text: It was pitch black on that back country road that night, the car was almost out of gas, and a baby who he knew would never know fame nor success nor love was crying in the passenger seat. You wouldn’t have known it at first sight - at one year old, she already sprouted a mass of jet black curls that spilled down her head and a tendency to grasp, squirm, experiment, escape and cause trouble that you would not have known would alienate and drive away any adult that would have otherwise helped her in life, were you not told. The politically wise would have guessed the truth at the sight of the caramel-colored skin that would, in no small part, mark her fate. You’d have really known it as you saw her claw at him. He’d have been sick of her shit a long time ago if it wasn’t for the job. And of course, he’d have to pick *this* road. A grand total of forty-five miles away from anybody else, the shoulders overrun with weeds and grass and brush, and the only illumination at his disposal of course being the fucking moon, *this* was the safest route, and the tank was running on empty. He couldn’t even risk turning on his emergency headlights for fear of discovery, even out here. He pulled down a wooded dirt road and stopped the car. And it was there, shielded from the harsh cold light of the moon by silhouettes of maples and oaks, enveloped and wrapped in the thick lush growth of early summer, that the fucking baby finally, *finally* stopped crying. The lone pink barrette donning her hair had come loose; the other one was lost in the aftermath of her fit. Her black, rhinestone-endowed tee was soaked in drool and sweat and tears. He was fairly certain she had soiled her pants. With each tiny breath, she turned to and fro, examining her surroundings with the kind of trepidation you would normally expect to see in someone decades her senior. He could see her body shaking - feel her tiny fingernails pinching his flesh, even still - and was thankful that at least for now, she was quiet. Each second of the first attempt in her life to regain her composure was followed with a hiccup, or a sniffle. She pushed her mop of curls away from her face with hands that in three decades' time he knew would kill millions. And she looked up at him with large, soft, puffy dark eyes that he knew, had she been born in better days, would have melted hearts. Her cheeks were slick with her tears. Her grip was loosening. His hands were slick with his sweat, and with blood. He wouldn’t be able to deal with her like this. He wouldn’t even be able to hold the knife. Actually getting a hold of the kid in the first place had been a fucking nightmare. Her father was every bit as monstrously violent and ruthless as she alluded to in her final writing now dubbed The Last Manifesto. His neck still hurt from her father’s stubby, steely grip - he understood now why she hated the motherfucker so much. And speaking of mothers, it was strange to him how despite clearly knowing what he had come to do, that the baby’s mother didn’t do anything to stop him. She had cowered, and she had begged, and she had cried, sure, but her actions, her every moment up to her last, were consumed by this grey, tepid resignation that he was certain was the root of her apathy as described in The Last Manifesto. It was in those ten decisive minutes that led up to this that he discovered for himself why it was his boss made him read the fucking thing over and over again, not just to memorize it but to truly absorb it, to embrace it. He looked at the baby - material and social conditions at this point in the past really were just as bizarre and horrifying as she had described. And for all of the pure shadowed night and clean air and lush growth around them, he couldn’t understand why. That house of theirs was fucking loaded. What had possessed her parents to become such monsters? The Last Manifesto had briefly mentioned a brother and spoke at length about a sister of hers who played an integral role in her path to vengeance, domination and destruction. He supposed he - and his knife - had managed to get to them before the sibling's conception. He saw no sign of the elder brother when he infiltrated the house. Four years old, and blonde, and completely unmanageable from what he could gather from historical records, her brother would likely spend his life marked by the trauma that would guarantee everyone else a lengthy and prosperous existence, as miserable as it may be for him personally. And that was the only comfort he could take as he pushed down his seat, shook his hand away and dug around the back, looking first for a cloth to wipe his hands and then for the knife. It was only when he pushed the seat back up two minutes later that he had noticed her watching him and she had started whimpering. Her earlier attempts to dig into his flesh stung throughout his hand, his arm really. Little droplets of blood trailed down his pale, hairy skin. It didn’t matter though; he’d just patch himself up after the job was done, but in the present moment, there was nothing he could do to stop that *whimpering.* It was a helpless, squealing, pathetic equivalent of begging from the baby, begging that his boss and his people had yearned, struggled, and spent years fighting to hear, yet now, in a moment that for anyone else from his time would have been a cathartic and magnanimous triumph, he just felt so... hollow. Unsteady. Not right. The inside of the car was hot, stiflingly so. It was only now that he had noticed the thick pocket of air his faded fatigues were holding in. The thick heat in the air sat heavy in his lungs with every breath. He flexed his toes - they were squished tight in his worn black boots and the laces were tied so tight that he could feel a very particular cramp from his left ring toe start to flare up. He could feel his M9 poking at his backside. His grip on his Ontario MK3 Navy issued knife was slick, not with the blood from the first half of the job, but with his sweat. The air in this car was like home, too much like home. In his time, the average temperature ranged from around 65F in the wintertime, if they were lucky, to on average 115F in the summer, and this was up in the mountains. The humidity permeated the air so utterly and completely that it would leave his skin