[ WP ] The lottery is an Institution designed to catch Time Travelers .

Looking around, I noticed the little convenience store was full of stereotypes from the early 2010's - young adults glued to `` smart'' phones, texting and snapping selfies. Selfies, so glad they phased that term out. Urban youth with those cheap, overpriced headphones blaring shitty dubstep into their empty heads. Overweight people, wow! what a sight they are. It's still so odd to me seeing them scattered about, without a care in the world. 
 
 I'm next up in line to purchase my winning lottery ticket, it will be my third in the last month. I've spread my redemptions from the last year all over the east coast. Small jackpots, all with different names and social security numbers, has n't failed me yet. This would be my final one. I can disappear after this. Maybe fly out to Iceland, enjoy it while it lasts - Iceland, that is. It wo n't be long until the volcano with the impossible-to-remember name blows a crater in that country that can be seen from space. I remember thinking that all the pictures from there were so beautiful, like they were taken on another planet. Yeah, Iceland. Spend a year there then check out Japan before it sinks. 
 
 `` Five lotto tickets, please,'' I say as I step up to the register, nerves beginning to flare up. 
 
 `` What else d'ya need, darlin'?'' the middle-aged woman says. I bet she was beautiful before years ( decades? ) of cigarettes and booze claimed her. Or maybe that word, darlin, just reminds me of simpler times and I see her through rose-tinted glasses. AI is n't programmed to use words like darling, sweetie, and honey in normal conversations. They're very cold, aloof. It's so nice to hear the little human nuances again. 
 
 `` That'll do me, I think. Actually, give me a trashy magazine. Some kind of tabloid, if you have any.'' I ca n't help myself. It's amazing they used to publish this shit, back when people's biggest worries in this world were what a celebrity wore to an event, or which woman with undeserved stardom is expecting a child. 
 
 With my five blank lottery tickets - four of them just for show - and my tabloid, I get into my rental and reach for the laptop on the floorboard of the backseat, my precious laptop that has 200 terabytes of text data directly uploaded from over 10,000 different.wiki sites from the year 2092. Years of lottery results, sporting victories, dates and locations of natural and unnatural disasters, dates of presidential assassinations, and the dates when the borders of each country inevitably shut down, permanently. 
 
 As I grabbed the laptop to pull it to the front seat, I hear a voice, my voice. 
 
 `` They're coming for you. For me.'' 
 
 I turn around wildly to see a man sitting behind me. It's me. A grizzled version of myself, a bit older, and he looks like hell. I'm not as shocked as I thought I would be if this ever happened, but it's odd, to finally see your own face, not as a reflection. It's backwards. Is that really what I look like? Fuck. 
 
 `` Did you hear me? They're coming. Your plan to go to Iceland? Yeah, you should have done that yesterday, but no. You had to be fucking greedy. How much do you even have now? 800, 900 grand? 
 
 `` 1.2 mil,'' I told myself. This angry, self-loathing clone. Wait, can you even call him a clone? Shit, the whole time-paradox situation breaks my brain. `` Who's coming? Old government or our government?'' 
 
 `` Old, probably. There's no way to be sure. It was old government that came for me on this night. There's no way to know if our government have begun hunting for refugees - for you.'' 
 
 `` This happened to you? What do I do? What did you do? How long do I have?'' 
 
 `` You have an hour, if I remember correctly. I lost track of time when I turned around and saw my doppelganger sitting behind me. It was all a blur after that. A bloody blur. You look like you're handling it better than I was. We peeled out of here, they caught up to us on interstate, and long story short, they found his dead body after the wreck and called off the search, not knowing there were two of us. I'm hoping we both make it out alive this time, and not just you. We need to ditch this car, it's what they're looking for.'' 
 
 `` Well what do we do? Do you have something else?'' I ask as I grab the laptop and we exit the car in perfect synchrony. 
 
 `` Yeah. There are woods behind the store, a house on the other side of the woods, and a car waiting on us in the driveway. We need to get moving, now. It might not be just cars coming for us this time.'' 
 
 We set off into the pitch-black woods, the blind leading the blind. I walk with a hand in front of my face to guard against stray limbs, struggling to distinguish the sound of his footsteps from my own. `` How far?'' 
 
 `` Not far. I need to do something first, though.'' 
 
 `` What's that?'' I say as I bump into him, he has stopped moving. 
 
 `` A favor, for both of us. It's hell from here on out, you saw what I look like. It's all shit after tonight. I'm sorry, but if you could, you'd thank me. You *really* would.'' 
 
 The chirp of a silenced pistol sounds off and only one remains. The man presses a button on a device in his pocket, and a moment later reality itself distorts and a hole in the fabric of space-time opens and out steps an androgynous humanoid. 
 
 `` There he is. The last one.'' The man said, motioning to the corpse on the ground. `` He said he has 1.2 million, he never made it to Iceland.'' 
 
 `` Good. Collect the money, do what you please with it. You are to stay in the United States, we will know if you leave. You're now a free man.'' The figure bent down and placed its hand on the corpse and the pale green hole from which it came engulfed the two of them. 
 
 The man sat in the woods for some time, trying to wrap his mind around what he had done, and how he would spend the two weeks before the world went to shit. 

