Peripheral Visions: Heritage

Peripheral Visions: They coalesce in the soft blur of darkest shadows and take shape in the corner of your eye. But you won't see them coming... until it's too late.

Heritage

"And you're really from the future?" Glenn leaned forward, studying Marjorie more closely. His hands slid a few inches across the table as he did so, and he gently pushed his coffee cup to the side. He didn't like the coffee in this place – or anything about it, really. They called it the Heritage Project, and it was supposedly funded from private donations and not taxpayer dollars, but Glenn suspected that this was all some sort of government-run hoax, like so many things had been over the last half-century.

Marjorie met his gaze calmly. She didn't seem to mind his scrutiny. If she was some sort of crisis actor or something, they had cast her well. She looked like she might indeed be his distant descendant. She resembled his daughter; she echoed his sister. He saw traces of many of his close relations in different aspects of her face, her body, her bearing. She had his sister's green eyes; she had his mother's Mediterranean skin, and a similar name. His mother Marie had come to America from Italy with her parents in the 1950s – the "post war years," she had called it. Glenn had been born in 1974. He was sixty now... almost sixty-one, actually. He had worried that his daughter – also named Marie – would never give him grandchildren.

I guess I was wrong he thought, looking at Marjorie.

If, of course, she really was a descendant of his who had traveled through time back to 2035. He had come to the Heritage Project that morning for two chief reasons, neither of them having to do with stories of time travelers and interview requests. First off, he'd been offered a stipend of $3,500 for each visit... not a fortune, but worth his time.

He also hoped that he would notice some detail, or coax some slip from her, that would lay bare a spectacular plot that he could talk about on his podcast. He'd been gaining listeners over the last year, thanks to his unique blend of insight and fury. He was no fabulist like Jake Jalex... though what the libs had done to that poor guy was beyond the pale, and another reason Glenn could never forgive what remained of so-called "woke culture." A juicy reveal about these so-called time travelers and this shady Heritage Project was all he needed to put him over the top and leverage his hobby into a paying new career.

His audience would love this, and he knew just how to spin it to keep their attention for months or even years, and to gain legions of new listeners. He was going to dissect this liberal billionaire deep-state conspiracy for all it was worth. It was an impossible story, one more con job – like green energy, trust funds for all newborns, and genetically engineered plankton that they said would clean the seas but that everyone with a brain in their heads knew was intended to alter the DNA of the fish. They said the fish had all been caught, and the oceans were essentially lifeless. That was bullshit. They were mutating the fish, the sharks and dolphins, and even those deep-water worms that lived in clusters around volcanic vents. Mutating them into water-breathing half-human monsters. The goal, as ever, was to conquer and kill, one more brutal and Satanic scheme in the Great Replacement.

But now, meeting Marjorie, and despite himself, Glenn found he almost believed that she really was a time traveler... really was, in fact, his own descendant. For some reason, the detail that almost convinced him was the color of her matching blouse and skirt: A raucous, cheery yellow with just a hint of orange; the yellow of a giant August sunflower.

The sort of dress that Evaline would have loved.

Glenn blinked: He almost thought he saw her here, now; Eveline, her face superimposed for a moment over Marjorie's, as Marjorie smiled, her perfect white teeth brilliant against her olive skin. "They explained this to you, right?" she asked him.

Glenn blinked again, pulled abruptly back into reality. "You mean the people from the Heritage Project?" He nodded. "They did, but I still don't really understand it. You come here... from the future... to interview your ancestors."

"Yes," Marjorie said.

"And why?"

Marjorie's smile faltered. "To try to understand," she said.

"Understand what?"

Now Marjorie's smile faded completely, and a sad, pained expression came across her face. "What did they tell you about the future?" she asked.

"Just that you have some kind of machine that lets you travel through time," Glenn said. "And that you wanted to do some kind of research."

"It's part research," Marjorie nodded, "and part diplomacy."

"I don't understand. Are you negotiating for something?"

"We'd like, eventually, to find a way to save the planet," Marjorie told him.

"From what?" Glenn asked.

Complicated emotions played across Marjorie's face for an instant: Anger, exasperation, regret. Hatred? Glenn wondered, not for the first time: Do they hate us? Does she hate me?

