"Jon," Karyn asked, "does this machine only go into the past? Or could we have it take us to the future if we wanted it to?"
Jon thought that over for a second. "Well, I guess there's no reason it couldn't. What do you have in mind?"
"Let's go, like, four years into the future," Karyn said. "I want to see what our lives will be like in college."
Jon thought that sounded like fun. After all, he wanted to know if he was going to pass this stupid history class of his. "But where do we ask the machine to take us? We know when we want to go, but we have no idea WHERE we'll be in four years. Will we end up at Middleton College?"--Jon meant the small private college on the other side of town--"or will we go somewhere else? Or maybe we won't even be in college at all... who knows what will happen in the future?"
"Hmm," Karyn said, frowning. "Maybe... maybe we can just have the machine take us to Middleton. It doesn't really matter whose body we land in, as long as we land somewhere here. We can scout around and find out where we are, then maybe we can come back and have the machine take us there. And if we're going to Middleton, great... we'll already be where we need to be!"
Jon thought that was a food idea. So, before the machine could get off another annoying PLEASE INPUT, he said, "Machine, take us to Middleton, four years in the future."
"INPUT ACCEPTED," the machine said. "PLEASE ENTER THE CHAMBER."
So he and Karyn stepped into the tube, and a second later they were swept into the rushing currents of time.
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