Bull Moose was originally written in 2017, and now updated for your reading pleasure. Please enjoy.
April 1921
Theodore Roosevelt realized the moment he woke up that he was dying.
His coughs had been getting worse, and his heart pained him every now and again, but today was different– he felt the pains in his body, his entire being, and he had not yet even stood up.
Roosevelt had become the twenty-ninth President of the United States, after a decade’s absence in the office. The country was nearly ruined by Woodrow Wilson’s tumultuous two terms, tumbling toward termination until old Teddy saved the country with naught but his words.
He had been in office less than a month when the sickness started.
Roosevelt called for his servants and they hoisted him out the bed. He felt so weak, so frail… his formerly-bulky build, the muscles and fat covering his body, were nearly gone. He had grown too small for his clothes and his mustache had turned thin and gray.
This was the man who was shot by a madman and gave a speech afterwards. This was a man who went on a safari to Africa, hunted wild beasts that could kill a man in a pounce. This was not a man who needed to be escorted to the bathroom for his morning bath.
It was humiliating.
Roosevelt merely eked out a victory last November against Wilson, despite the latter’s deep unpopularity; it was up to these four years for him to remake his legacy, to prove that he could be the President he always wanted to be. He could not disappoint the American people again.
It would have all gone so smoothly, except for this damn sickness…
He was going to die in office, he already knew it.
He would become one of those Presidents, passing away in the White House and letting his successor overshadow his legacy. He would know; he did that himself to President McKinley. But his Vice President was puny; Robert La Follette was a vocal man and a good speaker, but he was simply not fit to control the nation. It would ruin Roosevelt’s last vestiges of a legacy to let a man like that wipe everything away.
His servants helped him put his suit and jacket on, and he began towards the Oval Office, ready to attempt a work day. The past week had been unsuccessful in this regard; he had spent most of his time coughing up mucus in blood in the bathroom.
What was this?
Why was this?
Roosevelt entered the Oval Office, shuffling with soft steps as he aimed to reach his seat, if he could manage it today. There were bills to sign, memos to pen. It was a must to accomplish something today.
His vision was so blurry and out-of-focus. Why couldn’t he see?
Wait… he had forgotten his glasses in his bedroom.
With a wheeze, he turned around and returned to pick up his–
There was a man in his bedroom holding some sort of large white contraption at his back, frozen in place as Roosevelt stared at him. And there were two women behind him.
“Fucking shit!” one of the women shouted.
Years in the Future (but not many)…
Chad entered the Temporal Management Lounge wearing a scowl on his face. Aisha and Doll, his two assistants, were already suited up in their time travel gear, but he hadn’t even begun to work out how this day was going to go.
Ugh…
His hangover pulsed over him.
Doll and Aisha were currently arguing over a sticky-note that Aisha put on the fridge that read, “Shutting the door prevents the food from going bad! Thanks! :)”
“Why don’t you just punch me in the face if that’s how you feel about it?” Doll asked with a growl.
“I’m not saying you did it, it was just a reminder to all of us,” Aisha said.
“Whatever.” Doll went over to the couch and plopped down. She pulled out a historical fiction novel about Chinese explorer Zheng He and ignored the other two in the room.
Aisha turned to Chad. “Well, aren’t you getting ready?”
“Sorry, I’ll do it soon…”
Ugh, his head hurt.
“I don’t want to be your mother, but you have to stop drinking on nights before we go time traveling.”
“Then… don’t be my mother.”
“I won’t if you just put on your damn outfit.”
Geez. He just wanted to go one day without getting whined at. “Oh, might as well tell you, I’m on probation now,” Chad mumbled. His head was throbbing. “My uncle told me if I travel back in time and mess anything up again, he’s going to put his foot so far up my ass it’ll launch me into orbit. So… I really don’t think I should go, maybe.” He really just wanted to lay down on the couch.
Aisha rolled her eyes. “We’re not allowed to go without our ‘team supervisor’ and I’m not missing the temporal window again because you got wine-drunk watching romcoms again,” she told him. “Just keep your dick in your pants and we’ll be fine.”
“Listen, you know I… I didn’t do anything wrong. It’s those stupid guys up at HR who just make all these–”
Doll looked up from her book and butted in, adding, “Even if having sex with some random woman in 4 BC didn’t drastically affect the timeline, you could have brought some horrible diseases with you that we just don’t have a cure for today. You could have caused a global epidemic.”
