With people standing six feet apart it is easy to see how the line wraps around the street, prospective clients shuffling awkwardly in the winter chill in the hopes of getting to see someone today and to avoid a similar wait tomorrow. Slowly but surely the line trudges on at a snail's pace, the massive demand overwhelming the incredibly small number of clinics that could offer this strange new service.
Around a year ago, a new patent was filled by a freshly incorporated business. This company, Nostalg-Co, claimed to have done the impossible, sending someone back through time. While the news quickly picked up on the story, reporting it as some kind of futuristic time machine, the reality was far more restrictive. Regardless, with the perception of our future growing darker and darker with the pandemic ravaging the world, young people feeling trapped under today's economy, and each successive climate disaster making the outlook appear more and more bleak people began to line up around the block to have a chance at going back to a more optimistic era.
The demand had become so high that governments around the world had to get involved. However, rather than limiting the procedure or restricting access, they pushed for a greater rollout as an easier way of combating the social problems of the day. Before long clinics had begun to pop up around the country, each one with the same simple, albeit confusing slogan;
NOSTALG-CO: FOR A NEW OLD YOU
What many a prospective customer only learned once they had their appointment was that they would not be sent back in time, at least not as they are now. They would not be some 'Terminator-eque' time-traveler, appearing in the past in a burst of energy and light to everyone's confusion. To everyone around them it would appear as if nothing had changed, not a single person would look at them twice for being out of place.
The process involved a rather complex process which could be described as 'surgically removing' a person from the timeline. Their past, their present self, and everything they would have done over the years would simply be cut free from reality. Once this had been done, seeking to restore the missing piece and to heal itself, the timeline would reconstitute the person entirely. Those left behind would still remember the individual after they left, the memories acting like a scar only to fade over time.
Nostalg-Co had no control over when customers were sent to, their technology relying entirely on the natural reaction of the timeline to do the time traveling for them after they had made their own cuts and edits. This could result in someone being sent back only a few years, complaining until they could use the service again once Nostalg-Co's door opened once more, or being sent back into the middle-ages or beyond.
From responses given by those who were sent back to a relatively recent era, or by those who were potentially sent back further even if it was impossible to tell if they really had, it appeared that it was more common than not that people were placed close to their own family in the timeline. This occurred by way of becoming a new sibling, offspring, or even parent of one of their family members, though relation via marriage or close friendship was also reported. A scant few claimed that they had been sent back to a point in which they couldn't find any such relation, living with strangers for years until they could share their story with the world.
One major issue with these self-reporters was that of appearance, with even those who had only been sent back a few years or even months looking nothing like how other's remembered them. While Nostalg-Co merely avoided questions regarding this it was an intrinsic part of the process. Once a person had been sent back, being stitched back into the timeline at some later point, a whole new life would be created for them in an instant. All new relationships, events, stories and everything else needed for a life would snap into existence around them, creating a sense of continuity for all those around them. While the individual would look just like they had once they left, even dressed as they had been, those around them would see someone entirely different. Over the coming days or even hours the person would undergo a series of uncomfortable and potentially painful changes, the timeline working to mold their body like clay into one which fits into the new life. On top of this physical change a series of mental changes could occur, fiddling with the person's accent and language skills as well as giving them insight into any skills they would have needed in their life up until this point.
However, their actual knowledge would be overall unchanged, leaving them with whatever knowledge they had prior to the procedure. This created all manner of potential complications, fears of people changing the future for the worse bounced around the public consciousness just as much as hopes of people changing it for the better.
Strangely enough, none of these feared changes ever seemed to eventuate. Nostalg-Co had said that they had avoided any changes through stern warnings as to the potential effects, but their critics had noted that any such changes would go entirely unnoticed by us now. In reality, untold numbers of people had changed the timeline either by accident or on purpose. While the timeline could adapt to minor changes, buying a house that someone else was meant to own or getting into a minor car accident, by making things turn out almost the same as it had before it had a more extreme method to handle more extreme alterations.
Where someone did something which severely altered the flow of events, buying stock in Apple and Amazon knowing where they would be going in the future or writing Shakespeare's plays before he could even lift a quill, the timeline will branch off and create an alternate timeline. From there things would merely play out normally, with those on the timeline being none the wiser. Regardless, out of fears of what too many of these branches could do Nostalg-Co warned against any major changes with each client that came through their doors.
In spite of all these rules and unknown implications demand for the service grew and grew. New methods of granting access began getting implemented at different clinics, from having to actually make appointments to performing the procedure via raffle, with each clinic being permitted to allocate their appointments in any way they saw fit.
While this lead to many strange stories from around the world the lengthy line was still the most common sight associated with the business. The shuffling awkward prospective clients either waiting all day for a chance, or even camping out overnight in the hopes of getting sent back to a new old era.
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