I can’t let them turn Earth into potential drowned in sleep.

My name’s Mack. It fits a lot of eras. Just like my duds – boots, black pants, white shirt, black coat. It’s not hip – but explain sequins to a Sumerian.

I’m looking for a way for my present to not be bodies in sleep couches alive only virtually. It’s paradise – but nothing real happened in millennia.

I got up, found a nanofactory. I used blueprints two centuries old to make a time machine. Sure, we knew how – but who needs time travel when paradise is now? Simulated – and as dead as dead gets.

I’m trying to build a humanity that doesn’t live in dreams.

I’ve got blood on my hands. Life isn’t pretty. I was in a parachute in Lakehurst. I was on lifeboat #7. And I’m not sure I’m helping. Fear can fuel, or it can handcuff.

But I won’t just watch – that’s why it all collapses. Just watching.

I put my beak in to keep things from being too calm, too placid. I hope that someone will eventually be born in my time who can see the jail for what it is.