“Alright,” Alfred sighs, his eyes fixating on the machine in front of us. “Step up there,” he directs me solemnly. The literal piece of junk in front of me, constructed from many pieces of scrap metal and garbage, begins emitting a numerous amount of beeps, much to my bewilderment. Being compliant with Alfred’s orders, I soon find myself sitting in a coward-like fashion within the machine. It’s hard to believe that I, comparable to the cowardly lion, have agreed to go through with this ridiculous plan. “See you later,” Alfred says with a smirk, shutting the door of the rectangular chamber, sealing me inside.
It sounds almost as if a firecracker has gone off overhead. Immediately I feel the gravitational shift of my body being skyrocketed upward, and then in turn plummeting back toward the ground.

“Alfred, I swear if this is a prank I’m gonna-!”

I’m interrupted by the deafening roar of the contraption landing roughly on pavement. The machine comes to a skidding stop, and for a second I believe that the thing will tip over.
But as if on cue, all goes silent.

A prominent buzzing noise begins to ring in my ears, like an gnat flying constantly around my face. Stepping quickly out of the machine, the gentle whir of it’s gears ringing in my head, I peer around the corner, heart pounding as fast as hummingbird’s wings. My mind hardly manages to register that I have survived. I barely recognize this place - the wisps of trash that once cluttered the ground in piles and floated along the streets like tumbleweeds now having disappeared. This place is hard to recognize without all the smoke and waste depleting my air supply.

Taking a closer look, I come to the realization that I have not gone that far back. Gum and crushed cigarettes remain littering the ground - it is 2014. This is where our dystopian society began, and this is where it will end.