It...really...works.

It...really...works.

I kept repeating this over and over again. It was not the traveling into the future part that surprised me so, that was just relatively advanced cryogenics. Rare, but not unheard of in the year 2027.

But traveling into the past - that was the stuff of dreams, and nightmares. And building off the work of Ronald Mallett and other brilliant scientists, I had created a machine that could do so. For 16 years I had been working on this machine. Since I was fresh out of high school! And it had taken so long, there had been so many bumps and pitfalls, and I had been put down by so many scientists as a complete fool. But now it was really real.

On the night of February 8th, 2027, I could not get to sleep. This did not bother me, because I had a plan. It would be the true test of both the cryogenics and the machine that could travel into the past.

I was going to travel into the future and kill my future self that lived 30 years in the future.

Now you may be thinking, why would I do such a thing? What did my future self ever do to me? And the answer is, nothing. It was an experiment, just an experiment. 30 years from now, I will be 64 years old, which in my opinion is more than old enough. And of all the ways to die, what would be cooler than to be killed by your past self? That would just be epic.

You may be wondering how I am going to find my future self. Well, that's easy. My future self is still me. I had it all arranged with myself. On the night of February 8th, 2057, I will sneak into the attic of this very house, sit down, and wait to be killed. Several things, of course, could go wrong. It could be the case that I will have already died by 2057.

I crept out of bed, down the stairs, and into my home laboratory. There were no test tubes, no hazmat signs, no unmarked pulsating crates. Just the time machine and a small, partially transparent cryogenics chamber.

I set the dial for 30 years, and before I could think of anything else that might make me change my mind, jumped into the chamber.

As soon as the chamber door closed, my body felt suddenly icy. And then, in less than a second, the chamber door opened again, and I stepped into the room I had just left.

It was definitely the same room - there was time machine, there was the lab, everything was pretty much the same as I had left it. It was night time, just like it had been when I had left it.

Then it occurred to me that there was a possibility that my future self would not want to be killed, that maybe he had for some reason changed his mind. It was a silly possibility, and even if it were the case, I had instructed my personal guards to make sure he ended up in that place at that time. And my personal guards were clever, strong, and could not be resisted.

I crept out of the lab and into the main basement. Everything in the house had begun to decay. There was moss growing on the walls, and the stairs were wet and rotting. There was a funky smell in the air, as if the place had been abandoned for years.

I tiptoed up the first flight of stairs, and then the second, each flight reaffirming my theory that the house had long-since been abandoned.

As I climbed the third flight of stairs, and the door to the attic came into view, I began to have my doubts about this plan. Maybe it was a bad idea to kill my future self. But the gun was in my hand, my mind was intent on the motive, and even though the gears of the train were beginning to grind, the train kept plowing forward, unable to stop.

I paused at the door to the attic. This was the moment. What would await me inside?

I opened the door. There was a chair in the attic, and sitting in the chair was a man. But he didn't look like me. He had his head down, his stringy black hair was down below his shoulders, and from what I could see of his face, it looked like it was carved out of wood, rigid and lined. It was very, very pale.

Maybe this wasn't me. Maybe I should just get out of here. I lifted my gun toward him and backed toward the door...and then he charged. Like a crazy animal, his black eyes haunted and demented, he lunged toward me, knocking me to the floor. The door to the attic collapsed, too rotten to stay there, and together we went tumbling down the stairs.

He held on to me tight, trying to get the gun out of my hands. Frantically, I fired the gun. It missed him. I fired again. A large red stain appeared in the man's shirt, and he let go of me, rolling to a stop on one of the stairs. I continued running, not daring to stop. I ran down the stairs, just hoping that the time machine was still in tact. I didn't look back. I didn't think about where I was going. I just wanted to get away from this demented horror house and back to my own time.

I frantically set up the time machine, closed my eyes, and counted to 13.

When I opened my eyes, I was back in my own time. The lights were turned on, and the only evidence that I had been in the future was the blood on my shirt.

I wandered into my house in a daze, thinking only of a hot bath, a good night's sleep, and the fact that I would never use this time machine again. Ever.

During the next year, the events of that night remained fresh in my mind, like a new cut. I went on with my daily life, not telling anyone about the time machine in my basement, not even my closest friends.

But then during the second year, the cut faded into a scar, and I began to confide with my closest friends about what happened that one night. We discussed it over beers, as I regaled them with the story of the crazy man who attacked me in my own attic.

Sometimes, I would go down to the basement to the cryogenic chamber, just so I could watch myself in that chamber, thoughtless and ageless. In the time since that incident had happened, I was already beginning to grow a couple gray hairs, but the version of me in that chamber did not age a bit.

I actually lived a pretty ordinary life as the years passed. I decided that science was not my passion, and that what I truly loved was actually cooking. I got married at the age of 38, had kids at the age of 39, and watched them grow into beautiful children.

