According to their proposal, I should have reached the Earth’s past sometime 3.8 billion years ago, and the first time I heard this figure I burst out laughing: not even a billion years ago, at least to my knowledge, had anyone yet arrived. But I didn’t see her, first because the experience was taking place somewhere else entirely, and second because the time tachometer was scrolling its digits on the display far too fast to keep track of anything. At the appointed moment, I was launched and, although I knew that such a thing was almost impossible, I felt myself being pushed backward by the temporal velocity with which I was propelled. Scientists were still arguing after I brought them pictures of it evolving low overhead and sending up a thick trail of black smoke.