Chad didn’t have the energy to argue with these women, not today.
“Is the time machine set-up?” he asked. “Did you send back the temporal distortions?”
“Two hours ago,” Aisha said. “We need to enter. Now.”
It was a bit too much for Chad to care to learn about, but time travel was a recent and very important phenomenon for human development. After a rare new element known as unobtanium was discovered, scientists discovered that they could send faint frequencies into the past–temporal distortions as they were called–and affect the timeline by changing small events.
It proved pretty dangerous for humanity, though. One careless bullet sent back by a rogue scientist to the Battle of Sedan got Napoleon III captured, leading to the rise of the German Empire, and… well, a lot of stuff happened because of that.
Finally, scientists learned how to “cut off” these temporal distortions, severing them from our timeline like blood clotting to fill a wound. The nature of time was elastic, working like a rubber band stretched out ever-further. When a large-scale event was changed, scientists simply used unobtainium to reset the signals they sent, erasing them from ever having happened; it was like snapping a rubber band back into its natural state.
Thanks to this, scientists could now themselves travel back through time and space to observe events, viewing historical events in-person and seeing how alternate realities could really play back, all without hurting anything. Each trip, they were given a few hours to visit the past; when their unobtanium ran low, they would merely have to return to the present and turn off their devices. However, if the time travelers were careless, or if they stayed too long without resetting the signals, it could destroy everything they’d ever worked for. Because of that, the entire act of time travel was a very restricted and somewhat-secretive process.
Chad, Aisha, and Doll worked for a movie production studio, BlythCorp. Due to popular demand, this studio in recent years had begun to focus on creating historically-accurate alternate history films by using footage from time travel excursions as reference. Films such as JFK Lives! and We Are All Dinosaurs were incredibly popular and hugely-profitable.
Chad wanted to become an executive at BlythCorp one day, following in the footsteps of his uncle, the CCO. However, he had run into a few instances of trouble, though the HR Department was vastly overblowing them. A few stolen artifacts, a couple hook-ups here and there… it was nothing serious.
He would make it up to his uncle this time.
“What’s on the time menu today, anyway?” Chad asked.
Doll finished her book, bending the spine and laying it face-down on the table. She walked up to the temporal viewing screen and flicked on a series of old news reels and still images of President Theodore Roosevelt. “There’s some writers trying to make a comedy about Roosevelt becoming President again and being a hunter and such, so we’re supposed to go back to this timeline where he really did win a third term.”
“Roosevelt? Yes!” Chad exclaimed. “He’s the most badass President ever. One time he got shot and gave a speech afterwards. I told my uncle we should do a thing on him.”
Doll shrugged.
“So give me the historical context,” he said. “That’s what you’re here for. What are we changing?”
Doll sighed deeply. “An American President of the old Republican Party, a very popular one because of his charisma and macho man image. He became President after William McKinley was assassinated in 1901 and then served until 1909. He attempted to run for President again in 1912 under a brand-new Bull Moose Party after disagreements with President Taft, but lost out to Woodrow Wilson. It was rumored he planned to try again in 1920, but died before he could try.” Chad really couldn’t care less about the history lessons. That’s what Doll and Aisha were there for. He just wanted to see a mustached man take down a tiger with his bare hands. “We sent back a cold virus into his soup one morning. He took ill and decided not to go on his final safari to Africa, where in our timeline he caught malaria that weakened and eventually killed him. He remained healthy for several years afterwards, as far as we know.”
Chad could never understand how these things worked, but he was paid to do location scouting, not to ponder scientific calculations. He took his temporal gear out of his locker and put on the suit. These suits came with a large backpack that allowed them to travel back far into the past and held any equipment they may need, including solar-powered computers and body cameras, the latter of which was essential for the film preproduction process since it captured every moment in detail. It was all necessary, but as they were painted a bland white and incredibly bulky, they looked extremely unfashionable.
“I’m ready,” he told the others. “Let’s go.”
“Since Mister Alcoholic over here dawdled our time away,” Aisha says. “We only have three hours to spend before we have to return to the present. Let’s make the most of it.”
They activated their time travel backpacks and blinked out of existence.