Of course, he corrected himself, the question wasn't whether they hated him and people like him, but why... and what it would take to get them to stop and just leave them alone to live their lives, worship their God, and restore the country to solid Biblical values.

"I really need to understand," Glenn said. "Why are you here, and why are you talking to me?"

"There are several hundred of us here," Marjorie said.

Reflexively, Glenn looked around.

"I mean," Marjorie said, "in this stretch of decades. Some of us are tasked with interviewing their ancestors from thirty or forty years ago. Some are being... or will be, I suppose... sent to times fifteen or twenty years from now. This is a crucial period in history. Right now, this day in 2035, is near the end of the era that we're interested in. Only a few interviewers are going into key years after now."

"Key years?"

"Next year is an election year," Marjorie said. "Who you elect is going to make a huge difference to the future. It's the most important election since 2016."

"So Trump was right," Glenn said, grinning. "He did make America great again."

Marjorie looked down, carefully stone-faced.

"What?" Glenn asked. "Are you gonna tell me that you're one of those malcontents that don't like Trump? Is the future full of never Trumpers? Because he put this country back on the road to righteousness."

Marjorie spoke carefully. Glenn could hear it. He didn't like it. It was too much like when liberals used to talk down to people like him.

"We can't tell you about the future," Marjorie said. "Not in detail. Not yet, anyway. But... certain things have happened over the last couple of centuries that had their beginnings in the first two decades of this century, or even before. There are certain moments that... if things had been different... the future might be different, too." She looked up again. A sad smile came across her lips.

"Are you going to give me some story about climate change?" Glenn asked.

"I'm not here to give you a story at all," Marjorie said. "I'm here to ask a few questions, if you're willing to hear them. And then I'm here to listen, if you're willing to answer them."

"And what do you want me to tell you?"

"Well," Marjorie shifted in her chair and reached for her cup of coffee. "You brought up climate change. I get the impression you don't believe that it's real."

"Hell no, it ain't," Glenn said forcefully. "And if it is, it's because the Sun is getting brighter and hotter. That's just science. All the rest of it is a great big lie. A hoax that China came up with, and then India picked up on it after them."

"Tell me some more about that," Marjorie said.

"You don't got history books in the future?"

"We're here to find out about history from the people who lived it," Marjorie told him.

***

The meetings took place every month. Glenn never missed an appointment with Marjorie. She refused to tell him anything about the future, but he started to put together a surprisingly detailed picture from the evasions and excuses she gave him.

"It's not that I think the time travel part of it is a hoax," Glenn told Raymond Burke, who joined him in his home studio one Saturday afternoon for that weekend's edition of his podcast.

"Really?" Raymond interrupted. "Because most people of our persuasion..." Raymond made a "you and me" gesture with his hand. "... well, most of us don't buy that at all."

"Maybe that's because these time travelers don't talk to many of us."

"Actually," Raymond said, "I think they target us. Try to make us look foolish. A lot of the guys I know were approached by this so-called Heritage Corporation..."

"Heritage Project," Glenn corrected.

"...and they turned the bastards down flat. Now, let me tell you why. It's a classic case of entrapment, the sort of thing that liberals get off on. They feed us a line of spectacular bullshit, something no one in their right mind would ever believe, and then they expect us to swallow it whole. No matter that it smells like bullshit. Right? They expect us to just wolf it down like chocolate cake. And then, they pull the rug out... or they pull the curtain back... and there we are, standing there like fools in the middle of what was always, obviously, a big, fake, goddamned lie. They talk to us like we're idiots, and then they make us out to be fools. And we are fools, if we let them do it. So, why are you letting them do it to you?"

Glenn smiled coldly at Raymond. He'd wondered, in the back of his mind, whether it was such a good idea to being a rival podcaster onto his show. He'd hoped for some fellowship from the guy, of course; he'd hoped for some synergy. But it didn't surprise him that Raymond was stabbing him the back the way he was. Looking for a story of his own to tell back on his own podcast. Well, Glenn wasn't too eager to be gutted and dressed like venison so that this son of a bitch could keep his freezer full.

