[ WP ] Teleportation is finally invented . Your friend is one of the first people to use it . After coming out on the other side , the more time you spend with him , the more you realize that this is not your friend

It was an exciting time. One of the biggest advances in human history, and Jeremy of all people was the first to test it. Being massive science fiction fans, we were so excited for the opportunity we never really thought about what might happen to him. They said he would spend about a month away, between all the protocols that had been set up and the actual `` traveling'' itself. I could n't wait to see him again, to hear all the stories of everything he had done. 
 
 Our families threw a massive return party for him. Everyone wanted to see him again and hear his stories, including the mass of reporters that gathered in the driveway. We eventually got the knock on the door we had all been waiting for, Jeremy walked in the door calmer than I had ever seen him. The luster in his eyes that everyone knew Jeremy for, ever since he was a baby, was gone. The party and the interviews went through all the motions. Everyone could tell something was obviously wrong with him, the expexted excitement of the party never came to be and all the reporters' questions were rather bluntly ignored. I wanted nothing more than to talk to my friend again, to find out what had happened to him. 
 
 After over six months of silence, Jeremy finally opened up to me. He spoke of places and events so grand that they were beyond description. Dinosaurs roaming the earth, watching our earliest ancestors leave their caves for the first time, even humanity's first contact with extraterrestrial life. As he described these things his face truly lit up for the first time since he left. He also told tales of darker times. Tales of a war that would rend the world uninhabitable. Ash clouds that blocked the sun for decades, sending mankind back into the caves from which he watched them emerge not so long ago. I finally realized what had taken the gleam from my friend's eyes. He had seen millenia worth of death and destruction, becoming merely a shell of the friend I once knew. 
 
 No one ever meaningfully heard from Jeremy again. He became a recluse and took his own life not long after. To this day he is known the world over as a symbol of man's potential as well as man's arrogance. I can only hope his story is remembered, both for the friend he was and the future his sacrifice may be able to prevent.