April 1921
Roosevelt couldn’t believe his eyes. As blurry as they were, he could plainly see three clear criminals in his bedroom, attempting to thief away his personal belongings. How had they made it past security? Those imbeciles at the Secret Service were never good at protecting him.
One of the women was Black, something that would cause a national scandal if the public ever found out. A Black woman in the White House? Roosevelt remembered the outrage after he invited Booker T. Washington to dinner. He did not want to go through that mess again.
“Chad!” one of the women, the lighter-skinned of the two, shouted. “I told you we had to go, and you just HAD to get those fucking glasses.”
The man, presumably the “Chad” they were talking about, was frozen in place staring at Roosevelt, his glasses in hand.
“Well don’t just stand there,” the woman continued to complain. “Turn on your backpack and let’s go!”
No. They were not going to escape, whoever they were. Roosevelt had enough of this. He coughed and wheezed, and then cracked his knuckles. He may have been dying, but he was not going to be humiliated like this by other people.
He charged forward, tackling this Chad man to the ground. It took a whole lot out of him, and his body ached with every blow of his fists, but he could not let himself be smeared in such an egregious way as this.
The women watched in terror, but did not scream, because that would alert security. Roosevelt was, for the first time in a long time, able to take control of a situation himself.
He felt the blood coursing through his veins, finally. Something had sparked within him, something that made him feel alive again, a brief reprieve from his descent into death.
That feeling coursing through him… it was survival. The base nature of man out in the jungle, holding a spear as he charges towards a lion.
Fury overwhelmed him.
Chad leapt back up onto his feet and began scrambling around with buttons on the device attached to his back.
“I’m getting the fuck out of here!” he shouted.
Roosevelt was not going to let him go so soon. He grabbed the man’s arm just as he slapped a large green button. Chad gasped.
And both disappeared.
April 2021
The man in front of Chad, the great President Roosevelt he idolized so much, was currently grappling his time travel backpack and trying to reach for his neck. He was failing, though, and that’s what made this entire situation so sad. It was like fighting your great-grandpa.
They were in Nashville, struggling with each other in the middle of the street as cars honked their horns and swerved around them. the city lights shimmering in the night.
Chad hopped up from the street and ran towards the sidewalk, underneath bright neon signs and amidst blaring country music. Roosevelt caught up to him and latched on again, trying to pummel him. Maybe he wasn’t so weak after all… his appearance was a bit deceiving.
“Get off of me!” Chad yelled. He tried to loosen Roosevelt’s grip on him but the old man hung on, swinging his free arm at his face.
The man was frail, skinny, and pale, but he could put up a fight.
There was only one thing to do… lose him in the timeline. Chad pressed a few more buttons, set a random date and location as fast as he could, and pressed the button as he tried to wrangle loose of–
Years in the past (but not many)…
–Roosevelt.
They were in the middle of a huge forest, a few deer skittering around and some squirrels resting on the ground. Compared to Nashville’s loud urban hustle, this tranquil scenery was literally a breath of fresh air.
But Roosevelt would not let go of Chad.
“Come on!” Chad shouted. “Just leave me alone, okay?”
“What is this magic? Tell me!”
Roosevelt pulled up Chad’s arm and bit down.
“Agh!”
Roosevelt tore the backpack off his back and pulled it towards him.
Chad took a few steps backwards and tripped over a branch. He landed butt-first on the ground and got his clothes covered in dirt. Not cool, man. Not cool at all.
His headache still hadn’t gone away, either…
“Please, stop,” Chad told Roosevelt. “I’ll take you wherever you want. Just…”
Roosevelt pulled a large tree branch and raised it over his head to strike him down. “Tell me what’s going on. Where are we?”
“We’re in…” Chad looked over to his wristband, which displayed the clock settings from his backpack. “194 AD. Near modern-day Vermont.”
“You lie.”
Oh, shit– Roosevelt was going to kill him dead. He had to think– how do you prove time travel to someone like this? You have to… show them something they remember. Chad didn’t know that much about Theodore Roosevelt’s life! He hated history class.
“Just… use that backpack. Put in a date that’s important to you and you can see for yourself. Here, I’ll show you.” Chad, holding his hands over his head, stepped towards Roosevelt and pressed buttons on the time travel backpack. “See here? Just set the date, and… you know.”
