Erasing People From the Past
Since they don’t matter at all
Three months after starting my high-paying, benefits-packed job, I quit.
I was part of a team who regularly went back in time to eliminate people who don’t matter to this world. Who are these people, you ask? You come across them every day, but don’t pay any attention to them — the paperboy, the waiter, the maid, the homeless man on the street. Either they don’t contribute to society, or their contribution is so insignificant it doesn’t matter. They are not going to change the course of history. They won’t find a cure for cancer, solve the climate crisis or invent flying cars. They might as well not exist.
Every day, my partner and I received a computer-generated list of people we needed to eliminate. Typically, these people lived between sixty and eighty years ago. We traveled back in time and then approached our victims when they were alone. My responsibility was to brief the victims about our visit since it was required by law. My partner took care of the actual execution. He carried an aluminum case that contained the lethal weapon — a CA45 pistol suppressor. I never watched those executions until that fateful day.
One of our victims on that day was a thirteen-year-old boy living in a small town in South India. He had dropped out of school and was washing dishes in a coffee shop. He couldn’t understand what I was telling him, but when he saw my partner drawing the pistol, he took off. It took thirty minutes for both of us to chase and capture him before my partner finished the job. The boy died while I was holding him, his terrified eyes staring into mine.
Those eyes haunted me for the next three days. I quit my job on the fourth day. I took a job stocking shelves at a local grocery store. The pay was significantly less, but I could sleep peacefully at night.
I was getting ready one day for my 7 am work shift when the doorbell rang. I opened the door, wondering who wanted to visit me at this early hour.
There were two neatly dressed men at the door. And one of them was carrying an aluminum case.
This is the third story in the “How I Died” series. The other two stories are below:
