The past effects the present but so does the future.

History. That is the main trouble with time travel. You have to know your history, if not you're dead or worse the world you know may change in drastic and unimaginable ways. Some parts of history are more important than others; the years before anomalies were known about are fine providing you stayed clear of the major historical points. No stopping world wars or inventing penicillin before it's time. And the stuff so old that records or humans didn't exist are quite important but mainly due to the butterfly effect, the one where you kill a dinosaur that existed millions of years ago and then some people that were never existed. It happened once. The Brown effect, Nick Cutters memory is the evidence for that. Nick Cutter, everyone knows that name, for some it means little, just an intelligent man who lived in one of the most important periods in the evolution of our world. To others he is a hero and to a lot a failure.

The problem with History is that it gets distorted by the present. The present being two thousand and sixty seven roughly. But the date that matters is two thousand and twenty three when the world became what the humans left class as uninhabitable. This world, too hostile to support life on its surface. This present, this world caused by humans who had anomalies in their control even history and the world at their feet. The arrogance of men resulted in the sulphur skies with unbreathable air, seas so full of methane that they can be set a flame but not drank. A world ripped by apart by the evolution of bats to form creatures more powerful and numerous than humans. With bugs that eat flesh and giant sea worms that that even fire can not kill. All this because by the knowledge of anomalies, you can see why most do not like Nick Cutter.

Then again people don't like most people as it is. The survival instinct of 'every man for himself' is one we all learn at an early age. Most parents don't keep the children they have, like mine; children are hard to keep alive so why bother when you have yourself to look after. Others keep the first one or two so that they have some to look after them when they get older. Older never old; I hear stories of how people used to get grey hair and wrinkles caused by age, some stories even say that they die happy in warm beds. But that doesn't seem likely to me, that those sort of things ever happened.

But maybe before the anomalies people did. Anomalies, gateways to different times everyone knows them. Some even understand the theory, a few of them even have proof that people played with them till they could do what they wished. Then man who saved me knows a lot Andrew Lester. His grandfather ran what is now known to be the starting blocks of the anomaly research. He ran the ARC – Anomaly Research Centre. Andy's grandfather stole most of the information we have and he hid it making sure it was safe. It was found after his death by his son Richard and a military faction leader known as smith. The both had ideas on how to fix the current world and both involved time travel. After the two men died at 40 and 45 respectively the two factions separated completely Andy following his father and a lot of people with guns following smith ideas. This has resulted in what we call the divide. The divide happened worldwide. Physical as well as moral divide. I live on the south side of the last habitual underground content with Andy and those who had come to believe that someone should go through an anomaly and change the past the way others had tried years earlier, by integrating someone into the past ARC. The North believed Smith's ideas of entering an anomaly to take charge of the ARC by force and learning to control the anomalies themselves, even if it meant killing people in the process.

The reason most of the people in the south don't agree with the north is not due to the violence or even the death. But these people are historically important during this time and the effects of their deaths or any dramatic action could result in an even worse present. History is important to our survival. The north ignored that small fact and sent a group of mean to the year that the ARC would be weakest but have the technology to control the anomalies. The year two thousand and thirteen. But we had sent two men back to 2010 to fix it before the men could get there. The problem was that we sent our men first, before my time really, I was three. We sent them before we had the complete picture, without the history. So Mr Anderson could not change the present we live in.

Andy has a plan to send another to the past to stop it. Today, he's going to send someone today. Not that I'm meant to be here but I wanted to see an anomaly with my own eyes. Humans don't go near the anomalies unless we have to the bats are always around the anomalies. And people generally can't escape the bats; they're taken as food for the young. It's a nice concept bring food to your young, sort of wish whoever my parents were had done that. But then again maybe I wouldn't be alive today if they had. I wouldn't have learnt to survive.

So now I'm hiding behind what use to be a building and I can see it. A ball of light, flashing and glittering in the dark. Illuminating the dirt in the world. It's beautiful a force of nature that humans used and abused till there was nothing but the sky crashing down to earth squashing anything in its path.

Then I hear it. The clicking, click, click, click. The bats they're here. Nick and the men gather in a circle guns pointing in every direction. While my I try to control my breathing, echolocation your doomed if your heart starts beating like a drum. Screams a man is grabbed. The new guys start to panic which is they're death sentence and my thought is proven when three more disappear. Blood sprays covering the ground, even me as a body is flung over me into what Andy calls a subway. Then it gets Andy and I stop thinking and just run. Next thing I know I'm alone completely Andy and his men they're gone. I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place; between several bats and an anomaly to two thousand and four. The clicking gets closer, I run through the light into a world I don't know or understand.

A phone rings. I rush up gasping for oxygen. Eventually I remember to answer the phone. There's an anomaly. Damn it's three in the morning. Oh well I role out of bed. Within thirty minutes I'm putting on a pair of blue high heels and getting into my car. Just another day at the ARC.