Hell, so that he could afford to even plug a freezer in.

"Well, Raymond, I'm gonna tell you why that is," Glenn said. "The lib-fucks like to say that we don't respect facts and truth? Well, sir, my podcast is all about facts and truth. When the Heritage Project came my way, I almost sent them packing, but then I thought it would be worth it to dive right in and see what they were about so I could expose them. Because folks like us – " Glenn mimicked Raymond's "you and me" gesture, and then gave it a final flourish, ending with a raised middle finger that silently made its point. "– want nothing less than facts and truth. The real facts. The real truth. The God's honest truth. And I'll tell you something: This woman I've been talking to, this Marjorie, I'm pretty durn sure she's telling the truth about coming from the future. But here's the thing, my man, while you won't even talk to these people from the future, while you bury your head in the sand, they've got their agenda. And I'm walking into their den every month, and I'm figuring it out. What do they really want? You think they come here to hear us talk about God's plan for the two natural genders? You think they're sincerely interested when we explain why missionary style, strictly for procreation, is the only acceptable way to indulge in sex? Or why it is we can't let colored people back into this country? Or why we finally started doing what we should have done from the very start of the New Revolution, and now we're executing men who went and got vasectomies, just like we visited divine justice on women who murdered their unborn babies back in the years of the Great Genocide? They don't care about any of that.

"But I'll tell you what they do care about. They want to try it again with the secular state, with the whole 'democracy' thing. Democracy! And privacy, and so-called freedom of religion! An excuse for all sorts of immorality. Who do you think is behind it? The queers, of course. And the Jews. And the socialists. Just like always, Raymond. Just like always. How do I know?" Glenn asked, raising his voice and hurrying his rhythm to cut off his guest, who was about to speak. "I'll tell you how I know. I ask a question about the future... any question... like, 'Is the sky still blue in the year 2525,' or whatever. Because, I don't know if you've heard this, but they won't even tell you what year, or even what century, they come from. It's all very vague."

"Maybe because it's fake and they don't want to get tied to any specifics," Raymond butted in. "Makes it harder to keep your lies straight."

"No sir, that's not it at all. Thing is, they come from a glorious future. A future we gave them. This Marjorie? My own great-great-great, I don't know how many greats, but my granddaughter from hundreds of years from now in the future? She's a knockout, I mean a stunner. And her clothing is always so brightly colored and so elegant. She's in perfect health; she looks like she never missed a meal in her life; she's got a good dentist, I can tell you that, and her skin is absolute perfection. Not a pimple, not a wrinkle. Can't tell how old she is, but either she's young or else they don't have any such thing as getting old. And her voice is so perfect, too. She doesn't have a wheeze like most people. You know, asthma? Not at all, and she never even coughs, never a sneeze, not a trace of any respiratory illness. No TB, right? Walks around light as the air on her own two feet – no polio. No motor neuron disease. Eight out of ten people here in our own time have some one or another very discernible health issue, and you know, you can see sitting there acrost from me the scars on my nose, my forehead, from the melanomas. She ain't nothing like that. The ozone layer is shot? Not in her time! The air ain't fit to breathe? Not in her time! What I'm saying is, she's healthier and better looking than anybody today. Why is that? Because the future is so good. Because we gave her that good future. Because we took things in our own hands, and we made them better.

"But," Glenn said, raising his voice and speaking forcefully to preempt Raymond's next interjection, "you bring up any of the men... the men, now, the alpha male leaders, the men Christ himself anointed, like Trump, like Hawley, like DeSantis, like Kirsch... you start talking about any of them, and she goes real quiet, real fast. And you can see it in her look: She's ashamed. She's ashamed, Raymond, and why can that be? Because she's here trying to sabotage the things that those great man gave to us."

"What, you're a sexist now, Glenn?" Raymond laughed. "No props for the great women God inspired? Boebert? Taylor-Greene?"

"Watch it, my friend. God might have put His hand on those women you named, but think of all the others who... God almighty! Pelosi! Ocasio! No sir, if God has a plan for a woman, she steps up to carry out His will, and then she goes right on back home and doesn't say word in public after that. Never more. She stays put in the kitchen or in the nursery, where she belongs."

