Just to warn you, this hasn't been edited in a long time (aka, several years), and I'm not entirely sure if this even is the edited version, but even the unedited version was good, and I couldn't be asked to check/recheck it, but I thought you all might enjoy it. :)

Mya

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“Are you serious? You want me to risk my life using that thing?” The fighterpilot asked the scientist skeptically.

“Why not? The space council approved of it’s design.”

“As long as it worked that is. This thing looks like a piece of thrown out trash.”

And how true he was, the scientist in his sparkling white lab suit had gotten the parts from the local discard bin, seeing as his funding wasn’t too good at the time being. The theory was sound though, even if this odd looking bracelet did look awful. The parts didn’t match, he admitted. Some were black, others blue and even a few white ones, but he knew all he needed to do was to convince the soon to be court-marshaled fighterpilot to be it’s first test subject. That wouldn’t be hard though, seeing as it would boost the admiral’s career.

“Krom?” The scientist asked tiredly. “Would I risk your life if I knew everything wouldn’t turn out okay? I’ve known you since you were a babe.”

“How many times do I have to tell you not to say my name in public?” The one called Krom answered, frantically looking around the room. “I could be killed if they knew I was the son of a rebel. Only one child was ever cursed with the name Krom Ironsides.”

“This isn’t public, this is my laboratory, no one’s here to hear me say your name. And your name isn’t a curse.” The scientist said calmly.

“To you maybe, but you aren’t blackmailed for it. Besides, the cameras could be anywhere, even in here. You know that.”

“Not here they wouldn’t. I have too many connections to the council.” He leaned close to Krom for the last sentence. “Even if they are evil.”

Krom then changed the subject back to the experiment at hand. He knew it was pointless to argue further, and time was running out. “I still say there’s some risk in this thing.” Krom said, looking over the strange bracelet/watch once more.

“What are you worried about? Your going to be court-marshaled anyway. The ones who watch those tapes already know who you are, besides, they will see your unquestionable bravery for being the first to go back in time.” The scientist leaned close once more. “And stop the takeover of the shadow creatures, leading to the corruption and takeover of the space council. That means your father wouldn’t have died in the rebellion, and you wouldn’t have been recruited to the fighterpilots to fight in the space war. You could stop the shadow creatures from even coming here, make them change their mind.”

“And how am I suppose to do that, Loren Kelly?” The one named Krom asked, using the name he knew the scientist hated.

“Well, you had to bring up the old name did you Krom? You knew that I’m the one that started the rebellion in the first place, and you also know that the fact doesn’t sit lightly with them. And your worried about your name getting you fired. I could get killed!” Kelly laughed sarcastically, raising his voice all the while, making his white mustache quiver, and his wig fall to the floor, which showed that his hair was actuality red, not white as most thought. So he picked up the wig angrily and put it on his head as he continued.

“Now look what you’ve done! You’ve gone and showed the blasted council that I’m a true rebel, red hair! All those with red hair were killed long ago!”

“Well, I thought you said the council wouldn’t dare put cameras in here?” Krom asked coolly. He knew how to dodge Kelly’s pretense, it just took a lot of patience.

“So, maybe they do have cameras in here. You know what the whole hair bit means, right? Well, it means I’ll have to go with you to escape their guns and torture chambers.”

Krom sighed. “All right, I might as well go. They’ll kill me for helping you escape, no matter how many shadow creatures I’ve killed.”

Dr. Kelly locked the door with a voice command. “Then change out of your uniform. Where we’re going that uniform will be mistaken for the enemy’s.”

“But we only have one enemy, the shadow creatures, and they don’t wear clothes.”

“Not in the days we’re going to. Back then earth wasn’t united. The enemy’s uniforms were blue, somewhat like the one your wearing now. Ours was red back then, so you better put this on.” Kelly then handed Krom a red jump suit. He noticed the bars of status hanging on the front hadn’t changed in all these years. It looked exactly like his blue one, he realized, only red with U.S.A. printed on the shoulder instead of U.W.C., or united world council. They controlled everything. But for how old the suit was it was almost spotless. It would have been very dusty though if they hadn’t put in the dust removers in all the compounds all over the world, for the suit was over 100 years old.

The scientist sighed as he reverently handed it over.

“This feels strange.” Krom said, putting it on. “What’s the material?”

“Cotton, the real thing, not this genetically engineered stuff. This stuff was much better.” He sighed again. “This used to be my uniform.”

Krom knew better than to say anything about the uniform being uncomfortable, or over a hundred years old. Kelly was only 45 or so, but he merely settled to ask another question that was on his mind. “This says U.S.A. on it, what is that?”

