October 2025 - Long List

“Ace Edd Bucket! 

You're a Theoretical Physicist from the year 2030. 

You've just time-travelled, which is why you can't remember anything right now. 

You're dead.” 

Except I'm not. 

I'm listening to a travel watch message I sent myself at some point previously, or in the future, I guess, if time travel really exists. 

Scratching my head through my hat - a Sherlock hat? Nice - I turn my attention to the library in front of me - ooh, I love libraries - with a sign out front, declaring: “Coming Soon: 1,000 Capsule Cone Homes.” 

Eugh, seriously? 

The surge of repugnance stirs something in my foggy mind as I remember that this is my library, the one I frequented as a kid, and still do. The last library in the county, in fact. 

Bloody capitalists - I click my fingers, the name on the tip of my pierced tongue - those anti-independent-thinking…ICU! That's them, the same crowd that bought the Internet - the entire Internet - and immediately started charging for and time-stamping every search. 

In protest, I made them eat their own words at a fundraiser by configuring their forks to print out anything they deemed a lie (which turned out to be everything they said, but sure, I’m the insane one. I even refrained from using the coffee-flavoured acid I procured for their dessert!). 

So that's who killed me; some punk from the ICU shut me up about saving our free-to-use libraries. I mean, thinking back to more of my ‘out there’ protests, how could I not be on their radar? 

I’m getting off track. 

My objectives: I need to not die, and I need to save this library, the place I turned to for refuge and healing growing up, especially after my ADHD diagnosis. 

It's where I armed myself with coping mechanisms and understanding, while simultaneously learning about the world I live in, like the fact that there's a blue-footed bird in the Galapagos called a Booby - *snicker* - focus! 

I head inside to my temporary ‘office’ - a storage unit the Librarian cleared out for me, in support of my protesting - and remember to duck under the new dinosaur display at the last second, triggering another memory. 

An excavation site! 

That's where my body was found. 

Now, where was that again? Pacing, I reach for a drink on my desk. Mmm, coffee… 

…burning… 

…acid…! 

Desperately inputting coordinates into my travel watch - I just need to go back an hour - I knock the rest of the acid to the floor and hear it sizzle indefinitely - so that's my final resting place, at least I delay those blasted cone homes. I bring my wrist to my mouth, and with my final breaths, I gasp: 

“Record message and send to set coordinates. 

Acid bucket! 

Yuri, you're a Theoretical Physicist from the year 2030. 

You've just time-travelled, which is why you can't remember anything right now. 

You're dead.”