"And your wife," Raymond began.

"And my wife was the most Godliest woman of all," Glenn interrupted. "She was there for me all the time, and she was there for me when I started this podcast, and those of you listening now who listened back then, at the start, you remember she used to say something every now and then when I invited her to, and her words were never less than absolutely righteous. And that's another reason I believe this Marjorie is who she says she is. Marjorie looks like my Evaline, she sounds like her, she has the same laugh and the same way of smiling, and she loves those bright colors, like my Evaline. She come back in time to talk to me, I frankly and honestly think it's because I have a bigger part to play. And Raymond, I'll tell you what that part is: Marjorie talks all the time, not about her future, but our future, just a few months from now. We have been meeting for a year and I've seen it time and again, how she can't help but talk about the election. Now, I think she's hoping she can turn me from making a difference in that election this coming November."

"Nine months from now," Raymond scoffed. "What you're gonna go in just a few months?"

"I'll tell you what I'm gonna do, Raymond, I'll tell you. I'll be settin' right here, with the microphone stuck in my ear, and I'll be telling people what they need to know. Don't be apathetic! That beautiful future our great-grandkids are gonna have in the twenty-fourth, twenty-fifth century? It starts now. Today. This November. But it will unravel thanks to the lies and schemes of the ones who still stand in the shadows pulling the strings, pulling down the world we make for our children and our children's children and their children after them. I think Marjorie doesn't want to do evil things, but I think she's suspecting that she's being manipulated, and I understand, because it's hard. It's hard, Raymond. You remember in the Great Cleansing, how many people we knew, people even from our own families, even from our own churches who tried to pull us back? Put a bit in our teeth and pull back on us? You remember the treason of the people who kept telling about the Constitution at the very same time they was betraying the Constitution? All that talk about liberty for the sinners and a separation of church and state, not having a religion in our laws... all that poison, all those lies. You remember? And they were good people. Yes, Raymond, they were," Glenn said, raising his voice again. "They were misled. They died for it. We didn't have a choice. They were part of the disease. They had to be burned away to save this great country from Hell fire itself. And now the people of the future... the future we made possible... the future with a perfect climate, with perfect people, with machines we can't even understand how they work, they've gone and lost the thread. They don't understand how we made all that possible. Think they would have those machines if we really were the enemies of truth and facts and science, like the lib-fucks said we were? No, sir, no, we wouldn't. I mean, they wouldn't. But they're our children, Raymond, and we have to step up, and we have to save the future for them. The future we gave them. We have to protect it. Because the Evil One is still at it, and he will tear down everything we sacrificed for and built up."

"All this because some girl reminds you of your wife," Raymond said.

"And that's all the time we have," Glenn said, glaring at Raymond. "Be back here in two days for our Monday report. Until then, enjoy your Day of Rest, but remember – sin never sleeps, so neither can we. Stay morally awake!"

Glenn reached down to his controller and tapped a key.

"What that hell," he snapped at Raymond, who was pulling his microphone out of his ear and placing it into its carrycase charger. "You gotta talk about my wife like that?"

"I just mean," Raymond said, throwing Glenn a nasty grin and putting the carrycase charger into an inner pocket of his suit jacket, "this girl, this Marjorie, must be one spectacular piece of ass. She has got you so flummoxed!"

"Get the hell out of my house, you goddamn prick."

"Can I quote you?" Raymond's nasty grin didn't waver in the slightest.

"Out!"

***

As clear as the picture was getting, there was still a lot that Glenn didn't understand about who these people were and what they wanted. Yes, they were time travelers. He really did believe that. Yes, Marjorie was his own descendant – he truly believed that, as well. She wouldn't talk to him about politics, and certainly not the future, but Marjorie would discuss philosophy and economic theory and even history – history from Glenn's point of view – with a fluency and intelligence that he'd only ever seen in his Evaline.

More and more he'd see Evaline in certain ways that Marjorie would turn her head or look up at him from the corner of her eye, or how a smile would tremble, incipient, before bursting to life across her face.

When they met that May morning, Glenn had a question – an obvious question, he thought – on his mind.