But I did not forget about that night, and around once a month, I would sneak down into the basement and watch the version of me in the chamber lie there motionless. I decided not to tell my wife or kids about the secret that I held in my basement, and the basement became off limits due to an unfixable "gas leak".

Then one day, 8 years after the incident, I realized something. In 22 years, this house, that I kept so perfectly clean and tidy and beautiful, would be a decaying dump inhabited by a psychotic murderer. And that meant that something would happen to this house and it's inhabitants in the next 22 years. Something unavoidable.

Something set in stone.

I began to get nervous about the house over the next years, and made more frequent secret visits down to the basement to look at my younger motionless body. It wasn't as if these visits would do anything; they just reassured me. Although it was like a drug. Each time I took it, the effect became less and less potent, which made me want it even more.

In the winters, I huddled in front of the fire, worrying. In the summers, I huddled in front of the fire, worrying. My twin boys, who were both now ten, began to get worried. "What's wrong, daddy?" they would ask.

"Nothing, nothing," I would say, ushering them to bed. But the truth was that I was halfway in between 2027 and 2057, and that scared me.

On July 9th, 2049, the day started like any other day. I woke up, stretched, gave my wife a kiss, and jumped out of bed to begin a day of work at the restaurant I worked at. It was very hard work, but enjoyable.

I walked over to the mirror, got out my toothbrush, and was just about to squeeze toothpaste onto it when the figure in the mirror caught my attention.

It was definitely me. I had seen this person looking exactly the same last night. But it looked very different than the me in the cryogenic chamber. My hair was no longer deep caramel brown, but a dirty mix of brown, black, and gray. My eyes seemed dark and sunken from lack of sleep, and my face had a dozen noticeable wrinkles in it. This was to be expected, of course. I was 53 years old, and the wrinkles weren't the part that surprised me.

The part that surprised me was the fact that I recognized that face from somewhere other than the mirror and photographs. My face now had a wooden look, a jagged look. It was a look I recognized.

The person I had killed 19 years ago, or 11 years in the future, was me. And that meant that no matter what happened, I was destined to die.

Because it was all set in stone.

I gathered my family and took them into hiding. They repeatedly asked why, and I told them it was for my safety. My sons, who were 15 now, didn't take this for an answer, and demanded more information. I wouldn't give them any. My family spent several years in hiding, living in a house on the other side of the country, all of us having pseudonyms. I think on some level they knew it was for their own safety, but on the surface, there was only suspicion.

I began to have nightmares. I would awake in the middle of the night, screaming, calling out things that made no sense when I stopped to think about them.

Many of my basic functions stopped working. I could not do dishes, I could not cook, I could not do chores. It was all I could do to be good dads for my boys. Each day, my eyes got more sunken and soulless. I stopped cutting my hair; it was just too much work to go to the barber's. I barely left the house at all, and so my skin got more and more stiff and pale.

One day, my wife arrived at my doorstep with my twins, who were now adults, living in different parts of the state. "We're here to take you some place, dad," said one of my sons.

I actually welcomed the insane asylum with open arms. It wasn't as bad as it was made out to be, actually. There were some truly crazy people there, but there were also people with some memory problems, as well as people with some disorders that made modern society not a proper fit for them. The food was good there, the beds were comfy, the conversations were interesting, and best of all, I felt safe here, far away and sheltered from the house with the time machine and the chamber.

But that place still haunted me. And one day, 9 months before February 8th, 2057, the bars to the window broke down, and a robot burst in that I recognized as a robotic guard that had once worked for me. Helplessly, I was snatched by that robot and dragged off into the night.

Escaping from that robot was quite hard, but I eventually did it, and as quick as I could, booked a flight to Hong Kong. But when the plane landed, I realized that it was not Hong Kong that it was landing in. It was the same airport the plane had took off from.

That was when I remembered that I had wanted the guards to make sure I found myself in the attic on February 8th. I laughed. They were still following an order made thirty years ago.

Sure enough, when I walked into the terminal, there were 5 guards waiting for me. They escorted me off the premises, back to the house I had once lived in, where I was chained to a chair in the attic.

The night of the 8th came. I sat there, waiting for it to happen. The guards, for some reason, had forgotten to chain me up to the chair that night, so I was locked in the attic. And so when my past self came into the attic, my plan was to escape.

I heard footsteps walking up stairs. I braced myself. The door opened, and myself entered, looking all young and handsome. I gave an inaudible snarl. My brain calculated all the options.

My past self, pointed his gun at me. I tried to remember being in his position, but I couldn't, I was paralyzed with fear. Then I saw him put the gun down, then raise the gun back up, and I knew it was time to act.

I lunged at him, trying to get the gun. The old funky attic door collapsed, and we went tumbling down the stairs, me trying to get the gun. He shot at me. He missed. Then the last thought I had before blackout was that I was doomed. He was going to shoot me. It was all set in stone.

And then there was nothing.