Someone knocked on the studio apartment's front door.

"Yes?" answered Derrick Smith, a 20-year-old doctoral candidate in electrical engineering.

"Derrick Smith?" asked a man standing beside another.

Derrick nodded.

"Come with us now." The man revealed a gun holstered in his pants.

"What have I done, and who are you?"

"You'll know soon enough …"

— — — —

They sat Derrick on a chair in an empty room with a bright lamp shining on his face.

"Mr. Smith, we're going to try a different approach this time," said a thin man wearing a white lab coat and thick glasses.

"What approach is that?"

"Instead of terminating our possessed clients, we'll try to convince you not to have children."

"But I have no plans …"

"Not yet, Mr. Smith, but you will. We believe we've figured out who the inventor is."

"Inventor of what?"

"They've been coming here to replace our wealthy clients."

"Who!?" Derrick demanded.

"The future people, Mr. Smith. There's an asteroid collision about to impact Earth in approximately 200 years."

"And what's that have to do with me?"

"We suspect the government pulled the space industry's funding in the future for some unknown reason, and they can't stop it. But an inventor, who we've determined through an interrogation of a replacement, is your progeny, develops time travel, and offers to send the highest bidders back in time, just short of the collision, to live out a full modern life."

"Why not warn them?"

"We keep trying to send secret messages, Mr. Smith, but apparently no one believes us … We can't risk exposing our organization to the general public. But that's not even the worst part of it."

"There's something worse than total annihilation?"

"Indeed, Mr. Smith, our wealthy clients are being targeted by an invasion of future people. You see, their method of time travel isn't physical. Instead, the consciousness is transferred and takes over the body of someone in the past."

"So how's stopping me from having children going to help save the world?"

"It's not Mr. Smith. Our clients know the world will end but not within their lifetime. They just want to live out their own lives to the fullest."