Another sigh escaped the scientist’s mouth as he changed into his own clothing. “The United States of America. It’s a country, I wouldn’t be able to describe the barriers to you though because you’ve never seen the ground, let alone the ocean. You wouldn’t know what I was talking about.”

“I have too seen the ground! What is this?”Krom asked pointing at the floor.

“Tile. What I meant was, you haven’t seen dirt before.”

“What’s that?”

Kelly laughed, lacing his leather boots and standing up.“You’ll find out soon enough.” Was all he said as he stood, wearing a flannel shirt and jeans. He looked strange next to the suit of the officer next to him. His wild curly white hair was a stark contrast to his companions black hair, combed nice, neat and short, the way the fighterpilot wanted it. As the scientist took off his wig and fake mustache it seemed that his real hair was even wilder than the wig, it seemed to double in size.

“Now you see why I don’t just dye it.”

“Die it?”

He shook his head at his friend’s naivete. “Never mind, let’s go.”

“Is there anything else I should know?”

“We’re headed for the middle of a battle!” The scientist yelled over the roar of the watch movement and the sudden banging on the door that signified that the tape in the hidden camera had been seen by the wrong people.

But by this time the small watch-like device on his hand was moving in a circular motion. A spherical portal of swirling gas had been created by the swirling watch head, and seemed to be pulling everything into it, except the two unseemly colleagues who were too heavy to be moved by it’s suction, so they ran into it and were immediately sucked up.

As soon as they landed, smashing into the ground, the scientist hid the watch as they turned towards the unfolding battle from the bushes they had landed in.

It amazed Krom, all the sparkling blueness on the ground that seemed to go on forever with it’s yellow orb sinking into the everlasting blueness, as if by magic.

At a sharp tap from Kelly he looked back towards the battle. He was astonished to find the battlefield littered with human bodies, and the two sides were both human! He hadn’t quite believed Kelly, back in the lab, when he had said that there was a time when humans battled each other. It seemed impossible that the human race would destroy itself to gain meaningless things like a piece of dirt, whatever that was. It was all too weird for the spacepilot, who had seen the shadow creatures do strange and truly impossible things, like passing through a solid ship, but this, this was beyond his grasp.

The battle was so primitive the fighterpilot almost laughed. These humans had strange weapons that fired what looked like metal, but metal was way too precious to waste as weapons! But then, he reminded himself, he was probably in the days before the metal shortages, but that would have to be at least sixty years ago, and from this scene it seemed more like a thousand.

But that was the least of his worries. The thing that bugged him was that he couldn’t figure out how Kelly could have known what year to go to, or how the uniform he was wearing could be Kelly’s, he had never seen it before today.

But the thought was forced out of his mind by Kelly’s sudden intake of breath, and a now pale Kelly muttering something about how the battle was going all wrong.

Krom looked at Kelly strangely for a moment before voicing his thoughts. “What do you mean? How could the battle be going wrong? How could you possibly know how it went? And even if you did, maybe you remembered it wrong.”

“Never mind how I know this, but I remember that we lost the battle because I tripped, triggering my gun and killing one of our guys. Everyone thought it was the enemy so they started shooting prematurely. I just realized, I’m not here at all!”

“Of course you aren’t. You never lived back in this time,” And at a sharp glance from Kelly he continued. “How could you? You’d have to be at least over a hundred.”

“Well, I’m technically 750 years old, but never mind that. We have more pressing matters on hand.” And he continued to look at the battle as though nothing had been said, when in actuality his feelings were quite the opposite. He had just told Krom his most deeply guarded secret, and Krom was bound to figure out he was part of the projects.

It took Krom less time than he expected to come up with that thought. After a brief moment of relative silence Krom made a very bold statement. “I didn’t realize any of the clones from the projects survived. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“Well, I didn’t want to scare you or anything, I know you were raised to believe that clones are evil, especially after you learned about the clone wars. You know, they changed a lot of information about it, like we were living in compounds even then, and that you had to worry about shadow creatures hiding behind every piece of grass.”

“Grass, what’s that?”

“What your standing on. Anyway, the only reason they have everyone living in the compounds now is because there were too many shadows for the shadow creatures to inhabit and hide in. Grass still exists today.”

“Really? No kidding?.”

“Yes, now will you stop asking dumb questions so we can watch the battle!”

“What’s so special about it?”

He shook his head. “I can’t believe you haven’t figured it out yet. This is the clone wars. The ones in blue are humans.”

“But you said that we’re in red and we’re winning.” Krom realized. “But it looks like the humans are loosing to me.”