"You won't tell me about the future, and you won't tell me even what you think about the past. I mean, right now and years afterwards. The election coming up, for instance. You talk about it like it's gonna make all the difference..."

"It will," Marjorie said.

"But you don't say how, and you don't say if your goal is to change that election, or what."

Marjorie shrugged and looked down at the table with pursed lips.

"And that's the look you give me every single time I ask about it," Glenn said, teasingly.

Marjorie looked up and him and resisted a smile until he sparked it to life by giving her a smile of his own.

"But I know," he said with a laugh, wagging a finger at her.

"Oh no, you don't," Marjorie said. "And you won't. I'm not here to spoil anything."

"But I can you see you have an opinion," Glenn told her.

"Let's just say neither me nor any of the other interviewers are here to shame or chide or preach to anyone," Marjorie said.

"I know. You just want to ask questions. Get a sense for our worldview."

"You remembered that word?" Marjorie asked, and she seemed genuinely surprised.

Glenn's frown superimposed itself onto his smile as he asked, "What, you think we don't have that word? Think you invented it?"

Marjorie shrugged, smiling.

"Look, I understand. You don't want to color my perceptions. Or maybe it's more like you don't want me to feel like I can't say certain things – you want to hear what I really believe. But I think it's unfair. I tell you everything, uncensored, because that's what you say you want. But you can't return the favor? That makes it hard to have a conversation."

Marjorie tilted her head. "That's the nature of the dialogue between different time periods. You understand that, right?"

"I do," Glenn said. "But I wonder: Why can't you just take me with you to the future? Not tell me anything about it, but just let me see it for myself? You don't think I'm gonna change things by seeing what's to come, do you? I probably won't even understand most of it."

"Oh, you'd understand," Marjorie said.

"And I bet it's beautiful," Glenn said.

Marjorie looked at the table, her lips pursed.

"Maybe it's not beautiful to you, but I bet it would be to me," Glenn added.

Marjorie didn't look up at him.

"Okay, look, at least tell me this. Why can't you? Why can't you tell me anything? Why can't you show me? It's easy for you, you come and go at will. It can't be that hard to bring someone from the here and now to your time."

"Actually, it is," Marjorie told him, looking up to meet his eyes.

"Why's that?"

"I have no idea. No one does. It's not something that shows up in the equations – but it's very much something that's in the reality of application."

"What is?"

"People from the past can't come forward into the future. In fact, nothing can. Nothing material."

"But you can. Or do you live here permanently now?" Glenn's forehead furrowed. That would change a lot of his thinking; it would be a fundamental shift in his assumptions if it turned out to be the case that Marjorie was stranded here, she and the others from the future sacrificing their lives in the perfect world centuries from now in order to pursue their academic interests.

"No," Marjorie said, shaking her head. "I can go back. But I can only go back to the moment I left – not one split second farther into the future. I mean, once I'm there, of course I go into the future one day at a time, the way we all travel into the future. But I can't, for example, return from the past to the future a day, or an hour, or a moment beyond the time I left. And you, I'm afraid, can't come into my future at all."

"I don't get it. Why not?"

Marjorie shrugged. "That's just how it is. It's the first principle of time travel – and we can't change it."

"You've tried?"

Marjorie shrugged again, her lips pursed.

"You've tried," Glenn said, settling for her silence but convinced he was right. "You've tried to bring people from my time forward into your time. And you can't. So you content yourselves with coming back here, instead."

Marjorie looked at him and he saw in her face that he'd put it accurately into words.

Glenn was about to ask another question, but he was shocked out of his mind when a black woman suddenly appeared at the door into the room, then crossed over to the table where they sat.

"Marjorie, you're going to have to file that report before you leave today," the woman said.

Marjorie smiled at her and nodded.

The black woman looked Glenn in the eye – in the eye! – and nodded to him, smiling... as if she had any right, as if she belonged there.

Then she turned and walked out of the room, her stride confident and even, Glenn thought, smug. Thinks she showed me, huh? he thought angrily.

Glenn fixed Marjorie with an outraged state. "What the hell was that?"

Marjorie seemed taken aback, then a look of comprehension came over her. "Oh. Oh, I forgot. You... I mean, in this time, she'd never..."