“This must be some sort of moving picture charade,” he said. “Are you a communist?”
“No, who the fuck cares about politics?” Er… “I mean, just set a date and–”
April 1865
Theodore Roosevelt and Chad appeared in New York City. They were in the middle of a busy street. There was a crowd of people dressed in all-black, and a funeral parade going down the street.
Roosevelt had no idea what was going on.
What was this? Where was he?
He tried to budge up to the front of the crowd, but it was difficult to move because there were so many people in the way. So many crying faces and tears being shed, but he had no idea why. Some sort of funeral procession, perhaps.
The buildings were so much more quaint, the skyscrapers missing and the automobiles nonexistent. This was not the New York City of the twentieth century.
“What year did you set this to?” Chad asked.
“1865,” he said. “I had to confirm if you were– My God.”
He finally reached the front of the crowd and looked at the funeral casket.
The man being wheeled down the street was… Abraham Lincoln.
Surely he had gotten ahold of some sort of vile box created by charlatans to fool him into believing in this massive hoax. They must have been film producers who used their movie magic and built this replica of New York City. Surely this device in his hands was not actually some sort of magical teleportation box. That was impossible.
“Why here?” Chad asked. “We go back to the Lincoln assassination all the damn time, but his funeral? What’s so important about that?” His volume raised as he asked this, and bystanders began staring at them both. The man coughed a few times. “Sorry.”
Roosevelt looked around at the buildings nearest to him, and then looked up at what he realized was his grandfather’s old house on the street corner.
It all came flashing back to him– he was at this moment before. In fact… He looked up at a window on the second story and saw two boys looking out at the funeral.
He saw himself as a seven-year-old boy.
“How… how can we have ventured into the past like this?” Roosevelt asked in a whisper. His heart could hardly take waking up in the morning; he could only wonder how he was still surviving under such pressure.
And there it came… the adrenaline subsided and the pain began again.
Roosevelt needed to see something… his future. This criminal had given him the only chance he could have to find out his legacy.
“Hold on,” he told Chad, and the man grabbed onto the strange time traveling backpack.
April 1922
Roosevelt and Chad appeared in Washington DC, as thousands were gathered to listen to a man talk up on a podium. There was another casket, with another dead body… this time, his own. The crowd was smaller than the one that visited Lincoln’s body, but the display was grander, more vibrant, the streets adorned in posters and drawings of Roosevelt at his prime. People mourned the strong, brave man that served them as President for over eight years.
Roosevelt had lasted one year as President. He gave it to his very last breath.
Robert La Follette, his successor, gave a speech, but he did not mind it in the least. Whatever he could be saying had to have been inflated lies, praising a man he barely knew, who only selected him to placate a more radical section of the Republican Party.
The people cried and held onto teddy bears, as if the puny body in front of them did not dissuade their sympathy. The body was skinny, his flesh sagging and hair gray. This was the antithesis of everything Roosevelt stood for, and the ultimate mark against his legacy.
He did not go out a hero, dying in battle or fighting for a cause. He was not killed by a rogue assassin and he did not go out saving passengers on a sinking boat. He died, struggling after a year of illness, from natural causes.
Pathetic.
Roosevelt felt his heartbeat weak; the courage he had summoned in himself to fight those thieves was already fading, and with it the rest of his ability to move, to stand without wobbling, to breathe a full breath.
Chad still stood next to him, standing in a disturbing silence. This man was everything he feared humanity would turn into– unfit, bulky, and with a crass mouth. But he was the only one who could help him for now.
“I will tell you, this is not what I wanted,” he told him. ”My legacy ruined. I will be forgotten, a footnote in the annals of American history. All because–” Roosevelt wheezed and clutched his chest.
Chad gave him a strange look. “What do you mean, forgotten? You’re one of the most famous Presidents.”
What? “What?”
“Here, let me show you,” he said. “I’m going to take you to a different place. You’re gonna love it.”
“What am I going to–”
October 2017
“–love?”
“Mount Rushmore, in South Dakota,” Chad said, holding his hand out as if he were presenting something.
Roosevelt’s vision came into focus and he saw the mountain carvings behind his hand.
Four great men etched into the side of a mountain. Washington. Jefferson. Lincoln…. Roosevelt.
He had a legacy. Even with all his failures, all his unattained aspirations, he was still so famous as to stand among the greatest Presidents of all-time.