“They are loosing. The clones have to win the battle so the shadow creatures will pass by our planet thinking that our world is too violent, and that there would be too many riots if they took over the world.”

“But that means the clones would take over the earth. The final battle of the clone wars was the only thing standing between the clones and world domination!”

He shrugged. “It would be a world without hunger, suffering or death. The clones were genetically engineered to be the best. It was evident that we would take over sometime as the stronger, dominant species. The humans would naturally survive. Well, a few at least, and of course they’d start a minute rebellion that would ultimately destroy their race. Even if it did happen in another dimension.”

“Okay, your starting to scare me now. Are we or aren’t we back in time?”

“Both, this is another dimension, and back in time. That’s how the bracelet works. But the thing is, once you use it you can never be sure if you’re back in your own time and dimension. Luckily we only need to use it once to make sure the clones take over this world.”

“Wait a moment, I just realized,” Krom said. “If you were a clone I would have seen a bar code on your chest, but I accidentally walked into you in the particle shower once, and you didn’t have one. Therefore you couldn’t have fought in this battle, unless you were immortal, an only shadow creatures that possess humans live that long!” He then pulled out a strange looking gun, made entirely of black plastic with a laser on top to aim with. “Luckily I brought my gun.” He said, pointing it at his life-long friend and shooting. Nothing happened, but after a moment a shadow could be seen leaving his friend.

Kelly whispered for one last time. “The shadow entered me as I was starting my work on time travel. I was trying to fight him the whole time, and I thought I was succeeding until we got here, but I didn’t realize how tight he was holding onto me.”

He sighed. “I’ll be gone soon, he’s taking me too, but I know what they are now. They aren’t aliens, they’re-” Then his eyes rolled back and another shadow left Kelly’s body.

Krom didn’t need the professor’s words to know what he was going to say, he already knew what they were. The shadows leaving Kelly, and his last words, only confirmed it. They were the spirits of the dead. The ones who had stayed were dead clones wanting revenge.

He couldn’t let this world fall to the same fate as his did, so he grabbed the bracelet/watch and ran into the middle of the field turning it on as he went.

“Stop!” He yelled running through the battle, and to his amazement they stopped completely and listened, so he continued. “You have to stop this, it will gain nothing but eternal wars. You can’t let what happened in my world to happen in yours. The clones took over, yes, but only their spirits did, and the system became corrupt. No one knows what grass or dirt is, or any other earthly things. I don’t even know what that bright yellow orb is!

You must make a compromise. Give the clones their freedom, and compromise on terms, just make sure you give them the rights of everyday citizens, and war can be avoided.

I came from the future, a bleak one at that. Metals are precious, the wars never end and the chaos presides over all. The human race, including the clones, are eating themselves up. Now I must return and help change things to the way they were. I just hope you settle this, if not for yourselves, then for the future.” At that he jumped into the sphere.

He landed in Kelly’s laboratory, relieved to be finally back home away from that nightmare. He looked around then and saw himself and Kelly looking back at him.

“Sorry, wrong dimension. But before I go I must tell you that the shadow creatures are really deceased clones that died in the clone wars. Stop the battle and the shadow creatures won’t take over. By the way, don’t ever stop looking for shadow creatures.” He used the watch then and went into time once more.

He ended up back in the laboratory. No one was there, so he went into the hall, relieved. But as the sight reached his eyes he stopped in his tracks and realized that he was somehow back in his own dimension, in the future.

There was garbage and scraps littering the halls. The shadow creatures were endlessly searching the halls for something.

He suddenly knew what it was they were searching for, there wasn’t a human in sight, he realized as they surrounded him, fighting to get close. He fired his weapon at them then to keep them away as he activated his watch.

He decided then that if it took him all eternity to find his own time and dimension he would, for that was the price he was willing to give to save his world.

Maybe it was fate, maybe it was destiny that led Krom Ironsides to becoming a trans-dimensional time traveler, and saver of worlds. The only certain thing is that he wasn’t seen in his time again.

Or was he?

The only real truth, the only thing that cannot be changed, is that only one from outside the time loop can change things. Only one from a parallel universe has any effect on the worlds they travel to.

Krom found that out at one world he visited, but that’s another story. So the question remains, did he or did he not see his own time again?

By himself he couldn’t do it, but who says he’s the only time traveler out there? Who says some time traveler didn’t start this whole mess in the first place to show him his destiny as saver of worlds? Who says that they won’t fix it in order to save him and his world? Who says this story wasn’t written to show them the truth? Who says it wasn’t you?

Just remember you were warned.

The author.

The author of what is up to you.