The Assassination of President Cornwall

The fair was in full force; a cacophony of clanking chains followed by ecstatic screams mingled with the aromas of fried batter, grease, salt, smoke, and the manure of the farm exhibits, together cascading across the packed dirt paths and rusted stands that caused the fairgoers to wander almost aimlessly to see the source of every sensation. All except for Kyra.

Kyra, lagging behind her brothers and parents, could not pull her eyes from one man. There was some switch that had been flicked on deep inside of her that prevented her from looking away, but for the life of her she couldn’t ascertain why. On the surface he appeared perfectly normal; perhaps his clothes hung a bit too large on him, but nothing more. Nevertheless, when she looked upon this man and followed his movements through the swarming crowds at the fair, there was an inherent sense of wrong about him.

It would have put her more at ease if she could attribute the feeling to any suspicious behavior, but there were no such examples she could find. No, the sense of wrong she felt was a guttural sense of incongruence; this man’s very existence, very presence, was incorrect. In fact, the initial tipoff was not from sight, sound, or any other of her conventional senses but occurred when he passed about a foot behind her back. It was as if a large static wave, the fuzzy kind of feeling that came off the screen of her grandparents’ old bulky television set, but ten times as strong; so severely that she felt had been struck by lightning.

Against her better judgement, Kyra slipped away from her family, excusing herself to find a bathroom. She slowly made her way back to the vicinity of the man and began watching him. She found an empty stand that she hid most of herself behind and studied his movements, slowly realizing that they formed a pattern. Although he moved back and forth at odd intervals, crisscrossing through the crowd of people and then standing at different spots for a minute, he stayed in one small zone, like he was tethered to an invisible pole. What was even more odd is that Kyra found the pole.

The man always seemed to face the same direction when standing still, and the few times he didn't, he would steal frequent glances that same way. Based on this, with some quick approximation, the thing he seemed to be stalking was a large wooden board with a cartoon moose and cow painted on it on a sunny farm. Their faces were missing; a large hole was cut out of each. Right now, two kids were standing on a stool around the back and sticking their faces through each hole and grinning into their mom’s phone.

The man continued this for another few minutes, with Kyra observing him all the while. The feeling of wrongness never faded. He never got close enough to give her that awful sensation from before, for which she was more than thankful. After some time of the two of them continuing their respective prowling and observing, Kyra realized that her trip to the bathroom would very soon surpass believability, and so she decided to go back, but first she wanted to take a picture, if for no other reason than to prove she wasn’t crazy. She slipped her phone out and got it ready, waiting until the right moment when he was walking back towards her. She clicked and captured it, but the flash inadvertently went off.

She stood frozen; the man was looking right at her with a mixture of shock and rage. He looked back at the picture board before turning back to her as he broke into a sprint. She turned away and ran into the crowd, bobbing under gaps and through families as she tried to orient herself and go find her family. She didn’t dare look back but had no doubt he was in pursuit. She ran by several stands and shops, eventually finding an alley between two exhibition buildings. She ran until she hit a dead end, and turning around saw the man had just turned down the same path. Frantically, she tapped away on her phone and whipped around to face him.

“Stop right now, or I'll send this to my parents,” Kyra said with a courage that surprised her. She held out the picture of him queued to send to her family’s chat. The man stopped in his tracks, a couple feet away, and the horrible feeling washed over her again. The fuzziness crackled over her skin like it was going to split apart. She gritted her teeth and tried to lean away from without ceding any ground.

"Listen, kid,” he said, his voice staticky. “You don’t know what you’re doing; I need—"

“Get back, now!” she screamed. The man did, and there was just a faint tingling in Kyra’s nose and fingers.

“Alright, let’s calm down now.” His voice was normal.

“If the last thing I’m going to do with my life is send a picture of my killer to my parents, you can bet I will.” Her voice wasn’t deep, but it was stern and resolute, and it kept him at bay.

“Listen, kid, you’re not who I’m here to kill, but I need you to delete that photo.” He kept his hands up high; his brow was slick with sweat, but the look in his eyes suggested it was from panic, not from exertion, which only added to Kyra’s confidence.

“So you are a killer.”

A pained expression spread across his face. “Shit. Yes, technically, I haven’t yet, but I have my reasons to. Just delete the photo and I’ll explain.”

Kyra shook her head. “No way, we’re staying here while I call the cops; you can explain it to them.”

           “No no no, listen, if I don’t do this, then millions of people are going to get hurt.” This made Kyra pause.

“What do you mean?” she said, her thumb hovering over the ‘send’ button. “How is that possible? Talk.”

The man looked back over his shoulder, back from where they came, and then roughly pushed the heels of his hands into his forehead. "Fucking—fine, alright, but you have to listen, you have to believe me. My name is Marcus, and I'm from the future.”

Kyra couldn't help but laugh. “Seriously?” she snarked.

“I understand, but it's true. I'm from 74 years in the future; in my time Earth is ravaged by nuclear war, starvation, and plague, and I've been sent back to kill the man responsible for it all.”

“Uh huh, I'm sure.”

"Here, look at this.” Marcus reached into his jacket, and Kyra readied herself to hit send but stopped when he all he produced was a photo. “This is who I’ve been sent to eliminate.”

He took a step forward until Kyra reprimanded him to stay back. “Just toss it over.” She tried not to let the pain show.

“Fine, you can have it. I know it like the back of my hand anyways. That is future President of the United States Alexander Cornwall.”

Kyra looked at the photograph; it was old and faded, but it clearly showed a young kid, maybe 7 or 8 years old, smiling ear to ear through the same picture board cut-out Marcus had been watching. The kid had shaggy brown hair and his grin was missing a few teeth.

“You’re killing a kid?” Her hands started to tremble and chill spread through her bones.

“There are only a few dates where we knew exactly where and when he would be, and this was the only one we had before he was president. This is our best chance to get him.”

Kyra’s head was swimming. “No, there’s no way; you’re insane.”

“Look at the date on the back of the picture. What does it say?” Kyra flipped it over; written in neat handwriting was that day’s date and ‘Alex at the Gibbons Valley Fair.’

“So? You could've just written this yesterday. I’m not stupid.”

“No, I don’t think you are, so tell me, how did I fake the age of the photograph?” Kyra was wondering that herself but was hoping he would cave and admit he was lying before she had to face it. “That is one of our most precious artifacts, found in the ruins of a museum and safely guarded for a decade until we worked out the technology.”

“This could just be from decades ago, I’m sure that board has been kicking around since at least the 80’s.”

“Did they have 21st century mobile phones in the 80’s?” He nodded towards the photograph. Sure enough when Kyra looked over the picture, a balding man walking through the background was holding a red phone up to his ear.

“Okay, let’s say you’re from the future.” Kyra was laughing at herself now. “How come you’re still here? Shouldn’t the future you’re from already have been written over the moment you went back? Shouldn’t you not exist?”

Marcus shot another look over his shoulder. He was getting impatient. “I’m not sure, okay? They sent me back because it’s easier for a soldier to kill instead of a scientist, and I had the highest resistance to temporal effects. I don’t know if I’m going to blink out after I pull the trigger or if the world I’m from is going to be entirely different when I get back, but what I do know is that kid will be the death of countless millions of people and will plunge the Earth into a wasteland because of his bigotry and senseless wars for expansion. So if fixing that means I cease to exist, that’s fine with me.”

“Then why do you care if I have a picture of you?”

“That’s what they told me when I was sent back: impermanent traces are fine; people can see my face because memories will fade and distort, but permanent records of my presence here will fix themselves in the universe, and that can create an exponentially growing impact on the future. Once I do it, if I’m still around, I need to get somewhere private and pull myself back.”

Kyra wanted to throw up. Her head was light, and the air seemed to crawl into her lungs like molasses. Everything in her brain was telling her this was just a crazy person, maybe an escapee from a nuthouse, but there was that feeling; whatever was radiating off of him was still licking the closest parts of her, not to mention the dissonance that his very existence had. While she grappled with this internal turmoil, Marcus had run out of time.

“Listen, kid, I have to—"

“Kyra. My name is Kyra.”

“I have to go, Kyra; I’ve already risked too much being here so long. I don’t want to put all this on you, but you have to let me do this. I trust you to do the right thing. Like you said, you’re a smart kid.” He backed away towards the road and turned to leave.

“Is he really that bad?” Kyra blurted out, her voice wavering. “Is he really worth all of this?”

Marcus stopped at the mouth of the alley. He took a moment before turning around. “We’re saving the world, Kyra.” He walked away and disappeared into the crowd.

Kyra remained for some time. A hundred questions passed through her head that she wished had left her mouth. Why not just persuade Cornwall from politics? Why couldn’t you split his parents up? How could you build a time machine in a nuclear wasteland? How can you build a time machine in 74 years? How can you build a time machine, period? Could you just injure him? But all of them withered away unspoken. Her legs were jelly, but she found the strength to make them move.

She was wandering through the masses, staring at the little pop-up on her phone screen: DO YOU WANT TO DELETE THIS IMAGE? THIS ACTION CANNOT BE REVERSED. The YES and NO buttons stared back at her, each awaiting her decision. She wandered back to where her family was heading when she heard three loud pops off in the distance that reverberated throughout the fairground. There was a brief quiet before the murmur of shrieks and wails rippled through the crowds. Everyone scattered and fled in every direction, all except for Kyra. She continued her trudge to the front of the fair, with tears welling in her eyes.

A pair of frantic arms grabbed Kyra and pulled her into a hug filled with fear and relief. Kyra let herself fall deeper into her parent’s embrace, her brothers just behind them, and sobbed. She sobbed harder than she ever had before, even more than when she had broken her leg while skiing. She sobbed for the rest of the day, she sobbed until her chest hurt, she sobbed until her voice gave out, she sobbed until her tears stopped running, she sobbed until her body collapsed, and sobbed the same over many days over the following years.