[ WP ] In an overcrowded future , convicted criminals are sent back in time hundreds of years with their memories erased . An agent tasked with recovering an innocent man who was pardoned now has to make a difficult choice .

He was n't a career criminal. He'd been sent back at 20 after a spate of small-scale robberies in tiny shopping centres. He never stole anything worth more than $ 1000; pocket change. One bad night though, he'd accidentally killed the clerk of a small chain-store after taking a gun of one of his accomplices. 
 
 Or so we thought. The only evidence we had was the testimony of his accomplice and the footage from the scene of the robbery. Of course the two, both alike in height and ethnicity, wore masks to cover their faces. He had refused to say anything about the night, his `` friend'' mouthed off every last detail, except the one who shot the clerk. Neither meant it, but one got the harsher sentence. 
 
 I got called in late on a Tuesday evening, rain belting outside, he'd been pardoned, and was allowed to rejoin the present. I was unsure, most of the time those that in the present were criminals, become criminals in the past. 
 Have you ever heard of the Zodiac killer? In the present, he'd been charged with the murder of at least 50 different women, and had been sent back in time. The charges were dropped through lack of evidence and a steely lawyer, and he was ordered back. It soon came out though that he had killed in the past too, but in an awkward legal loophole, the case had been cold for over 200 years, so he could never be charged for the crime, he ended up shot at the trial by a bystander screaming `` justice for all'' 
 But that's another story. 
 
 They handed me his file. He now went by Harry Winslow, and he lived at 1272 Chester Lane, Wynnbrook, California. Seemed easy enough. I kept reading though, and as I stepped into the garage and into the car - this is how we travel through time, explanations can come later - I noticed something. *1 wife - 2 children - Boy & Girl - 7 & 5 respectively. * I started the car, and the garage door opened, revealing a 2013 Wynnbrook California. There had never been a return who had started a family, ever. In all my years as an agent, only one pardoned convict had had a wife, divorced when we found him in squalor. I suppose though, it was the perfect combination of youth and total innocence. Many of the returns are middle aged when sent off, so in the past, they suddenly wake up a 45-year-old man with not even a high-school diploma, they never end up with a job, and a lot of returns are found dead by suicide. 
 
 I tuned down Chester lane. Chester lane was about as typical suburbia as you could get, large American-style house meshed seamlessly with expensive cars and large, well-kept front lawns. The street was lined with trees, giving a dotted shade over the car as I passed under. Dusk was looming, so I rolled down my tinted windows to get a better look at the house numbers. As I did, a child's laughter echoed down the street, joined by a chorus of gleeful shrieks. I pulled up outside 1272. A well-built middle aged man was running around the yard holding a football, with two children trailing behind him at full pelt, laughing. Suddenly the two jumped on him and he dove to the ground. `` 1 Down'' I heard the little boy cry. and the man boomed with laughter. Up on the steps of the house, a pregnant woman watched on, smiling. This was n't right at all. I checked the file again. Everything matched. The attached photo resembled the man currently tickling his son if he was twenty years younger. This was n't right at all. None of it was meant to go this way. It was meant to be a prison for people, a hell, forcing them into hardship and depression for the horrendous crimes they'd committed. They were n't supposed to turn around. They were n't supposed to be happy. 
 
 As I looked again at the man, throwing his daughter up in he air and catching her again, to her overwhelming delight, I thought about what bringing him back would do. He'd lose all this, all his happiness, he'd lose everything he had here, to rejoin a present where he had nothing, and which had absolutely nothing to offer him. Beyond just him, he now had a family he had to support, and a new child on the way. I rolled up the window again, the orange sun was catching my eye on the horizon line, and peeled out. 
 
 I phoned in. 
 
 `` Another suicide.'' 
 
 
 

