Science had advanced far faster than anyone had dared to imagine.
Concepts that were relegated to the realm of fiction just a decade or two prior had rapidly materialized into reality. Ultimately, it culminated in humanity's greatest triumph: the conquest of aging.
Though the maximum human lifespan still hovered around a hundred and twenty years, the specter of natural decay had been banished. Life expectancy had soared, granting the illusion of immortality. Humanity had eagerly looked forward to an era of boundless time, envisioning a glittering, infinite future.
That was, until the asteroid appeared.
---
Kim Ki-woo watched the gray plume of cigarette smoke catch the breeze and scatter into nothing.
He stared blankly at the cruelly blue sky. It looked so peaceful, almost as if it were mocking the zenith of human civilization built beneath it.
'Is this the last time I'll see it?'
Beyond that serene azure veil, in the cold vacuum of space, the colossal asteroid Narvas was hurtling toward Earth. In less than twenty-four hours, it would make impact.
The result was indisputable. Earth would be rendered entirely uninhabitable. No matter how desperately the optimists argued, there was zero possibility of survival for anyone left on the surface.
'Why now?'
Ki-woo resented the heavens. If they had only been given a few more decades, humanity might have become a true interplanetary species. They could have engineered a way to divert the rock. They were standing right on the precipice of a technological singularity—a scientific revolution unlike anything in history was just out of reach.
But time was the one thing humanity no longer had.
Ki-woo took another deep, final drag of his cigarette and exhaled a thick cloud, but the suffocating weight in his chest remained entirely immovable.
"I knew you'd be up here."
The gruff voice belonged to Song Seong-jung. It was a voice Ki-woo knew entirely too well.
Ki-woo didn't bother turning around. "What are you doing out here? You don't even smoke."
"Just came to see your pathetic face one last time," Seong-jung chuckled.
"Bullshit. You came to get me because the preparations are finished."
"Sharp as a ghost, aren't you? Come on, let's go. The director is waiting."
Ki-woo finally turned around. As the old saying went, you couldn't spit on a smiling face. Despite the impending apocalypse, Seong-jung was grinning.
Seeing that forced smile made Ki-woo blurt out his next thought before he could filter it. "Aren't you afraid?"
He regretted the words instantly. Voicing anxiety out loud was an unspoken taboo within the research institute right now. He opened his mouth to apologize, but Seong-jung cut him off.
"Of course I'm afraid." Seong-jung's smile faltered, his voice going dry. "I thought I was finally free from death, and now I'm about to die anyway. Who wouldn't be terrified? You know exactly how chaotic it is outside these walls."
It was true. Ever since the Narvas trajectory had gone public, the world had descended into pure panic. The only ones with even a sliver of hope were the ultra-rich, fleeing on experimental spaceships—and even their odds of survival were abysmal.
Seong-jung sighed, clapping a hand on Ki-woo's shoulder. "But we can't just stand around shivering. We have to cling to whatever we have. If you're done with your mental prep, let's head down. The director isn't known for his patience."
"Yeah. Let's go."
Ki-woo knew exactly what Seong-jung meant by whatever we have.
It was a gamble with a probability of success infinitely close to zero. But it was humanity's absolute last resort—the most powerful kick they could muster against their extinction.
---
Vrrrrrrrr!
The deafening hum of the supercomputer powering up battered Ki-woo's eardrums, amplified by the heavy silence in the chamber. His heart hammered violently against his ribs. His mouth tasted like ash.
"One minute to activation. Commence final checks," the director's clinical voice echoed through the intercom.
Moving with practiced precision, Ki-woo inspected his gear. His protective suit, the heavy-duty safety boots, his tactical goggles, the heavy survival backpack, and the parachute strapped tight against his spine. He ran through the checklist for the tenth time. Everything was secure.
Not that a problem would stop the launch now. The moment the facility's power grid dumped its colossal energy reserves into this unperfected time machine, the blast doors had sealed. There was no abort sequence.
To survive, Ki-woo had to warp precisely into Earth's atmosphere at a point in the distant past. If he didn't, he was dead.
This entire project was a desperately funded hypothesis. A gamble paid for with astronomical funds and the lives of ten volunteers, including Ki-woo. If the destruction of Earth wasn't imminent, a theory like this wouldn't have been practically tested for centuries.
