Set your story in a world where time travel has been perfected, and people can use it to hop between alternate timelines — but at a cost.

Posted in Dystopian on Apr 28, 2023

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✍️ 50 stories

“Gate M41” by Liv Chocolate

Submitted to Contest #196

cw: mentions of suicide, murder, sex, and terminal illness Balloons, apparently, are a weapon of mass destruction. Even the one that I’m fighting to get past security at this very moment—an 18” round one with the words GET WELL SOON printed above a cartoon sun wearing sunglasses. The more I look at it, the more it bothers me that the sun, in theory, is protecting himself against himself. Out of all the people in our lives, we hurt ourselves the most, my husband had warned me before I left. Are you sure you want to visit ...

32 comments 32

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“Born in the Sands of Mars” by Russell Mickler

Submitted to Contest #196

The supercollider was called Magus, and it was - undeniably - mankind’s most significant scientific achievement. Constructed in the asteroid belt 1.2 million kilometers from Mars, Magus remained far from population centers, closest to the resources needed for its function. In continuous operation for more than four hundred Martian years, the Magus Complex was serviced by tens of thousands of autonomous robots that mined raw materials and fabricated components necessary to maintain the machine. End-to-end, Magus’ structural truss ran a kilome...

29 comments 29

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“The Leavers” by Charlotte Kelley

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #196

You weren’t allowed to return. That was the rule. In Sali, Washington, people disappeared. My grandmother did back in ’92, just after having Mom. She left a succinct note explaining that Pop wasn’t doting enough, and she missed the soft skin and moist lips of her fading yesterdays. My best friend Beck did, the night before her eighteenth birthday, claiming life wasn’t worth living if you only got to be a child once. Even my boyfriend, plagued by the obscurity of our town, a loyal resident through and through until he realized just how...

14 comments 14

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“The Waiting Room” by Paul Besancon

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #196

Eric watched them through the window. The night was cold, yet no breath fogged the glass when he leaned closer. That took some getting used to the first few journeys he made. Now, it was trivial. As always, the glass was dirty. She regularly teased him to help out around the house more. He kept up with the maintenance, but cleaning was never his forte. Still, he could have helped out more. One of many regrets. That was when he felt it. God damn hands. They were shaking again, but he never let go of the cylindrical key fob resting tightly in...

18 comments 18

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“To Bake Under the Sun” by Sam Jacobsen

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #196

Earth is now a whisper--sad, desolate. For many miles, crags drone on in a ceaseless field of black. The rocks left behind are sharp and cracking, their shale falling down into pits of tar and sludge. At the peak of the highest crag is a glowing portal--our slip. It is a gate to another time; another place. We funnel through the slip like lemmings to the cliff, our eyes glazed and desperate. We being the last of us, that is. We come, warped and damaged by radiation, drought, famine, to escape. The seas and forests are gone, our beloved anima...

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“Scratched Wax” by Chris Miller

Submitted to Contest #196

“I see that you cannot take your eyes from the gifts time has bestowed upon me.” The Dealer’s eyes glinted through a fringe that lay over his face like the unearthed roots of a mangrove swamp. The roots fed a great vine of matted hair that climbed over his head in a dense coil and looped down to twist like a constrictor several times around his body. “Stare,” he said in a delicate breath barely strong enough to carry the word, “every second you spend staring at me becomes mine.” He raised a thin hand and used the edge of a long, twisted fin...

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“Bottled Time” by Anne Shillingsburg

Submitted to Contest #196

The perfume jars started accumulating before Gemini’s birth, an accidental collection in which Francine felt no real interest for many years. The first was a gift from Francine’s college roommate, who brought it back from a trip to Egypt on the mistaken impression that anyone as interested in her appearance as Francine would also love perfume. She did not. To her it smelled like a chemistry lab and gave her headaches, but the little glass jar was pretty and she couldn’t smell the contents when the stopper was in. She hadn’t meant for it to b...

18 comments 18

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“Purple Tears” by Theresa Amante

Submitted to Contest #196

Diary Entry: 1_Timeline: Earth2, Day 1 Everyone’s heard of dark matter, but now the hot topic is strange matter. We caused so much chaos when we discovered that. Geneva shook for 4 days straight. Anyways, today is my first day on Earth2. I got clearance to time step from General Stern. Basically, you round up a lot of strange matter then inject it with the energy of one billion split atoms, and then use that force to fold the matter like a blanket, prior to ripping it a new hole. Then, you just step through. It’s only open for about 3 second...

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“Future Gazing” by William Richards

Submitted to Contest #196

“Thank you for coming, please take a seat,” the interviewer said without looking up. I wondered how many people she’d seen today. It was a game of numbers after all. Finding the perfect candidate. You just had to look into enough futures and eventually you get a great match. I sat on the rigid white chair beside her silver desk. She looked at a tablet, shook her head, and dropped it in a hole marked ‘reject'. She grabbed a new one and looked at me for the first time. Her eyes were intense and blue. It felt like she was assessing me alr...

