text: Hey, I'm a newbie to writing, and I want to try and improve. Here is a piece I started working on recently. If you have any suggestions on how to improve it, or my writing in general, it would be greatly appreciated. &#x200B; &#x200B; It had always been you. You stare proudly at the chrome-domed tube shining in front of you, wiping the grease off your calloused hands with a work rag before tossing it aside to where--you cared not. The gleaming brilliance stole your eye, and your arms placed themselves satisfied on your aching hips. The drooping bags under your eyes left dark shadows, set by the seeping light from the crack under the garage door. The sun had just rose, making this either the fourth or the fifth day that you had spent shut in, inhaling noxious fumes and metal shavings. The garage was a sty, an appropriate disarray to act as a habitat for the messy, unwashed being that was you. None of that matters. It is time for a test run. You pick up the pile of alumnimum coated clothes folded neatly on your work bench, unfurling it in your hands. You slip it on. A leg. The other. An arm. The other. Then, you carefully lift the spherical reflective visor off the table, and place it over your head. You recall the day that your destiny first called to you. You were eight years old, your mother holding on to your wrist tightly as you tore through the crowds of people surrounding the line up to the ride. This would have been a day you remembered fondly as being the first time you ever set foot in an amusement park--you still did remember it fondly, though for different reasons. The blur of motion settled as you fell into queue, growing ever more impatient. When it happened, it seemed like there should have been an explosion, or a crash, or a sound of some sort. Instead, it just appeared. A chrome tube, a fixture that definitely did not belong in this theme park, let alone this century. It opened up, and a figure in a silver suit walked out, with a reflective bubble over its head. Then, it went back in and disappeared. “A freak occurrence,” “a collective psychotic hallucination,” many different terms were thrown around. But you knew the truth. It was a sightseeing tour. *It* was looking through history. \*It’\*s own history. *Your* history. Your chapped lips open to the smacking sound of a dried tongue unsticking from the roof of a wrinkled mouth, but hydration is the furthest thing on your mind. You admire your handiwork from afar, your heart beating in a loving rhythm akin to parental love as you gaze over every small aspect: The brilliant shine and gleam of its reflective silver surface. The bubbled door and triple pane viewing window. The satisfying click of the square buttons on the main panel, pressing and depressing as the LED display illuminates: “-60 seconds” it reads, in chunky, blocked text. Of course, you were so entranced you hardly took notice of the small imperfections in your work. No, the cracked exterior, uneven sealing around the door, and the half-empty life preserve system did not worry you. This would work. It had to work. It is, after all, your destiny. Your hand trembles as you feel the cold metallic touch of the clutching door handle on your palm. You listen to the swoosh of whipping air as the inner vacuum ceases. Smoke billows out in dramatic puffs and clouds settling along the floor--only in your imagination, of course, because your invention had no reason to spontaneously combust. You step inside, and you feel as if you are entering a womb from which you will be rebirthed as the person you were always meant to be. The time traveler. Crouched down, your back arching to the contours of the tube, you click the door lock closed with your forefinger to start the machine, just as a thought enters your mind. It is a small, nagging thought. An intrusive, inconceivable thought. You try to shake it off, but as your surroundings rumble in flashes of multicolor lights, it forces itself on your mind’s eye: All those years ago, when the you--the one from the future--went back to the past, they saw you--as a child--and you saw them. But, that thought nagged, you had not seen your future-self sixty seconds ago. *Could something have gone wrong?* a part of you wondered, but it was a small, quiet part. Nothing could have possibly gone wrong. Your destiny would not allow it. The lights stopped, as did the trembling, and all went still. All went dark. It worked. But the light never came back. You peer out from the bubbled viewing window out into the infinite blackness, dotted only by pinpoint lights and a massive hurtling blue and green sphere whizzing past you. The Earth, leaving you adrift in the cold, random point of relative space. But you were not alone: your nose smushed against the triple pane glass covered in breathy fog, you see a chrome-domed tube. Then another. And another. Your time remnants, from the past, future, and present. A reminder of your follies. It was never you.