The odds were laughable. There was no guarantee the machine would actually send him backward in time, and even if it did, the temporal coordinates were unstable. Space was vast, and Earth was merely a speck of dust. He could materialize in the vacuum of space and be torn apart instantly. He could warp into solid bedrock and be entombed forever. Even if he miraculously hit the atmosphere, he might plunge into the middle of the ocean and drown.
It felt less like a scientific mission and more like an elaborate, multi-billion-dollar method of suicide.
But someone had to try. It just happened to be him.
The mission was simple in concept, if impossible in execution: survive the jump, accelerate humanity's scientific development in the past by decades or centuries, and alter the future. If he succeeded, humanity might be able to deflect Narvas or evacuate Earth before the asteroid ever arrived.
"Five. Four. Three."
The countdown snapped him out of his thoughts. The numbers ticked down mercilessly from the speaker.
As the sound reached zero, a crushing, inhuman pressure slammed into Ki-woo's body, tearing his consciousness away into the dark.
---
A violent roar of wind tore Ki-woo back to reality.
He gasped, his eyes flying open as freezing air battered his body. Through the thick lenses of his tactical goggles, the world spun wildly.
'Sky! Clouds!'
'Did it actually work?'
He was in free-fall, plummeting dangerously fast toward the surface. The crushing pull of gravity felt like a miracle; he had never loved the sensation so much in his life. He had run through this exact skydiving simulation eight times during training, and muscle memory quickly took over. Shifting his limbs, Ki-woo stabilized his descent and rapidly regained his bearings.
'Where am I?'
He scanned the sprawling landscape below. Thankfully, it wasn't the ocean. Instead, a vast, untouched expanse of green plains and dense forests stretched out to the horizon, split by the winding silver ribbon of a massive river.
There was no concrete. No glass. No grids of light, roads, or smog. The complete absence of modern civilization hit him like a physical blow.
'The probability of finding an undeveloped plain like this in the modern era is zero. That means... I actually made it to the past! The crazy bastards actually did it!'
A sudden, euphoric thrill sent goosebumps rippling across his skin. Against impossible odds, the warp had succeeded.
But he aggressively forced his rising emotions down. The rush of victory was a luxury he couldn't afford right now. The ground was rushing up to meet him. Survival had to come first.
'I need to hit the river.'
Regardless of the era or continent, human civilization always gathered around fresh water. It was the absolute foundation for agriculture and survival. He needed to make contact. Calculating his trajectory, Ki-woo reached back and pulled the ripcord.
Crack!
A violent jerk launched him upward as the parachute caught the air, drastically killing his momentum. He hung in the harness, drifting steadily toward the riverbanks.
It was a massive waterway, wider and longer than most he recognized, though without modern borders, he couldn't identify it. He kept his eyes locked on the shoreline, burning the geography into his memory.
As he drifted lower, a cluster of dark spots came into view near the water.
'People?'
Ki-woo narrowed his eyes against the wind. They looked like ants from this height, but they were definitely moving like humans. There were about ten or fifteen of them.
'Perfect.' This was the absolute best-case scenario. To leapfrog scientific progress, he couldn't live as a hermit; he needed to integrate into an existing human society immediately.
As the ground grew closer, the blurry figures came into sharp focus, revealing striking details. They were dressed in crude animal hides and furs, their hair adorned with woven feathers. In their hands, they gripped primitive wooden spears and bows.
A single word flashed through Ki-woo's mind.
'Indians?'
More accurately, Native Americans. As he descended the final hundred feet, the realization cemented itself. He was in the Americas.
'Damn, I landed in America.'
He had prepared contingencies for this, though secretly, he had prayed for Asia. Pre-Columbian America meant starting from a severely low technological baseline. It would be an uphill battle to industrialize without a pre-existing foundation. Still, it was infinitely better than being stranded in the harsh Australian outback or on an isolated Pacific island. And Europe would have been a nightmare of racial hostility.
A sudden commotion broke his train of thought. Shouting drifted up from the riverbank.
Ki-woo glanced down at the gathering crowd. A short, breathless chuckle escaped his lips.
The natives had dropped their weapons. They were kneeling in the dirt, their heads bowed low to the earth, worshiping the strange man falling from the sky like a descending god.