Submitted for the January 2026 prompt: Auld Acquaintance

On July 20th, 1969, Howard Traylor sat transfixed before his family’s television. He held his breath as he watched Neil Armstrong descend the ladder from the lunar module… and make history.

 

Like most people, Howard considered it humanity’s pinnacle achievement. He alone, however, knew that it would remain so for less than a day. Because no one else knew what was in his garage.

 

Two hours later, Howard was making final checks of the machine’s settings. Sixty years into the future seemed a reasonable destination. At the current rate of technological advancement, six more decades would surely transform the world in ways beyond his imagination.

 

Despite being confident in his preparations, Howard couldn’t help clenching his teeth as the machine wound up. He’d allowed the chronowave generator to approach the jump threshold several times, but only when operating it remotely. Now that he was strapped inside, it felt very different. An oopsie before might have lost him his invention, but he would not have been lost along with it. Wherever — or rather whenever — the machine was about to go, he was going too.

 

And then, just as the generator’s whine was becoming oppressive, everything went quiet — and dark.

 

* * *

 

As several of the longest seconds of Howard’s life slipped by, he became aware of small sounds beyond the pounding of his own heart. He heard the familiar drone of cicadas, fewer in number but similar to those he’d just left behind. Then not far off came the sound of a passing car. This too seemed quite familiar. Surprisingly so.

 

As his eyes adjusted, he realized the space around the machine was not completely dark after all. Stepping cautiously out from the machine’s interior, he spotted a single covered window right where the window in his own garage had been. Enough light seeped in around its edges to reveal his surroundings: a rack of shovels and rakes, a wheelbarrow, a pair of bicycles, and what he took to be a somewhat strangely shaped lawn mower. This last, unfortunately, had been damaged by the spatial displacement of his machine’s arrival.

 

Although unlikely, Howard considered the possibility that the damaged mower might be his own. That he would end up living in the same place for that long seemed exceedingly unlikely, but he did not doubt that he might still be alive — somewhere. Another six decades added onto the six he’d already survived would make him the oldest person alive in his own time, but that surely wouldn’t be the case in this future. With advancements in medical technology, people would probably be living at least a century and a half by then.

 

Having allotted himself only ten minutes for this first foray through time, Howard gathered his courage and tiptoed toward the door. He was relieved to find its handle no different from the one he’d left behind in the past. He flipped the deadbolt and turned the knob, and that was it. He was surprised not to find an electronic device of some sort securing the door instead.

 

Outside, his luck held. As he’d arrived fortuitously in the concealment of the garage, he now saw exactly who he was hoping to find outside: a teenager. The young man, maybe fifteen years old, would be old enough to answer his questions, but still young enough to feel beholden to an adult.

 

The kid was standing on the sidewalk, staring intently at something in his hands. He wore a pair of threadbare jean shorts and a Detroit Lions shirt. Howard smiled, pleased to know his favorite team was still around, and that football was still around for that matter.

 

When he was ten feet from the young man, Howard froze, his attention captured by the approach of a vehicle. The pick-up truck, for clearly that’s what it was, was sleek though surprisingly similar to those Howard knew from his own time. Even more surprising was the cloud of black smoke the truck coughed as it accelerated. Still gasoline powered?

 

“Hey, can I ask you a few questions?” Howard asked as he approached the young man, who ignored him. “Excuse me. Hey, kid, can you hear me?”

 

Finally, the teenager lifted his gaze from what Howard now realized was an illuminated screen.

 

“Is that a game?” he asked.

 

“No,” the kid answered reluctantly. “It’s just social media.”

 

Howard had no idea what that meant, but given his self-imposed time restraints, he decided to forge on in a different direction.

 

“Can you tell me how far people have made it into space? What planets have we explored?”

 

“Uhhh… I guess,” the kid said. Then, after a couple quick taps to the glowing screen of his device, he said, “How far are people from the Earth?”

 

Immediately, a slightly off human voice said, “There are currently seven astronauts aboard the International Space Station in low Earth Orbit. Historically, members of the Apollo space missions, the last of which landed on the moon in 1972, were the farthest from the earth.”

 

Howard was thunderstruck. The little device that he’d taken for a game was a computer! A tiny, super-advanced computer! And yet… people were no farther out than low Earth orbit? The seeming contradiction of the pair of revelations was jarring. Then another, even stranger thought, struck Howard.

 

“You didn’t already know that?”

 

But his words fell on deaf ears. The young man had reengaged with his device. Howard saw he was watching a video of a skateboarding accident. Repeatedly.

 

* * *

 

Instead of returning home to the moment of his departure as planned, Howard instead retreated into the past a couple of extra hours. He wanted to watch Neil Armstrong step down onto the moon one more time, hear his inspiring words, and dream of a future he was no longer sure would ever come to pass.