Los Angeles, California (USA): Sunday, January 1, 1922, 12:04 AM (local time)
"Oh, well, it's '22 now. Time for another year trying, and failing, to make it into the motion pictures," said a young man in an old suit, glancing at his pocket watch under the cold dark sky, sitting on a wooden crate at the end of the alley. Like so many young, idealistic souls before and since, he had come to California looking to get rich and maybe famous as well. It didn't take long for most such souls to be crushed. "Everyone back in Kansas is right: I can't even act like a young man from Kansas! Why did I come here? I haven't even been offered an audition in months!"
Just then, a hurried old man in a brand new trench coat came clopping down the street in high-end shoes.
"Well, this is it!" said the trench coat man to himself. "I've done it. I'm here, and I'm not going back. I'll never have to hear again about how I'm just a scammer and this thing I've invented could never work. The only question is now, how should I get rid of it?"
"Get rid of what?" asked the failed actor at the edge of the alley, noticing the scatter-brained speech and odd, glowing box with buttons on the side. "And what in the world are you holding?"
"Uh, uh, it's a ... a ... oh, whatever, I might as well tell you. It won't matter at all; nothing else ever seems to. This is my time machine. It hasn't been invented yet; I haven't even been born. I've just arrived from what you would call the future--a hundred years from this very night! Everyone in my time says that this invention can't possibly work, that time travel is most likely not possible, and that no one's found a way to do it even if it were. But I have! I can go anywhere in time just by setting the date with these buttons, and I can go back to my own time just by pressing this big red one."
"That's a very good plot," said the actor, "and you're a much better actor than me. Been a few years since I read the novel that Wells wrote about time travelers. Are they making into a movie already? Any chance you get me a part, too? I'd make a perfect extra!"
"Um, no, no, this is completely real. I'm Dr. Raymond Locksteed III, I'm from the future, and no one ever believes me. I wanted to help people change their lives for the better by going into the past and giving them a more favorable start to life, but nothing I do ever really changes the past. If I save an orphan's parents from one car crash, they just get killed in another. If I go back and get a homeless lady into an elite school when she is still a little girl, she just drops out and still ends up on the street. I've lost count of the number of times I've save President Kennedy in the '60s, but I always have to escape back to my own time before somebody kills me, too! Even have someone take a picture of me in the past--just to prove to my 21st century friends I was really in the past--the picture just gets lost through the decades, or I don't really look enough like myself in the photo. I can experience any moment in history, but I can't make any of them turn out differently for the benefit of anyone at all."
"Perfect," said the actor, "just perfect! Now all your picture needs is a climax. Why did you leave the future this time, Dr. Locksteed? Why are you here, trying to get rid of your time machine, ensuring that you can never return?"
"Didn't you hear what I was saying? I'm sick of time travel! I'm sick of the 21st century! Everyone there has closed their minds, and nothing I do here will help or hurt anyone I've ever known. The device won't take me to my own future, and I've always enjoyed spending time in the 1920's, so here I am. Living out what's left of my retirement in an age of jazz and silent films. Maybe I'll live long enough to see the early talkies, even the ones that are lost. At least the people here--as racist and sexist and religious as they are--are willing to think big. Within a thirty years, you'll invent atomic bombs and electronic brains! As for me, I'm done. I'm never pushing this red button again; I'm staying in the past. You can have it if you want it! Here you go: if you don't believe in it, or you find it as useless as I have, just toss it in the ocean and be done with it."
Dr. Locksteed tossed the device to the young actor and walked off. The actor, who still thought he was looking at a movie prop, was amazed about how realistically futuristic it looked. He thought it was too expensive to throw away for real. 'This guy must really want me in the movie after all!' he thought. He looked down the street at the old man with the trench coat and called out to him:
"Uh, thanks, 'Dr. Locksteed'! My name's Aaron Marshall Miller, and I'll be 21 next Thursday. You can find me here in this alley most nights. Thanks for putting in a good word for me to your director!"