𝗝𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗲𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗙𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲- "Are you alone *cough*?" "I'm not sure what..." "I asked you a question. Are-you-alone *cough*" "Down here? Yes I'm alone". I'm Reginald Lambert *Cough* *Cough*. You might not know me but I very well know you and this day! Joseph *cough*, before you ask me anything, find my present self *cough* *cough*and give him this device, goddamnit I can't even speak properly now". "Your present self? What do you mean?" "I have arrived from forty years in future to prevent this from happening *cough*! The extinction of human life in 2012, the isolation of our habitat and what else I couldn't have beared to see *cough* *cough*! For you, yes I am what you would probably percieve as a time traveller". "Mister, you've already lost a lot of blood..." "Quiet *cough*! I have planned this out in every little detail and I'll be damned if I let it fail. You, Joseph now could be the only little spark of hope for the future. Take this device, you'll need this!" "What is this thing?" Its a portable interdimensional chronosync remote". I looked at him in my most logical and understandable look possible. "Its a Goddamed time machine, ok *cough*? Listen to me very carefully now Joseph, this remote *coughs* runs on solar power, without which, it would be useless *coughs* *coughs*!" His coughing was getting worse. "You understand me Joseph *coughs*? Now go and don't let anyone *coughs* see you with this, ok?
Go now, *cough* go..." and that I think was his last one. His breathing had stopped prematurely and his eyes were shut.
I was terrified to the bones. I tried to get out of that room and as I made my way out of Room 2B, 2 security guards surrounded the corridor whilst also finding the body inside. They handed me over to the Police and I still shaken of what I heard and seen couldn't even had said a word to defend myself until the amazement and the terror striked me at the same time once again in the Interrogation Room, where I was held under custody in view of Mr. Darian and his sidecop Burke.
"So you're Mr. Joseph! Listen, I don't want to be unreasonable here. All I want are some simple answers to some simple questions. Do you want to make things complicated? Do you? Coz' we can do that, you know. My partner Burke over there, different kinda guy. A real stickler for rules. Sometimes I have to consult him, you know in some complicated matters for helping our dear suspects to.... simplify.... their statements". I saw a bulky man of what seemed more to me like a powerful bodybuilder resting himself along the wall. "No sir! I'll try to answer your questions as simply as I could". "Didn't think so. Let's just keep this nice and informal. Now mind telling me what it is" he asked while putting that time machine remote on the desk in front of me. That device was pulsating with green light. I picked it up and pressed that button. The thing vibrated in my hand and in just a moment of time, I was in a fully dark room with a faint smell of iso propyl alcohol around everywhere near me. I got up and opened the door finding myself in a place quite different from the one I was brought in a while ago. All the walls were dabbed and cracked. Branches of trees came in from broken pieces of walls and the ceiling were scattered on the floor. Floors creaked and stairs were broken with a....dead body hanging from the ceiling. "Yikes! A man hanging is from the ceiling! What is this place!?" And then the realisation hit me like a truck. I was forty years in future!
"Man I'm dizzy, how long was I out?" I walked up to a room and opened it. Inside was an dead guard's skeleton with a badge. "Ahhh! A skeleton" I shouted with top of my lungs at its first glimpse. Still shakingly, I check the badge which read Burke, the same guy from that time. He was having a key in his left hand clasping it tightly there. I left that room and walked upstairs to a locked room with a very faded sign I almost barely read 'Store Room'. Inside I went and found a rope there inside a glass case half broken on the wall half. I took that and broke the window pane, tied the rope to a sturdy table which seemed kinda fixated and jumped for the ground.
"Woah! The streets are fully deserted I suppose and look at those buildings, all desolated. The plants are also starting to wither and...there's no animals also!" I continued my voyage but while walking, suddenly I found the device once again pulsating and emiting green light. I gently pressed the button again and I was back to present. There was a mini alleyway ahead me and a hospital near the next turning. I used the cage door and made my way to the hospital where I had to stop midway and hide behind a recycle bin as there were some cops inside asking one of the hospital guards. I once again travelled back to future and the same hospital door was now locked and sealed completely from outside. I tried to pry it open but it didn't even budge. There was a small window opened upwards and with the help of that same recycle bin, I climbed inside and switched back to present because the condition of the hospital in the future from the inside was neither worth seeing and nor worth describing.
"Ah hello Doctor, is there a patient named Mr. Reginald Lambert?" "Ok, your identity please mister?" "I'm Joe Smith, doc. I...um knew the patient and was there at the time of his death. Can I please see him?" "Turn right from the next corridor and go all the way downstairs" and he hurriedly went inside a room with some papers and reports in his hand. I followed his told directions and went inside that room whilst sneaking from a doctor near that room looking at some diagrams and papers on a desk. Mr. Lambert's body was lying there with his head covered. While looking at him, I remembered those words he said to me earlier that time in his dying state, "You might not know me but I very well know you and this day! Joseph, before you ask me anything, find my present self...." "I wonder why Lambert wanted to give his past self this device?"
I thought about it for a moment and then without hesitating checked his toe tag and matched the serial number under the hospital patient almanac. I found his address. "Quite an isolated place and little too far from here too but I must go there to try to figure out what's going on!"