The inertia corrector began to glow blue as we started the ships preparations through the transience-terminal.

I looked at all of us standing around. Beings of my own reflection stood and stared at the one in front of them, the one appointed mission commander. He was no more or less than the rest of the bodies standing on the triangular platform inside the ship, he was just appointed a position, as each one of the beings inside the ship had been.

We heard once, before breaching telepathy-evolution, that the humans of the past had individual thoughts, feelings, and motives. We heard that the time we would be traveling to was still occupied by these humans. We imagined a chaotic and disorderly place, driven by fear and the ancient word 'greed' - meaning to desire selfishly. These types of barbaric notions had been surpassed long ago by us, but we had seen it in civilizations throughout multiple temporal lineages.

But It was our own past that we had to face on this trip, our own history.

The mission commander...us... we...spoke.

"There is a place in our history, a turning point that has been looked back on as a travesty for us" we spoke "When the humans of ancient times destroyed each other for fleeting desires. This time was early in our history, and many before us have traveled there. However, our bodies will be going for the first time. We travel to the early part of our growth, the six-thousandth year of formal civilization, in the year our ancestors called 'two thousand and ten'."

We gathered our tools. One of us took seat at the pilots stations, one of us at the control deck, two of us left for the observatory, and the other two headed toward the anti-gravity beam. The mission commander typed in the coordinates. My body sat at the log-file system. This assignment was intended to document the path of our journey. When we separated from our other selves in the current time, they would no longer be able to connect with our minds. Those on the ship would be the only we, autonomous from our civilization. The thought attempted to invoke fear, we washed it away quickly.

"We are ready" The mission commander spoke. He pushed the blue orb into the transience-terminal and started the temporal-shift.

Our ship turned to face the long stretch of mechanical circles, each with two mile diameters and empty in the middle. They were anchored into the planet, pulling energy from the core and sun. As the orb in our ship began to spin and glow, so to did the the edges of the circles in front of us. We sat, hovering above the planets surface. And then we propelled forward, passing through the first ring of temporal-shifters. Three miles away, the other one came into view. The spinning of the circles rims accelerated as our ship passed through each one, the spinning blue lights on the rings turned into one solid circle. Our intertia corrector began to turn dark purple and we felt the strain of acceleration fade even as our ship got faster and faster.

And on the last ring, our planet disappeared. The spinning of the now purple corrector slowed, our ship decelerated as we passed over the dark side of a moon that had long since been destroyed by a supernova.

"We are here. We are in the year two thousand and ten" the mission commander spoke.

I began pushing thoughts into the log-file. Our return home would be met with curiosity of our travels by my other beings.

We began closing in on the earths atmosphere. As we did, our ship made a noise. We turned to look at the engineer.

"Something is not right" he spoke in our monotone voice

Fear tried to enter, we tried to push it back. We turned and looked at the inertia connector, it began to spin and turn red

"Check the temporal shifter" the Mission commander spoke

"It is...it is lost of energy" the engineer spoke

We felt a jolt as Earth-two-thousand-and-ten's gravitational pull began to pull us in.

"Engage planetary thrusters, shut down dark matter siphons and helium 3 cells one and two" we spoke and all bodies turned to their respective stations.

And all went black.

I awoke to a sound. A creature walking toward me. It was a quadrupedal. I had seen this animal in ancient texts, they were said to have been 'Man's best friend'. It stopped and stared at me for a brief moment, then turned to run.

Me.....I...., I asked myself

I looked down at my body, the mission commander logo was fused into my torso. I looked around for the ship.

Where are the rest of me I thought to myself

I had heard of this feeling before. As young beings, a story is passed around that there once was a lone being. He had been left during a temporal-shift. The story says that he became autonomous and for many eons had drifted across planets alone. He was said to have developed many great tools, for benefit and for destruction. The story is told that when he was found, he could not reconnect to the hive-mind and thus, our being was forced to relieve him.

I felt fear at this thought. I tried to push it away but could not. Without my other selves, I did not have the capacity to overcome emotions.

Hey...are you ok?

I turned swiftly. Fear enveloped my body.

"Ew, look at his black eyes Macy!"

"Shut up josh, he looks just like us!*

"No way. His eyes are black and there's black circles on the sides of his forehead"

Black, I thought

I stood up, staring at the boy and girl in the field. I had only been taught very little of the modern anglo-saxon, but in scenario - which I realized had never been recorded to have happened in our history, we were taught to say one thing.

"Please", I spoke as I stared at the two with the man's-best-friend "I come in peace".