This changed everything.
His heart could hardly take it.
Modern medicine could not cure what he had. He was doomed to death, as his own funeral showed.
But he needed to survive. He could not accomplish the rest of his life if he was dead.
“You’re going to take me to a different time,” Roosevelt said. “And you’re going to help me navigate the way. Get me healed.”
Chad gulped, but nodded.
Roosevelt set a new date: 3330.
April 1865
Aisha looked around in the crowd, looking for Roosevelt and his bulky white backpack, but the crowd was too large to see anything in.
“Are you sure he went to New York City?” Doll asked her.
“Yes, I’m fucking sure,” she growled. “I mean, That’s what the unobtanium trail suggests,” said Aisha, looking at the readings on her tablet device. “He WAS from New York City. It makes sense that he would travel here of all places, rather than Washington, D.C.”
“This is all your fault,” Doll said. “If you just snapped some sense into that douchebag, we may have–”
“If I had done it? You can’t take any responsibility for anything. I can’t believe I have to work with you on every one of these fucking projects.”
Aisha realized there were people staring at her. Was it the weird outfit, or the fact a black woman was standing in a crowd of a bunch of white people in 1865, or their loud yelling during a funeral procession? Either way she decided they needed to leave, and fast.
She looked with great anxiety into her device’s quantum monitor. While the timeline was static, still affected by the unobtanium and their group’s actions, not much in the timeline was changing. But tracing Chad and President Roosevelt was a difficult task, even with her technology. “The trail is already heading off,” she said. “He’s jumping all through the timeline right now. 1922, 2017, 2112, 2048, 3330… What is his goal here?”
“Probably Chad giving him a tour of history,” Doll said. “Man’s history of bloodshed and dumbassery and macho insecurity. Are you sure we can’t just leave him behind?”
“Not without his backpack,” Aisha told her. A whole lot of people were staring at them by now. “We need all three to reset the timeline to normal. And as for Chad… We should probably save him too…” And it was damn annoying, too. They only had an hour or so left before they needed to reset the timeline.
Doll sighed. “Yeah, I really don’t want to start looking for a new job, not in this economy…”
“I feel you. Let’s save Chad too. Right now, the unobtanium trail suggests they should be in… 2142. What’s so important about there?”
“The Mech Wars started that year.”
“There’s no way Chad knows anything about a war that minor,” Aisha said. “All he knows about comes from TV reenactments and video games– Oh, there’s a video game about the war, isn’t there?”
“Six of them, very popular,” Doll told her.
“Roosevelt’s getting weapons, isn’t he?”
They really needed to hurry.
2142
Blazing lasers lit up the night sky and collided into the ground, into vehicles with tremendous booms. It was a distance away and the battlefield was covered in dust and smoke, but Chad could still see the two great armies clashing with all their mechanical force. A human-piloted mecha leapt into the air with rocket-boosted feet and slammed back into the ground with a large improvised club made out of a ripped-off arm; when it landed, it disabled the surrounding combat vehicles and caused a tremor that shook even a mile away from the conflict. This era had been so heavily documented through media that it was pointless to travel back here for study, but Chad was glad the backpack’s body camera was capturing this scene in all its fatal glory.
“I’ve played this exact battle before on Mech Fights 4,” Chad said. “It was so immersive. I’m a big fan of the Model-VSRs myself, but a lot of people really don’t like them because they’re more effective in close-range combat. It’s really practical though, y’know.”
Roosevelt said nothing. He must not like video games very much. Did they have video games from back when Roosevelt was alive? They were invented at some point in the twentieth century, he knew that much.
Chad continued speaking. “I know all about the shit you were in back in the day,” he said. “I mean, it isn’t mech battles and laser swords, but you charged up that hill in Cuba or whatever and I heard you got shot in the chest by some crazy guy once and then delivered a speech. You’re just so cool.”
Roosevelt barely turned his head back to meet Chad’s eyes, before returning his gaze to the battle. “That man who tried to kill me,” he began. “He insisted the ghost of President McKinley sent him to kill me and avenge my sin of abandoning the Republican Party. I am inclined to believe him. I overshadowed my predecessor after he was killed, and then I cost his party the election in 1912 out of spite. If I were killed as intended, that damned Woodrow Wilson would never have been able to run our nation into the ground. McKinley knew what was best for the party.”
