Apparently, I’m going to be famous.
I know this because I just received a visitor from the future who traveled all the way back in time to this very moment when I happened to be placing a semi-colon at the end of a line of code. He appeared out of nowhere in a rapid barrage of applause marvelling at my typing.
“What, of all of the actions I’ve performed thus far, makes this particular moment the most important,” I asked.
“You’ll find out in a week or two,” he replied. “I think. I’m bad with dates.”
To commemorate this apparently yet-to-be historical moment, he asked if he could take an image. I smiled and said cheese as he suddenly stabbed me in the thigh with what I had thought was a rather too needle-like camera.
“Ow,” I cried. “What the hell was that for?”
“I just took your image,” he said. “You see, in about 15 years some guy discovers that thought is not isolated just to the brain but is scattered throughout the cellular structure of the body. Therefore, I can take some of your DNA and reconstruct this very moment in a simulation that will not only let me see what you looked like, but also place me in your shoes so that I can experience precisely what you experienced at this great moment of creation. Here,” he said as he squirted my genetic material into a small glass and metal ball he pulled from his pocket, “Let me show you.”
He handed me the ball and I had the most amazing sense of de ja vu as I was taken back in time a whole 15 seconds to relive the moment when a strage time-travelling fan jabbed a needle into my thigh.
“Ow,” I cried.
“Yeah, I’ll crop that out when I get home.”
As I handed the ball back to him, he sheepishly asked, “Would you mind if I also got your signature?”
I looked around my desk. “Sure, do you have a pen?”
“Of course I have a penis,” he said. “But I’d prefer that you used yours.”
“No, not a penis, a — wait, what?”
“I asked for your signature,” he explained as he handed me a small plastic cup.
“OK. But if you don’t have a pen, how am I supposed to sign this?”
“Sign it?” He shot me the kind of look I would have expected if I had just exclaimed to him “Duck fingers!” Which is to say one of “WTF?”
“Yeah, you asked for my autograph.”
He thought about this, bewildered for a moment. Suddenly it came to him. “Oh, no no no… Sorry, no, I asked for your signature. Your genetic signature. I want you to deposit some of it in this cup.”
Now I was bewildered. “You want me to… in this cup? If I didn’t do it for the army, I sure as hell ain’t doing it for you. What kind of sicko freak are you?”
“Perhaps I should explain myself,” he explained. “You see, we have completely perfected all genetic engineering techniques in our time, hence the experience imaging chamber. I’d like some of your untainted genetic signature to, y’know, show my friends.”
“I’m really not into alternative lifestyles,” I said.
“No, no… I don’t plan on showing off the *actual* genetic material. Just its signature. You know, figure out which alleles are dominant, look for genetic diseases that may have contributed to the madness of your ancestors, find out what the progeny of you and some of my friends may have looked like – that sort of thing. Nothing creepy.”
“I’ll have to decline my signature,” I told him. “I think playing with the experience ball may give you some idea as to why.”
“Bummer. Well, Thanks for indulging me with this visit. I’ll let you get back to your vital work.”
“What, exactly, do I become famous for?” I asked him.
“I can’t tell you,” the traveller said. “Otherwise it may screw things up. And what you create is something wonderful, magical… the apex of culture for your time. That’s soemthing I just don’t want to jeopardize.”
With that, he left in a blinding flash that rattled my windows and knocked my Jenna Jameson bobblehead to the floor.
I turned back to my work writing the code that should soon become www.HotSouthernSluts.com and rubbing the sore spot on my thigh. Fucking futurazzi.