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“The Winking Man” by Derrick M Domican

Submitted to Contest #196

*Features suggestion of child abduction.* The smart-looking centrepiece of the Pink Bougainvillaea Resort rose high into the cloud-filled night beyond a tidy block of white stucco villas. It was a five-storey, hundred room building with, as its name implied, an embracing multitude of pink bougainvillaea vines clinging to its brilliant, white-washed walls. From where I crouched, hidden in the shadows at the edge of a glade of palm trees amongst short, spiky Aloe Vera shrubs, I could see over the terracotta-tiled rooftops of t...

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“The Perfect Present” by Ian James

Submitted to Contest #196

Johan drew a long, satisfying breath and savoured the moment he'd laboured for seven interminable years. The path to this juncture had been paved with dedication, experimentation, and an unwavering determination. Now, he stood before a resplendent silver contraption that bore an uncanny resemblance to the cockpit of a helicopter. Johan knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this apparatus would inaugurate a new era and transform the course of human history forevermore.But his journey hadn't been without its trials and tribulations. The great...

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“Droun” by Beth Kubala

Submitted to Contest #196

When I was ten, Uncle Droun gave me my first telescope. My parents were obviously pleased for me but also somewhat embarrassed by his generosity. “Droun, you didn’t have to give Andrew anything,” declared my mother, shaking her head. Uncle Droun was not really my uncle, he was an out-of-town friend of my father’s whom he had met at a conference a few years ago and brought home to meet the family. About ten years younger than my parents in many ways he treated me more like a big brother. Droun was an astrophysicist and my father’s field was...

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“A Lover's Paradox” by Brandon Breeze

Submitted to Contest #196

Evan Barnes was stunned to the point of bewilderment. Mere seconds ago, he had been sitting in his parked car in the driveway of his Cedar Point, Connecticut home. Now, although still sitting in his car, he was over a thousand miles away in Palm Hill, Florida, and twenty five years in the past.He sat struggling to wrap his brain around the leap through time and space. He looked around at the unmistakable Palm Hill skyline. It looked exactly the way he remembered. Even the old Grand Hotel, which Evan saw with his own eyes get torn down to mak...

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“Relive Again Agency” by Daniel Rogers

Submitted to Contest #196

Time travel is easy. It’s paying for it that’s hard. Most people can only dream about it. Even the wealthy have to think twice about it. It takes millions of Global Credits to time travel. The longer you want to stay in the past the more it costs. The companies that provide time travel, justify their price because the time splitters cost billions. So as of right now, only the wealthy can even entertain the thought of time travel. A wealthy man in his old age, planned a five year trip. He lost his wife a year ago and couldn’t stand living w...

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“The Time Travelers Club” by Josephine Harris

Submitted to Contest #196

I’d travelled through time before with no ill effects, but this was different. My lungs ached as I followed the others to the ‘Time Travelers Club proudly welcomes you. Wait here.’ signpost. All these terminus towns used signs in both languages, but it seemed odd to see the yellow smiley face. Surely they could have come up with something new after two decades.I set down my luggage and took a long breath. Nothing too unusual so far. Of course I saw no alien lifeforms; it was still humans throughout this solar system give or take a few m...

10 comments 10

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Set your story in a world where time travel has been perfected, and people can use it to hop between alternate timelines — but at a cost.

Submissions are closed

✍️ 50 stories

“Gate M41” by Liv Chocolate

“Born in the Sands of Mars” by Russell Mickler

“The Leavers” by Charlotte Kelley

“The Waiting Room” by Paul Besancon

“To Bake Under the Sun” by Sam Jacobsen

“Scratched Wax” by Chris Miller

“Bottled Time” by Anne Shillingsburg

“Purple Tears” by Theresa Amante

“Future Gazing” by William Richards

“The Winking Man” by Derrick M Domican

“The Perfect Present” by Ian James

“Droun” by Beth Kubala

“A Lover's Paradox” by Brandon Breeze

“Relive Again Agency” by Daniel Rogers

“The Time Travelers Club” by Josephine Harris

🌟 Similar prompts

Write about a character unknowingly experiencing a “sliding doors” moment. Write your story in two halves; what could have been, and what actually happened.

Write a story that includes the phrase “Maybe in another life.”

You’re walking down the street, when you spot a familiar figure. It’s another you. And they’ve come from an alternate reality to warn you about something.

Write a story involving a portal into a parallel universe.

Contest #196

Enter our weekly contest!

$250

Prize money

280

Contest entries

149

Stories

Win $250 in our short story competition 🏆

Explore more writing prompt ideas: