"What would you do if you could save something you've lost?"
"Everything."
"Something that wasn't in your power to save. What would you do to have the power?"
"Everything."
"Even if it means getting lost in time?"
"I would still."
"Even if it means not being thanked by what you saved?"
"That would make me want it even more."
"Even if it means losing everything?"
"For something I loved - I would, and more."

Falling.

After that it was just days of drifting in and out of reality. I would see myself being pushed down a hospital corridor for a lucid few seconds, but then a spot in the wallpaper would swallow me up and tumble me around like a washer. I'd be jacked up to an IV in the ward for a bit then the stripes in the bedspread would swallow my neck. I would vividly feel the orderlies change me then a drop of my own saliva would cast me into a world of flashing multicolored lights for hours.

Then the dreams just stopped. I was in an empty ward, parched for water. I couldn't turn my head at all. Two police officers came in.

"I'm James Wilson," said the white man, "and you can call me Wilson."

"I'm James Taylor," said the black man. "Taylor."

"You are a time traveler," said Wilson, as he showed me my phone. "From sometime in the 2020s, I presume."

"What year is it?" I stammered.

"You appeared where a building would have been in the future, but does not exist now. You fell 32 feet. You're lucky to be alive." Taylor ignored my question.

"Which brings me. In this timeline we get a constant drip of people traveling from other timelines, with a wish." Wilson said with an aura of authority.

"What kind of wish?" I croaked, desperate for an answer.

"It depends," Taylor finally acknowledged me, "some come with grand wishes, to revive failed political causes or former states. And if their wish is granted, a lot of people who will be alive in the future, will never have been born in the first place."

"And well, their past selves are still alive. So no one was killed," Wilson slowly turned his head.

"Others come to save family members, their favorite hangouts as kids, or hell, even pets. Those we don't care about." Taylor offered hope.

"But on one condition," reminded Wilson, "that they tell us everything they know about the future."

"This is my wish," I almost forced out of my lungs.

I spoke of my time. I spoke of the walls fast closing in on the last bastions of Internet freedom; old anon tactics now being turned back on their successors with overawing force; despair, destruction, dissension. I spoke of the last hurrah of the free internet as it became more corporate and government controlled, as everything went to hell. My sore throat made me feel like I spoke for two hours, but it turned out the minute hand had only moved a quarter of the way around as I finished. I spoke of Systemspace.

In the anteroom I could hear Wilson and Taylor arguing over my fate indistinctly as I sweated in my hospital gown. I looked around as best as I could, trying to take in what I was sure would be the last thing I ever saw. Finally the door creaked open again. "Tell us everything you know about the future," Wilson said sternly.