"We don't let them kind of people in our country no more," Glenn snapped. "It was too goddamn hard to get rid of them in the first place. Multicultural nonsense. All the colors. And the goddamn gay ones, too. So, did she come here with you? Is this some sort of invasion?"

"No," Marjorie told him. "She's here just for a few hours, like me. We came back together, along with the other volunteers doing interviews today."

"But all you volunteers are... are real people, right?"

"What?"

"You and all the volunteers, you're all white."

"Yes, of course. We know about this time in history, we know about the prejudices..."

"Prejudices? We didn't pre-judge anybody. We watched them live in filthy drug-ridden neighborhoods, killing each other, for the first two hundred fifty years of this great country, and then we had enough. Enough of the crime, the chaos! Oh, we had a hell of a time reclaiming this country for justice and morality, but we finally did it. Only, it looks like it didn't stick. They're back come the future, aren't they?"

"Glenn, I can't –"

"Can't explain yourself? Can't excuse yourself? You're goddamn right you can't. It's not possible! No one with a shred of sense or decency would let one of those into the room with her, or let them talk to her like that one talked to you – giving you orders..."

"Well, Glenn, she is my supervisor."

"Your supervisor?"

"More of a coordinator, really, for all of us. She –"

"Don't explain! I don't need to hear it." Glenn shoved himself to his feet and looked down as Marjorie in disgust. "I cannot believe this country fell back into its old ways, the ways that just didn't work. No wonder you're here asking all these questions. You're wondering where you went wrong."

Marjorie pushed herself to her feet in turn, with force equaling his own. There was a look of fury on her face that no pursed lips or demure stare at the table was going to contain. In the back of his mind, Glenn knew he was about hear what he'd been waiting more than a year to hear: The truth about these time travelers and their agenda.

"You want to know about the future? You motherfuckers wrecked it!" Marjorie hissed at him. "Want to know why we're here, what we're looking for from you? We want to understand what kind of excuses you told yourselves while the world was dying from your abuse and indifference. Oh, yeah, I know all about the stories you've invented about a perfect future... your great gift to us. I've heard your stupid podcast. Somehow, that piece of shit survived when most other media from this time didn't – at least a few episodes did, including the ones where you talk about me and spin your delusions about what it means if I don't fucking cough up a lung or if I wear nice clothes. You want to know about the perfect world you people gave us? The oceans: Dead. The farmland: Dead. The groundwater: Poisoned beyond use. The air: Hazy, hot, and getting hotter. You wanna know if the sky is still blue? The goddamn sky is almost black, that's how deep blue it is. That's from the job you did on the ozone, the way you ravaged the seas and the rainforests. You think I'm the picture of health? No sun damage to this perfect skin? I've lived underground my whole life, you fucking idiot! I'm in perfect health? Yeah, well, we don't eat the junk you do; we can't afford to. We produce the food we need, and that's what we eat. That's all we have. My nice clothes? Hemp and soy fiber! Byproducts of our agriculture... plus some scientific advances in dyes and 3D printing. Our clothes are easy and cheap to make because they have to be. We don't have sheep, so we don't have wool. We don't have cotton, so we don't have... well, we don't have cotton. Lucky us, we get to wear beautiful clothing, and it goes so well with our perfect skin and our lungs that have never... never!... taken a breath of the atmosphere outside our sub-cities. Know why? Because one breath would be enough to kill us. That's the goddamn glorious future you left us."

Glenn spun on his heel angrily and began to walk out of the room.

Marjorie stood with her fists on the table, leaning forward on her knuckles, shouting after him as he left: "And as for racial purity? I'm one-eight Black, asshole! Yeah! Your blood is mixed in my veins with the blood of people from Africa! Suck on that, you contaminated wad of fuck!"