Chad laughed nervously. “Well, that’s one way to look at it, but… you don’t have to worry about that kind of thing, ghosts and curses and all that.”
“I don’t. My ambition lies above political squabbles now.”
There was a long pause. The battle in the distance subsided; most Mech Wars battles only lasted ten or fifteen minutes due to the sheer carnage and regulations from the Manila Conventions about keeping casualties to a minimum. The last mecha still swinging its arm-club was shot by a cannon and crumbled onto the dirt below.
“Say, I know you wanted me to show you around to all the cool battles and stuff, but don’t you think we should be… getting back to our own times?” He tried to segue into the end of their adventure while not explicitly mentioning the fact that he was going to reset everything at the end of this and Roosevelt would once again die in his sleep in 1919. But the President was still the one with the backpack, and he didn’t want to try wrestling it from him, not in his present condition at least.
Once again, Roosevelt ignored him.
After they healed his cancer and lung disorders, Roosevelt had the color back in his skin, and he was no longer walking in a slow, hobbled manner. But he was still quiet, almost pensive, leaving Chad to do most of the talking as he guided him around the timeline as best as he could recall it.
“How would you take mechanical beasts in the battle back to my time?” Roosevelt asked. “I quite like them.”
“I– Uh, why would you want to do that? That would be a little bit…” Chad struggled to come up with anything to say that wouldn’t get him strangled to death. “Anyway, it’s not possible in this era. You’d have to go to my time, and we don’t have these kinds of weapons anymore. They’re–”
“Are these time travelling devices common in your time?”
“Not really. Just in… laboratories and museums and other places that like to use historical research.” Like movie studios yearning for screenplay material.
Roosevelt nodded to himself and grabbed Chad by the arm. “Alright. I’ve decided.”
“Decided what?”
Years in the past…
Roosevelt let go of his arm and pushed him onto the ground.
More dirt? Really? His suit was completely ruined now. The cleaning bill on this piece of shit was already big enough.
Roosevelt disappeared.
Now, Chad was alone in some sort of swamp, surrounded by ferns and conifer trees.
Chad heard a roaring dinosaur in the distance.
2142
Aisha and Doll stood in the ruins of a great mech battlefield. Smoke still rose from the destroyed vehicles, and limping bodies made their way back to their respective sides’ camps.
Chad and Theodore Roosevelt were nowhere to be seen, though in this mess of metal and blood it was hard to tell.
Doll laughed to herself. “You remember when we were in the Academy for all this, and I told you how much I wanted to use time travel to cure the world of war and greed? I really believed in all of that, I wasn’t just trying to show off.”
Aisha, examined her devices, looking for unobtanium data. “They aren’t here. They’ve already jumped to a time pretty close to our own. We’ll have to follow them, and quick. And… yeah, I know what you mean. I never thought we would use our skills for anything like this. It’s kind of unethical, don’t you think?”
“Tampering with time, ruining lives and killing people with the justification that it’s not permanent so it’s okay? A bit,” Doll replied. “But.. it pays well.”
Aisha patted her on the back. “That it does.”
Doll flashed a smile.
Years in the Future (but not many)…
Roosevelt, standing strong and eyes bright, shoved a plasma rifle into a man’s mouth. “Give me the access codes to your mech squadrons or taste lead.” He did not realize that this rifle would merely disintegrate the man, instead.
“I-I-I-I’m just a museum worker! Half of these things don’t even work anymore!” the man shouted. “Please…”
“I hope your family understands your decision, whichever one you make.”
The man complied with the request and released the mechs from the holding bay, lowering them down towards the temporal portal. Along with the weapons and robots he had secured, this would be enough for his plan.
“We’re… we’re not supposed to use the time portal for anything besides research,” the man said. “It’s just so dangerous for…” Roosevelt smacked him with the butt of the rifle, knocking him out.
Finally, he felt healthy again. He felt strong. He could survive and cement his legacy as the greatest President of all-time. The Bull Moose would rise again.
After seeing Mount Rushmore, he realized that great deeds truly could be rewarded. He realized he had a destiny that had gone completely unfulfilled, and the limitations of mortality and technology were not going to stop him from achieving that.
The time portal opened, and the conveyor belt underneath the mechs and other weapons began to move through the swirling vortex and out to the other side.
