"If I had a time machine, then I would travel back to those days where someone had all the solutions in life."

-Anonymous

"We're all travelling time together, every day of our lives. All we can do is do our best and relish this remarkable ride."

-Quote from About Time

"If no one comes from the future to stop you, then how bad of a decision can it be?"

-Anonymous

"If you had the capability of time travel, what would you do with it?"

-Steven "Stevie" Vincenzo, 2000

***

Is it worth it, altering the fabric of time itself, just to save someone? Hopefully.

"Hey, dude look. Here's another one, 'If you had the capability of time travel, what would you do with it?'"

Ford laughs at the quote I just pointed out in one of the pseudoscience books we saw. He then started to point out something he found in a magazine he had just picked out,

"What do you think about this, Stevie? 'If I had a time machine, then I would travel back to those days where someone had all the solutions in life,' apparently, it was a quote from a famous movie about a gazillion decades ago," he exclaims while managing to hold in his chuckle.

Look, we're not skeptics or anything... ok, maybe just a little. But you can't really expect us to believe in such a thing as 'time travel', can you? It's the year 2000! Well, yeah, a new millennium and all that, but I doubt time travel will even be close to possible, at least until about another century at most.

"Hey, Earth to Stevie. Hello? Is anybody there?"

...

Ford shakes his hands in front of my face while I was spacing out.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm here," I tell him while swiping his hand away.

"Don't tell me your mind just went into another timeline or something?" he mockingly tells me.

I look down, "There's no way, Ford. This all sounds so impossible. There's no way, absolutely no way!"

I exclaim as I read a book about time travel with Ford in the Haggrew Local Library,

"Look at this, Ford, 'Time Travel is possible by travelling from two points in space-time.' Do you believe this pseudo-science? How is that even possible," I laugh at the quote.

"A wormhole? Maybe? But how will you even form a wormhole? Aren't wormholes unstable?" Ford questions.

He's right, you know.

A wormhole is very unstable according to some scientists in the 1960s.

But what is a 'wormhole' anyway? It's the curving of space-time and weighted upon by two masses towards each other to form a pathway connecting two ends.

That is how people can 'theoretically' time travel, given all the current information we have in this time period. Einstein entertained this idea so it must be true, right? But then again...

...

I smirk as I mock the words that appeared in my mind, "As if, good luck surviving that."

Ford stopped for a moment, "Hey, you might be onto something there, smartypants," he chuckles. I chuckle alongside him, "Yeah, yeah. There's no way to stabilize a wormhole though. Tampering with a black hole?

Do you perhaps wanna cause the end of the world itself?"

"Unless they can somehow make technology in this day and age to stabilize wormholes and project the pathways safely, then I might consider. But," we laugh at the words the second it ran out of my mouth, "in 2000? There's ABSOLUTELY no way!"

Ford kept laughing at the idea, "That's some theoretical alientech idea you got there, Stevie," he gestures jazz hands while wriggling his fingers mockingly, "it's a conspiiiiiracy!"

I laughed at his mocking gesture and proceeded to copy them,

"Ooooh, the government is hiding something, we're sOoOOo onto something."

We laugh even more until our gut busted.

I laughed too hard that I started to lean back on my chair really far and fell back head first onto the dirty carpeted floor of the library.

Ford loses it, laughing and pointing at me hysterically. I replied by laughing at myself for being such an idiot.

Everyone around our vicinity started shushing us so hard that they overpowered our laugh by more than twice the volume.

Wow, talk about ironic.

We stopped laughing altogether. I swear, the shushing felt like it took more than a hour as I just laid on the floor, rubbing my aching head from the fall. Ford was slowly looking around, gazing at all the people shushing at us.

Once the shushing finally stopped ringing our eardrums, Ford suddenly stood up from his chair and I stood up quicker than a person could blink, we started to apologize profusely to everyone, swore that we will be quiet and quickly sat back down.

Now, the awkward silence of the library sounds even more deafening than the shushing earlier, added that the embarrassment was slowly killing us inside.

When the awkwardness finally settled in, Ford suddenly whispered words to me, and I couldn't thank him enough for doing so. I really have to repay all the nice things he's ever done for me.

"Ah, best two months I've had since...forever! Glad you moved here, Stevie," Ford looked at me with genuine happiness as he pats my back. I felt the same, so I returned his gesture, "For real, man," I told Ford as I gave him a bro hug.

If someone here might be wondering what Ford and I were doing in the Haggrew Local Library considering that even though we are quite intellectual individuals, we don't read that much. Well, it's a pretty long story full of its very own ups, downs, tosses and turnarounds.

Let me start from the top, we were actually here in the library to find more information about a murder case. But why in a library out of all places?

Before I say any more, I'm obliged to give a little introduction about what the heck is happening.

My name is Steven Vincenzo, Stevie is what they call me. This rowdy guy accompanying me is Charles Mondt IV, he's preferably called Ford.

We're both 18 years of age as of now since I just had my birthday about five days ago. We currently live in a neighborhood called Izzaya which is inside a city called Haggrew.

Living in this city for the past two months had been a blast, and it's all thanks to this guy, Ford. He was the reason I didn't go through the "shy" phase of moving into a new environment, mostly because we stuck with each other the whole time.

We couldn't really have it any other way, because frankly, there was no other way. We just had each other's company in the past two months, and we had each other's backs.

If you couldn't point it out already, I'm not originally from here. I was born and grew up in the Philippines, a small archipelago in the Southeast Asia. Now, before I get all nationalistic and talk about the Philippines and its remarkable history, let's move on.

Even if I was a Filipino resident, born and raised, I'm not actually full-blooded. I'm a half-Filipino, fourth-Italian, and fourth-American. It's actually easily distinguishable from my name, Steven Vincenzo, just Stevie is fine though.

My father, Tony, was actually an Italian-American man, he moved to the Philippines for some unknown reason.

He met my Filipino mom, Judy, who was a doctor that, as I've heard, nursed his injuries one day. They eventually fell in love and had me on the 13th of November.

Growing up, my father was mostly absent, only appearing every once a month due to his job. He couldn't even be there for his famiglia at most times.

That was also one of the reasons why I was worried about the time I heard about the great migration to the US because this ultimately meant that he would eventually spend even lesser time with me and my mom.

Here's how it all happened, it was the 18th of September, 2000.

~~~

Mom was cooking breakfast one morning when suddenly...

A knock on the front door came.

"Stevie, be a dear and check who it is for me, will you?"

I complied with my mother's request with a nod as I stood up and walked to the door.

I opened it and a man in a suit and sunglasses stood at the front porch of our house.

"Uh, yes? What do you want?" I asked the mysterious man.

With no words spoken, he hands me a letter and leaves. I watched him step inside his black Chevrolet Corvette and drive off before coming back in.

I unintentionally slammed the door hard, which made my mother worry.

"Who was that? Someone that had upset you, Stevie?"

I nervously smiled, "Uh no, I just accidentally slammed the door."

She calmed down before asking about the letter.

"Some silent man in a suit gave it to me," I told her.

I hand her the letter.

She looked shocked...

as she opened and read it.