Tales From the Future, By Way of the Past

At long last, it was finished–and just in time! I looked out my window one last time at the approaching mob of crazed religious fundamentalists. With bombs strapped to their chests and jihad dripping off their lips, I watched with morbid fascination as they simultaneously did the work of Allah and the Unabomber, detonating their malicious cargo on buses, power lines, and even my local Dairy Mart. At the sight of my beer-source exploding, I frantically turned my attention back to my life’s work–my time machine–and began adjusting the controls. In the background, I could hear the liberal talk show host, who was holed up in the local radio station, berate his conservative colleague for even thinking about something so inhumane as nuking our fanatical opponents. Me, I had a better idea: I was going to nip this religion problem right in the bud.

Moments later–or thousands of years earlier, depending upon your perspective–I arrived in Earth’s distant past. Quickly, I set to work finding the earliest humans. It wasn’t hard. They were the only creatures in the forest saying “Ugh! Ugh!” and dancing around a fire.

I approached without caution, hoping to impress upon them my greatness and superiority by sheer confidence. For good measure, I pulled out my .45 and put several holes in the big one that seemed to be their leader. That put a stop to the “Ugh! Ugh!” pretty quick.

In no time at all, I took them from worshipping the sun and moon to worshipping me. I layed out a few simple commandments for them.

1. Don’t kill anyone unless you have a really good reason. I was going to ban killing altogether, but considering I had just perforated their leader, I didn’t want to get off on the same hypocritical foot as Yahweh.
2. Free love for all. Knowing how maladjusted I had become from lack of nookie, I wasn’t about to let the same fate befall others.
3. Time travel is expressly forbidden. I didn’t want some future generation time-traveling back and mucking up my hard work.

Satisfied that I had given My people a religion that even Chief Priest Tharg couldn’t blunder, I hopped back into my time machine and headed home.

Upon arriving, I found things exactly as I had left them. The streets were afire and my house was besieged. I immediately reset my time machine for one hundred years after my simple peaceful religion was founded.

Well, big surprise. Seems there was another group of primitive humans in the forest, and their god demanded human sacrifice. My people didn’t last a century. Hoping to make the best of my situation, I journeyed to 1960s America and joined a hippie commune, determined to get the most mileage possible out of free love…at least until my next time travel adventure.