***

"So that's the story of these people and where they came from and the lies they intend to tell us – the same climate hoax bullshit that the liberals tried to shove down our throats!" Glenn paused, grinding his teeth so loud that he realized the microphone was picking it up. He forced himself to stop. "And who's behind it? Who do you think? The same usual suspects, that's who. She even confessed it to me, after her midnight-black boss walked into the room, walked right into the room where I was sitting. I, I... folks, I don't know what kinda disease she might have put into the air, I don't know what kind of rot. But I'll tell you where the future fell short: My own great-great granddaughter is, she told me this, she told me that she's part black! You heard me right, America. You heard me! She's part black! I don't understand how; I don't know when they come back acrost our borders, when the next invasion takes place, but it's all gonna happen again, and it's no goddamn wonder that they're coming to the past, trying to derail the glorious future we want and we deserve for our children and their children and their children after them!

"So listen, America. There's an election coming up this fall. The primaries start in a month or so. And here are the candidates you have gotta put into office if you want to stop this ungodly invasion from the string pullers in the future..."

The 2036 election came at last, after months of rage-fueled eighteen-hour days. Glenn's podcast wasn't just providing him a livelihood; after that bombshell broadcast in May, the number of his listeners had skyrocketed. Suddenly, all of America was listening to him, and major platforms were looking to bring him in on a paid basis... a very well-paid basis.

Glenn's entire brand had been recast in the wake of that podcast, and it wasn't just his podcast but the political movement he jump-started: The Save the Future movement. The candidates he endorsed won; others, currying his favor, lined up to wear the red hats with SAVE THE FUTURE or SAFU printed across them.

That leaking fuckhole Raymond had tried to make fun of Glenn, calling his new brand SNAFU and mocking the idea of people from the future trying to subvert the election and, from there, rewrite history so that a white and pure America would slide into multi-colored multi-culturalist sin that much sooner than evidently it had in times to come.

But Glenn was a man possessed of a mission, and the Americans who heard his warning took heed. That future was never going to happen. If anything, the bright future that true patriots had forged for their country was going to be even brighter, and even more solidly secured.

Glenn quickly found that it was impossible to sustain the level of fervor he needed to keep working, or to slow down enough to get to sleep, without a few drinks, and maybe a few pills... prescription, of course, but he found his way to friendly doctors for what he needed. Uppers. Downers. Focus enhancers. Even, once or twice, entheogens – because he wanted a sense of God, a sense of the moral urgency of his quest.

It all kept him going, and he – single-handedly, he told himself – secured that bright future by helping usher in an electoral sweep.

2036. A pivotal year.

"I'll drink to that," he slurred, glass in hand on election night as, one after the other, every single one of his preferred candidates won their races.

***

It was two weeks after Inauguration Day that Glenn made his return to the Heritage Project. It was sure to be his last visit; the new government had already passed legislation banning the Heritage Project and ordering any and all time travelers to return to whence they had come, never to return on pain of immediate execution. Congress was scheduled to begin hearings and an investigation into the future people's present-day collaborators.

Justice was going to be served. Even better, President Kirsch had sent word that Glenn would be receiving the Medal of Freedom – the country's highest honor.

But the Heritage Project had sent word that before they closed up shop for good and retreated to the future by the mandated deadline, they wanted him back for one final interview.

Glenn had to admit to himself, if to no one else, that he was glad he'd be seeing Marjorie one last time. It pained him to know that his bloodline had been so profoundly sullied, but the girl herself couldn't be blamed. It wasn't her fault that the manipulators had tarnished her genetic purity, and the Satanic conspirators had colluded to confuse her mind and her morals.

Maybe, Glenn thought, he could say a few words of compassion to her... plant a few seeds that would, in time, take root and help guide her toward whatever degree of righteousness was possible for someone of her compromised lineage.

The same attendant as always ushered him into the building and then to the meeting room, though this time, Glenn noticed, she was accompanied by a surly-looking and well-armed guard. Was he from the future, too? There was something in the cast of his face, in the slightly dusky hue of his skin, in his dark brown eyes, that made Glenn think he, too, must be of mixed speciation: Human, and... and them.

The guard threw a withering, hate-filled glance back at Glenn as he followed the attendant out of the meeting room, confirming Glenn's hypothesis.

Glenn thought about some one or another of his descendants... man? Woman?... intermingling with... committing bestiality with... He shuddered, unable to complete the thought.

