But then they went and gave a Peace Prize to Al Gore, and I realized my ambitions were not as lofty as I once supposed. Now my life has come down to this: brainteasers and writing prompts.

As I sit here, puttering away at my preparations, there is a loud clanking like the hollow, booming sort of noise that heating pipes in old buildings sometimes make. I look around, wondering what this strange noise might be. To my astonishment, a strange figure starts to materialize in the corner of my office. The figure starts out as a wispy sort of vapor, and then begins to coalesce into a human being - a human being who looks exactly like me.

"What..."

I can't think of anything else to say.

"No reason to panic," the mysterious intruder says, "It's just you."

"What..."

"I know," he continues, "most people would say, 'It's just me.' But in this case, 'It's just you' is quite appropriate. I'm you, from the future."

I continue staring at myself, and all I can think of to say now is, "Aren't you afraid of time paradox, and tearing the whole space-time continuum?"

He shrugs. Or, I guess, I shrug. Or maybe I should say I will shrug, since he/I comes (or will come) from the future.

I look at him/me suspiciously. "You don't look much older than me."

He laughs. "I come from just one week in the future. In my time, it is September 26, 2008."

Next Friday.

"How did you get here?" I ask.

"Built a time machine. Had to come back and talk to you. Me. Whatever."

I'm glad I'm not the only one who gets confused by the pronouns. Wait...I guess I am the only one.

"So what's so urgent that you had to build a time machine and come back to talk to me?"

"It's that writing prompt you're setting up," Future Me says.

I'm setting up a writing prompt about Time Travel. "What about it?" I demand.

"In my time, it's Friday morning, and only two people have done the prompt. It's a bad writing prompt. No one likes it. You need to do something about that."

I stare at him. I say nothing for several seconds while I contemplate the enormity of what he is telling me. "Are you saying that you went to the trouble of building a time machine, and the best thing you can think of to do with it is to come back one week into the past to tell me to create a different writing prompt?"

"Pretty much, yes."

I sigh. "I can see I haven't gotten much smarter in a week's time."

On the bright side, I realize that if I can maintain this level of idiotic dim-wittedness, I might still be in the running for a Nobel Peace Prize after all.

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