Future Hair
by Ásgrímur Hartmannsson
They were all naked, but wearing sandals. Clothes hadn’t really been a thing for centuries. It was because of the hair. The all-covering hair of decency. Only scientists would wear full-body covering overalls while working on sensitive equipment, so as to not get hair all over whatever they were working on. Otherwise it was much more comfortable just to go naked. Being all covered in long-hair fur made clothes both uncomfortably warm and itchy.
Lorenz Diefenbach walked up the steps to the Institute of Science, and reported in at the reception. Behind the receptionist hung a large, ancient oil painting in a baroque frame, depicting a nude woman reclining on a bed. She was hairless but for the top of her head. There were also old-style statues all over, representing nude women in various poses. Hairless, the way they were before the change. Humans had substantially less hair back then, and the consensus was that they looked much better for it.
“Mr. Diefenbach!” someone called at him in a booming voice.
Laurenz looked. It was Dr. Akiyoru. He was quite taller than Lorenz and not as heavy-set. He was covered in lighter brown fur with some grey stripes here and there, with a white headband to keep the hair out of his eyes. Lorenz was more or less black, and had just cut the hairs over his eyes. Most people did that. With Dr. Akiyoru was a woman, whom the doctor introduced: “This is Dr. Hatichat Hara, she’s here to prepare and monitor your physical well-being during our mission.”
Lorenz nodded. Dr. Hara was a head shorter than Dr. Akiyoru, covered in golden brown fur with a red headband keeping her hair from her eyes. It was tied in a bow behind her slightly conical head. Lorenz looked at the statue beside her, depicting some 5000-year old model. Even if shaved, Dr. Hara wouldn’t look anything close to that good.
“What was the mission again?”
“You forgot? I sent you the mission briefing last week.”
“Too long, didn’t read.”
Akiyoru and Hara looked at each other. Dr. Akiyoru sighed. “Walk along, I’ll explain.”
They turned around and walked away, and Lorenz followed them through a door to a hallway, and from there into the main machine room, while Dr. Akiyoru explained: “You just have to deliver a message to the past. You can see the time machine over there. It took us two hundred years to develop it, and we have used it often, hundreds of times, and even managed to retrieve most of the subjects.”
“Most of them?”
“Yeah... I guess maybe we ported a couple into the ocean, and one or two may have been hit by a car. But most have made it back. With some memory loss, as you may already know, but intact. They have all recovered completely from their trip. But none of them has yet managed to deliver the message.”
“How come?”
“We think the reason is that they get disoriented in transit, and have been getting lost. Or that was the theory for the first fifty or so subjects. Then we slowly improved the device, and our guys and girls have been returning in a more and more cogent state. They have been able to report back and we have adjusted our machinery accordingly. But obviously they haven’t been able to deliver the message.”
“What was the message again?” Lorenz asked. He had just thrown the mission briefing in the trash unopened. Not much of a reading person, he.
Dr. Akiyoru handed him an envelope. Lorenz opened it, and looked at the piece of paper it contained. There was some gibberish written on it in an alien language.
“Never mind that; it is in a forgotten tongue known as English.”
“What does it say?”
“It’s just a warning to the past from us.”
“And you think the humans of the past will be warned?”
“I hope so. But some say it won’t effect our timeline. We’ll be stuck like this.” Akiyoru ran his hands down along his body, indicating the long fur covering him all over.
Dr. Hara pointed Lorenz to enter the time-machine chamber. There were three guys in there, wearing white body-suits, just preparing some things. “We will be sending you to some time near the pandemic. There were some panics in the 21st century over a couple of pandemics, and we are pretty sure it was the vaccine for the latter one that caused the change. Some say it was the first one, because there was some scandal rising from that, but we think we know that it was the vaccine for the second one that caused all the children to become born hairy, like we are now. It was sophisticated-gene altering medication, but we don’t think it was a plan to make us all into fur-balls.”
Lorenz just nodded. He had heard several versions of that story. He stepped into the time machine, and made himself comfortable. He looked at the envelope, and thought that they should have given him a pouch for it, that he could put over his shoulder to have free hands. The door was closed, and the machine hummed.
* * *
Lorenz woke up in some forest. He sat up and looked around. It looked like the middle of nowhere. He had been hoping for something more built-up, he had heard interesting stories about life millennia ago when nobody had hair and wanted to see it, but it looked like he would have to walk. The thought came to him that maybe the boffins had just teleported him a few miles out of town, into some thicket or other, but he waved that idea away, as he couldn’t hear traffic.
Lorenz rose to his feet and felt dizzy. He tried to remember what he was supposed to be doing here, he remembered that he was supposed to be on some mission, but what, that escaped him. He had lost his sandals, and he vaguely recalled something else that he may or may not have been carrying, but couldn’t.
He walked along. Then he heard something. He glanced around and saw a figure in the trees. It was definitely one of those ancient men. He had clothes on, his face was nearly devoid of hair, and he was carrying some device. Lorenz’s blood ran cold. That had to be a weapon of some kind. Maybe a machine gun. He decided to play it casual, and slowly walked away from the man, who was aiming the device at him. Lorenz hoped that he didn’t look threatening as he ambled away in his usual slouching manner, and didn’t breathe freely until he was out of sight in between the trees.
The man did not pursue. He made his way back to town and developed his film, which became one of the most famous Bigfoot videos.
Copyright © 2024 by Ásgrímur Hartmannsson
