Arin Hellstroem was—well, let’s not mince words, he was a genius. Indeed, one of the brightest intellectual lights ever to gleam in the long and too-often dark history of mankind. Unsurprisingly, he also suffered from those afflictions which so often accompany genius: arrogance and oddity. His early life was remarkably easy and followed the typical pattern. First published theoretical works at ten, completed graduate school at 12, nominated for the Nobel Prize at 15, awarded same at 17. But while science continued to reveal its secrets to him, Life remained entirely unfathomable. He hadn’t published much in the past few years. Again, an understatement: his “latest” articles were more than a decade in the past, and the University was getting anxious. Hellstroem was tenured, of course (since age 14), so there was no direct fear for his job; but without any results to tout, his public relations value was nearly nil. The administration seemed more and more hesitant to give him the resources he needed, and he began to feel the first stirrings of the squeeze that might send him to obscurity. Some say he simply wasn’t well liked. Others might argue that it was his affair with a trustee’s wife that endangered his career. But the consensus was that it was embarrassing to have to keep funding Hellstroem’s time-travel experiments. Hellstroem himself never spoke with the press, or even other academics, but it was common knowledge that he’d been chasing this impossible dream for the past ten years, frittering away his reputation at the same time. No one understood his theories or even his basic approaches, and most thought he’d simply given up the fight and submitted to insanity. Only Hellstroem knew that it would work; and boy, would he show them. After one particularly bad meeting with the University’s chancellor, he decided it was time to make his move. A month later, at midnight, he was in the lab. Standing before his apparatus, to which he alone had the codes, he experienced a moment of doubt. The machine could only send him one way: forward, and a necessarily vague number of years at that. And then, there would be no returning. But his plans were made. And then there was the exciting part, the anticipation of what he might see. “Mankind,” he thought to himself, “has always found creative ways of dealing with its problems. We may be stupid and shortsighted, but we’ve got cleverness going for us.” He shrugged and went through his checklist. He’d added a fair amount of extra padding to his space suit, just in case he arrived in the air or underwater. He’d converted his small life savings into gold, and made sure that was fairly buoyant as well. The explosives and their accompanying timer were too small to harm anyone, but large enough to wreck anyone’s dreams of reverse-engineering his designs. He’d take them with him, where they’d be appreciated. The timer was set: 2 hours. While he was a confident genius, he wasn’t stupid—no sense in being blown up if you happen to be proven wrong. The only thing left to do was set the destination. He’d always been told he was two centuries ahead of his time, and that seemed like a good number. Not too distant that things would be weird, not so close that things would be the same. The machine whirred and sparkled, and creaked more than a little bit. He stepped through with something that could only be called hope.

He was a little bleary when he picked himself up, grateful for falling only a couple of yards. Nevertheless, there was something entirely wrong here. It was too quiet. The room was an empty shell, abandoned but not destroyed. He ran to a nearby window and saw the campus outside encompassed by the same sort of emptiness. He walked cautiously out onto the overgrown quad and looked around. Everywhere there were buildings, but no people. Thoughts of disease or war flitted through his mind, but he dismissed them, pondering the peaceful look of the surroundings. It was only after he made it to the library that he understood. Picking up an old newspaper, brittle but legible, he read the headlines and smiled. He might be alone now, completely alone, but he began to feel a grudging sort of respect for the people who’d lived in this world. Clever was right. Much cleverer than those bastards he’d left in the past. The banner headline read, “Humanity Leaving Earth, No Forwarding Address.”