clammy and glistening during training exercises. His boss, a tiny, steely woman with obsidian eyes would give you a look that would pierce you in very particular and very nasty ways if she caught you buckling even slightly under the burning weight of the air. She purposefully trained him for this mission in that shit, in her own words, to make him appreciate. He fucking hated it. He fucking hated every inch of her short, scrawny, bronze-skinned little ass every time she would make him do it. But the first thing he noticed when he stepped through the portal at the start of the mission was the soothing cool breeze in the evening air, and that was when he realized why she did that. He’d never known the wind to bring relief. In his time, it brought destruction and radiation and misery, all thanks to the tiny baby sitting next to him, whimpering. The first loving, icy lick of the stuff already had him addicted. That was what he was here to fight for. To kill for. The job was supposed to be simple, a quick in-and-out. Portal jump to June 15 1987 7:04 PM, capture the target, eliminate any and all witnesses, eliminate the target, meet at rendezvous point at exactly 11:24 PM, portal jump back home, and hopefully reappear in a better time where all he would be is a stranger to the people he saved. A time where the land was still green and pure and not seared black and grey by plasma blasts and nuclear fire. A time that the baby sitting next to him, whimpering, would never get to see or enjoy or appreciate, because of the actions of the maniacs in that house with her, and the choices she would make in kind. She was a cute little thing, or as cute as a terrified, traumatized, stinking, whimpering pile of fat and curls and flesh could possibly be, and it was at that moment that the weight of his knife pulled his hand downward. He rolled down the driver’s side window. His neck was lovingly kissed and stroked by a breeze the other grunts back home would never get to feel, and the little bits of it that made it past his large and imposing frame made the kid sigh a soft sigh of, relief, he guessed? At least now she finally shut up, if only for a second. Now came the fucking cooing. He hung his head down and an exasperated sigh pushed past his lips. His boss would’ve been ashamed of him to see him like this. He could already imagine her putting a hand to her greyed, thick hair and shaking her head - and then glaring at him. On September 15th 2026, the baby cooing next to him would make the world burn in nuclear fire, and according to his boss and The Last Manifesto, that burning was only about 53% as intense and all-consuming as the burning she felt every day as a result of the irreversible psychological damage brought upon her by her family and by the New American Empire that subjugated her. His boss made him read The Last Manifesto over and over and over again, not to memorize it, but to truly *absorb* it, to *embrace* it. It was only as he looked upon the baby as she played with her tiny blood-stained sneakers, that he realized that his boss didn’t just do this to prime his mind against the inevitable guilt of murdering an entire family that would have hung on his mind regardless of the good it would do. It was something particular about the baby’s big, soft, dark eyes - maybe it was the full moon shining from the roof window downward, he didn’t know - but the light sparked a hint of sharpness in them, a hint of obsidian. And the boss’s greyed, thick hair, though perpetually tied in a bun as per Coalition of Humanity regs, would sometimes betray the barest hint of a curl. Per his training, he was required to study the history of the New American Empire and the height of American civilization from the 1980s, to the start of it’s downfall in the early 2000s, and the rampage started in the early 2020s by the little baby next to him, who had some-fucking-how managed to unlock her seat-belt, that would consign humanity to a fate as horrific as it was indelible - at least until his boss managed to rise in the ranks. Some-fucking-how, that bitch had managed to rise from lowly grunt to petty officer to chief scientist in the space of only three years, and in the twenty-five years since the destruction of the biosphere from the nuclear fire, she had managed to somehow, some way, build a fucking time machine. A portal, she had called it. It was she who proposed its construction as the only way to undo the massive influx of radiation and irreversible runaway climate change triggered by the rampage that would otherwise doom all of humanity to extinction. It was she who had proposed changing the past, and undoing the bearer of all of this destruction, before she could undo everyone else. It was she who had purposefully chosen *him* for the most sensitive and most important mission in all of human history - and it was *she* who had forced him to read The Last Fucking Manifesto over and over and over again - sometimes forcefully, sometimes balefully - not just to memorize it but to truly *absorb* it, to *embrace* it. And now he understood why. The baby was crawling into his lap now, using his thigh as a stepping stool as she tried, in her own haphazard infantile way, to grab his wife-beater and pull herself up. The baby was likely already deeply traumatized. The baby was an orphan now. The baby was filthy. But he’d be damned if he’d let his boss down, and he’d be damned if he’d let her grow up to bring about the end of all life on this planet. What he didn’t know was whether his boss had actually anticipated him doing what he did next. He took hold of the baby and popped the car door open. He stepped out into the deliciously cool night air, and as the baby snuggled into his chest, he wondered how much of that was due to the chill air and how much of it was due to the fact that she was likely unused to gentle treatment given in earnest. He checked the watch on his wrist his boss was reaching for as he started walking. It was already 11:15 PM. There was no way in hell he’d make it to the rendezvous point, but he didn’t care. He knew there would be a better time - he’d make sure of it. And he’d live out that better time with his boss now, not just to experience it but to truly *absorb* it. To *embrace* it. And he’d make sure his boss could, too.