The crackle of the campfire was the only thing that could be heard in the stillness of the hilltop. The rest of the valley was quiet, covered by the gentle night and a sea of stars above.
Two men sat at the campfire, both serene and silent. They stared into the flames as the tiredness of the hike melted away, resting and enjoying the moment until one of them spoke.
“Hey, Mel?”
“Yeah?”
“How long have we known each other?”
The other man pondered. “Fifteen years, give or take.”
“That’s right. And in these years, how many times have we come hikin’ on these trails up into remote mountains just to stay a while and leave?”
The other man pondered again. “I reckon a few dozen times or so.”
“Yeah, I reckon so, too. You never wondered why I insisted on doing all this?”
The other shrugged. “Figgered you for a keen outdoorsman, that’s all.”
“Aye, I guessed I’ve grown into one. But there’s more to it.” The man turned to his companion. “Mel, I’m from the future.”
If the other man was shocked or doubted these words, he kept it to himself. “Is that so?”
“Yep. I was born, will be born, in the year 2702, nearly eight centuries from now.”
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The partner just nodded. “What’s the future like?”
“Complicated. It’s just too much.”
“Is that why you came to this time?”
“Naw, my hand was forced. I got in bad with my corpo when netters hacked my account and made a deepfake pretending how I was dealin’ in illegal stim-meds on the side and I got terminated.”
“What’s all that mean?”
The man looked at the sky and shook his head with a smile. “Nothing no more.” He turned back to the other. “But because of that, I had no place to go and no job. No relations, no savings. And for people like me, in the year of our lord 2727, there’s one option more attractive than all others: time travel.”
The other man politely waited for the tale to continue.
“It’s a buncha eggheads who want to study the past but have only old tomes and faded documents to work with. Too little for all the questions they have. So they get people like me to hop back and find some answers.”
“And now yer going back to report?”
“Oh no. Time travel’s a one way ticket. There ain’t no going back for me, I’m here for good. That’s why it appeals only to the desperate, those who’ve got nothing to lose.”
“So how are you supposed to give them their answers?”
“I’ve got these lil metal capsules — they have ‘peculiar isotopic signatures’. Don’t ask me what that means, I just remember the words. I fill them with info using a little gizmo that finds patterns in π.”
