We live in the Now. 

Time is relatively constant where we exist, and its passage makes its mark on everything. José refused to be a spectator and wanted to know more.

He was an unusual kid by any standard. In modern terminology he would be considered ADHD or PTSD, or any number of alphabet designations. In his era, he was just called weird.

Thick glasses, held together by white tape around the bridge, identified him as a homegrown science nerd. Behind the glasses there was a highly intelligent kid with a compulsive streak. Bad eyesight, inherited from some distant relative, lead to highly tuned ears detecting the quiet banshee singing beyond the Now. With access to discarded TV vacuum tubes and electronics scavenged from dumpsters behind the mall, he created a time machine. 

Cracking open the TimeWall didn’t allow him to travel the depth and breadth of Time as the tropes alleged. His worst fears were validated when he met himself, created only a step behind. Them, his Shadows, were snapshots of José’s last moment, and there were a lot of them, gray and thin as a molecule. The one-dimensional copies of his every existence, linked together with QTmBits, were not happy to see their host standing in front of them. 

Even skinny shadows have power, and José was pushed back to the Now. Passing through the TimeWall filled his head with detailed snippets of his life playing out in his dreams and waking life. The unexpected exit shorted out his Time device, and he was stuck in the Now like everyone else.

The first person to break through Time and return with evidence would gain the accolades of his fellow explorers. Being first meant he could always make a living trolling the university symposium circuit.

His only competition are the other TimeExplorers, the University, with their ProtonTimeGun, and the military, who didn’t care who won the race as long as they got the spoils.