Turns out, time travel is surprisingly easy.
The part that took 27 years of my life was discovering how to harness the subatomic energy generated from oscillating neutrinos. Once I could do that, OK, yes, I had virtually unlimited energy and probably could have ushered the Earth into a new golden era, but I didn’t want to. Everyone on Earth in 2016 had pissed me off. I had better plans.
Harness the energy. Use my device to channel it, open a wormhole that connects to another at a time of my choosing, and then all I had to do was just… step through.
Goodbye, 2016. Goodbye, infuriating politicians. Goodbye, people walking into traffic while texting. Goodbye, reality shows. Goodbye, looming climate change. Goodbye, hideous tortured squalling they call music. Goodbye, all you freaks and morons and doomed people. I was taking my genius back to a simpler time, one that would appreciate me.
One step, a burst of light and I was… elsewhere. Elsewhen. Half a century and more back from chaos. The sky was clear and blue. People walked the streets with purpose and dignity. Everything looked so new. There was music in the air, coming from a radio in some store down the street, and it was jaunty and fun and had a melody and no bad words. Women were dressed demurely. Men were wearing hats.
I took a deep breath. Yes. This was when I was supposed to be.
Just one more check of my device to make sure the wormhole was in a fixed location, and–
“Oh my Lord! That poor man!”
“He just came out of nowhere and stepped right in front of my car! Did anyone see what happened?”
“He was looking down and poking at some sort of metal thing in his hand, wasn’t looking where he was going, I guess.”
“Moron.”