All of them are gone. I stand there, wondering where they are. Are they away celebrating? Did they think the machine failed? Did I really only go one hour into the future? The lights are still on and the building is still whirring with activity, but the room has a lot of subtle differences. The walls are too grey, the lights a little too bright. I begin to worry that something other than miscalibrated timing is all that was wrong with the machine. 

I try the door, it’s open, a new style of lock I’ve never seen before neglected to be allowed its sole purpose. I begin to travel the halls, I still hear some voices. A woman talking to a man, I listen and the man’s voice changes, like someone completely different was now talking to the woman. On my left, in a metal room is a beast with three heads, one a goat, one a lion, and one a golden retriever. I stare at the scene in confusion. A small group of men and women in body armor come patrolling down the hallway, they see me. They immediately raise their weapons, holding me in place at gunpoint. They tell me not to run or fight, or they will all shoot me down. “Sirs, madames, I have absolutely no idea where I am and why I came out of that dang time machine to be met with a place filled with freaks and creeps.”

“Time machine? Oh, we know who you are now, the facility seized it for being an anomaly to society and likely very dangerous, you will have to come with us for questioning.” They carry me along the halls, passing men with cockroach heads, a man in a jail uniform gets slaughtered by something truly unholy behind another pane of bulletproof glass. I stand there, my feet moving under me slower and slower as I see more and more of the madness that permeates this place. They take me to a room where a man, likely a researcher, questions me about what was going on and if there were any adverse effects on my body. “So, tell me. What was it like going through that machine?”

“Well, one second I was checking off any negatives on the machine that may affect where it will take me, we had set it for only one hour into the future, and the next thing I knew I was held at gunpoint, escorted down a corridor of these ‘anomalies’ you guys are housing in this wackjob facility.”

“It appears that the recovery team was a little too good at their job,” he tells me jokingly, “You were lucky it only took us about 45 minutes to capture and contain that machine.” I stare at him intensely, questioning whether or not I can trust him. I suppose I will have to stay here a while, and maybe even do another trip at some point. Maybe I’ll end up as just another one of the freaks and wackos held in these grey hallways, the lights just a little too bright to be comfortable.