Oh, boy. My entire internet career has been building up to this article. I started doing a cartoon strip for the sole reason that I would be able to write this article at some point. Now, I feel, the moment has arised to - hey, who are you? What are you doing in my URK

(thump)

Hello? My name is Kain. I am a warrior from the twenty-fourth century. It has been decided unanimously by the ragged remnants of the United Nations to instigate this mission. I have been sent back here, to the early twenty-first century, to prevent something that will cause the dystopian society our world has become.

Just a few short months after this article was put up, a great depression descended upon the Earth. The new generations became apathetic to an as yet unheard of degree. They universally refused to vote, even when in desperation the voting age was reduced to 12. Young men stopped enrolling into university or the armed forces. Without armies, or educated people to construct new weapons, the war in Iraq ended up as a group of ten or eleven old men having a punch-up in the streets of Baghdad, which Iraq eventually won, although UN investigators later discovered that some of them were using sticks.

With voter apathy leaving democracy in a total shambles, only the most right-wing of the population bothered to vote, and as such 60% of the world's nations were seized by madmen who turned them into fascist dictatorships. Each one persecuted the others, but again without weaponry or armies all they could do was line up along the borders and sling rocks. Within ten generations, no-one could be bothered to get a job. Production of all manufactured products halted. Food became sparse, and there would no doubt have been rioting in the streets if anyone could have been arsed to leave their homes. Soon, however, when the last of the TV operators died and there was no-one left to run the big TV stations, people began to gingerly venture outside and form half-hearted gangs which looted shops if the shops were available, you know, but otherwise just sat around playing board games.

Just a few short years ago one of these gangs - of which I was a member - dawdled into an abandoned suburban house somewhere in middle England, now thought to be this house. There we found a defunct, long-forgotten computer gathering dust in the corner, strewn with spider webs. A skeletal operator sat in front of it, having apparently been electrocuted to death. It took us two years to get the computer running (a task which became a lot simpler when we discovered the instruction manual), and when we did, it had an interesting tale to tell.

The sentient AI inside the mainframe (which for some reason insisted we address it as H. Doggie) told us that it had been dormant inside the computer, left powered down for centuries, and had had enough time to complete its research into time travel. Its brilliant mind had developed blueprints for a working device, and it told us it knew what had caused the disillusionment of the entire world's youth many years ago. If one of us could go back in time to prevent the event, then the world would be changed for the better.

The mass despair had been caused by a young writer of cynical websites, the previous owner of the mainframe, who in a moment of weakness had written an article of such supreme awfulness that it brought inconsolable depression upon all who gazed upon it. Only a few thousand saw the article, but it was enough. The essay was so bad that it spread sadness like a disease, making it radiate off all it came into contact with. Millions of people lost all interest in life, work and the world around them. If the article could be averted, humanity would be safe.

That's why I'm here. I have clubbed the author into unconsciousness before he could write the fateful article, and as I write am deleting all notes pertaining to it. I can only hope he does not try to write it again.

Now then, before I return to the future, I have orders from my superiors to print the following haiku. It was judged the winner of the recent Kelloggs Corn Flakes 'Write A Poem For The People Of The Past' competition.

"People of the past,
Beware the lizard creatures,
They smell of old ham."

- by Dennis, aged 8

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