The Last Laugh

 

I couldn’t believe it when my name was called at the annual meeting. I had never won anything before. Now I was going to go on a trip to some unknown place and even be on T.V. The others in the group seemed happy, but it didn’t seem that they were happy for me so much as happy that they had not been chosen. Maybe there was something about this adventure that I didn’t know about.

I had only been there a week, after getting sent forward in time a hundred years. There were a lot of things about my new present that were different than my old present, but one interesting thing was that it appeared that technology hadn’t really made any advances. In fact, this time seemed more primitive than mine. And the level of poverty seemed much more than it had been a hundred years ago. I mean, people starved in my time, but only if they left their domes for too long.

Eventually, I learned that the whole thing was a contest, where the last one living won the game. The people in my town began showing me how to use the different weapons at their disposal. I accepted their help, but they didn’t know that I had been in the Special Forces in my time. I’d show them how to fight.