A new man had entered the room – a men even larger and surlier-looking than the guard had been. He was lily-white, however; his skin pale and his eyes a faded blue, though his hair – thatches of it, abundances of it on his cheeks and down his neck and tufting up from under his blue button-up shirt, a shirt that looked like a uniform, like the kind of shirt that police in old movies wore – his hair was a chestnut color, a little reddish. It looked dark against his pale skin.

The man crossed to the table and sat down. Glenn looked at him questioningly. Was Marjorie refusing to see him?

"I'm Soren," the man said. "I'm your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandson."

Glenn nodded. He had lost track after the fifth or sixth "great."

"I just want to say how sorry I am."

"About Marjorie?" Glenn asked, confused.

"Who?"

"About... about Marjorie. Where is she?"

The man shook his head. "I don't know who that is. But I was looking forward to our interviews, to finishing the research for my book."

"What book?"

"About you," Soren said. Then, quickly: "Sir."

"Me?"

"The man who saved the future." Soren smile shyly. It was a strange look on such an imposing figure. "That's the name of my book."

"But... but where's Marjorie? Won't she see me?" Glenn was surprised that he was so upset; his heart racing, sweat starting up under his arms and down his back.

"I really don't..."

"I have to see Marjorie. I have to... maybe not apologize, but... the last time I saw her, we... I mean, I was so shocked. I hope she'll understand. If someone like her can understand..."

"Um, sir... I'm sorry, but I don't know who that is. I was supposed to meet you for a series of interviews, to get to know your thoughts and attitudes directly from the source. For the book, I mean. But now, well, I guess we're not welcome in your time anymore. So we're only going to have this one session today. I don't really understand what happened. It was all supposed to be settled. The Heritage Project set it all up. Everyone's so excited about the first modern account in person with the man who saved the future... and it was so hard to make it happen, I mean it almost wasn't going to happen, because of the resource wars and the shortages and so many people are always so sick and everything. And also, I mean, it takes so much energy to send someone back in time. I mean, half the city has to remain without power for days at a time to charge the Vorenberg manifolds..."

Nothing this babbling idiot was saying made any sense at all, Finally, Glenn held up a hand. "Just tell me this," he said. "Do you have any black blood in you?"

"Black? No, sir... I mean, blood is red. Everyone knows that."

"But are you pure bred?"

"As opposed to what?"

"Do you have any heritage from inferior races in you?"

"What? You mean, am I a mixup? Hell, no! Of course not! I wouldn't be here now if my natal genetic scan showed anything like that. How would that even be possible? America conquered all the non-white countries and wiped out the vermin, just like you planned."

"Me?"

"Yes, when President Kirsch made you his... Oh, my god, I said too much. Shit! I wasn't supposed to say any of that. I was just... I'm just supposed to interview you, ask the questions they helped me write, and then record your answers. But if you're not feeling well...?"

Glenn was not, in fact, feeling well. He was realizing that in changing the present from whatever it had been, he had changed the future. It sounded like he was going to change it a lot more in years to come.

But he'd changed it so much that this young dolt – not Marjorie... smart, insightful Margorie... Marjorie, who was so much like his Evaline, in spite of her diseased blood – this useless idiot was now his descendant in the far future.

Marjorie was...

Glenn felt a knell of loss sound through him as he realized what he'd done.

She didn't exist.

He hadn't murdered her; he'd prevented her from ever being born.

The big, dumb dolt was still talking, worried about his book, worried because this was the one and only day he was going to be able to meet Glenn, and the clock was running, and he needed to start asking questions. Would Glenn mind if they started now? And the big dumb dolt produced a tiny device that looked like an earpiece microphone and said it could record seventy-two hours of thoughts and memories. All Glenn had to do would be to let his mind go to the recollections and thoughts that came naturally when he heard the questions...

And Glenn looked down at the table, his lips pursed, holding back a scream of sorrow.

And he looked across the room at the door, which the big dumb dolt had left half ajar.

And nowhere did he see his Evaline. And nowhere did he see a future that he could love.

Next week's interrogation of the strange and otherworldly takes us the most perilous journey of all: Spring break with a half-dozen college students, who take a shortcut through the California desert to the last place they expect: Almost a century in the past. However they've gotten there, will they ever be able to escape the embrace of a "Golden Age?"