All he had to do was return to his own time.
“Stop right there!” a squeaky, feminine voice shouted. Roosevelt turned around and saw the two women he had encountered in his bedroom over an hour ago. Or many hundreds of years ago, depending on how one looked at it.
These time travelers had interfered with the wrong man. A very, very wrong man indeed.
He shot his plasma rifle at them, incinerating the wall behind them and sending a light pole crashing onto the ground. They dodged, but only barely.
“You won’t stop me!” Roosevelt shouted. He pushed the unconscious man’s head to the side and pressed some buttons on the console in front of him. A bright light turned on, and all of the equipment near the temporal portal had disappeared.
The two women began firing back at him, but before they could get a clean shot, he was already gone.
“Fuck,” said Aisha. “We only have twenty minutes left before we need to be back in time to end the temporal distortion. Chad wasn’t even with Roosevelt. We have to–”
Doll interrupted. “Aisha… what are we going to do? Chad’s been deserted somewhere in history, and Roosevelt still has the backpack. We’re fucking done if we don’t fix this. We only have two options here. We give up and tuck our tails in and hope the timeline change doesn’t completely erase us, or we dig our heels in and buck up. Let’s make some lemonade with these lemons.”
“What lemons?”
Doll ignored her. “We’re part of a movie production company, yeah? Well, we have body cameras and time travel devices. That might be all we need.”
May 1921
President Roosevelt stood on a podium surrounded by mechanical beasts, laser weapons, and robotic soldiers behind him. A grand army of a million soldiers stood before him, saluting. He himself wore a chrome-colored power suit, enhancing his strength tenfold and making him impervious to most forms of attack.
It was time to tell the world of his plan.
He began to pull out his speech, stuffed into the front of his power suit just like the speech that saved his life all those years ago.
“Seventy years ago, a great man once said, “Go West, young man.” That man happened to be a Democrat, but I’ll excuse him for that.” There was quiet laughter from the civilians watching the speech. “America was founded on the concept of Manifest Destiny. We conquered the land going west, populating ourselves and creating civilization where there was none. In my lifetime, we conquered the seas, taking in our possession a great number of lands as diverse as the Philippines and as grand as Alaska.
“Today, with our new weapons, we will continue Manifest Destiny.” He gestured behind him to the mechs. The pilots inside them activated them and began to shoot plasma cannons into the sky. “We will continue to go westward with our expansion, and this time the Pacific Ocean will be no boundary. We will go to Australia. We will go to Japan. We will go to Siam, to Persia, to Egypt, to Germany, to Britain. And we will go west until we can go no longer. Because we are the United States of America, and we are strong.
“I once advised that the best course of diplomacy was to speak softly and carry a big stick. Well, I will speak softly no longer!”
Long ago, Theodore Roosevelt was sick. He was dying. He felt focused on nothing but survival. Now, he was long past that. He was focused on not figuring out how to live, but to thrive.
And thus, a path of destruction that spread across the entire globe began. When it was all over, the world was ash.
Years in the Future (but not many)…
“…And that’s how that timeline ended,” said Aisha. “The world was ash.”
The circle of BlythCorp studio executives sat in silence as Aisha and Doll finished their slideshow presentation. The final photograph was taken in the year 2000, at the new millennium celebrations. Theodore Roosevelt, still wearing a cybernetic power suit, looked straight into the camera, laughing with glee as fireworks exploded in the background.
“We were forced to leave Chad in that timeline for good, but we believe that our movie will be so profitable that our stock price will rise by at least twelve percent this quarter,” Doll said. “Teddy and the Mechanical Army will be the biggest hit of the summer season, according to market research and historical interest.”
“How did you survive?” one of the executives asked. “Didn’t Roosevelt keep the time travel backpack?”
“We just warped to a time after he died and took it off. That was the only thing we could do,” Doll said. “He finally went in 2019, assassinated by his own prime minister. He was more willing to negotiate with us. We took the backpack, by then encased in the Imperial Museum, and examined the body camera. You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff on there.”
“Any more questions?”
The CCO, Chad’s uncle, stood up.
“Yes?”
But the CCO did not speak. He only clapped. The rest of the executives followed suit.
And that was the story of how two scientists became the biggest producers in Neo-Hollywood.
