It’s not easy to understand…

“Look, David, stop this foolish attempt…
I understand you want to be a hero, but this is not a game, nor a novel…
This is real life!”
I said, trying to stop my best-friend from entering the values into the machine.
But he pushed me away.
“Look, Angeline, is it so wrong to want to save our species?”
He asked.
“Fool! We are safe! We inhabit a different planet now, but we spread across the galaxy!
It’s alright now!”
I shouted.
“Yes, but we almost went extinct once…back on Earth…
A great calamity happened, and with our knowledge and technology…
I am sure I can stop it!
If time travel is widely used, why shouldn’t we use it for such a great cause?!”
He exclaimed.
“Because we don’t know what made us almost go extinct!
We know nothing but that we left our solar system and our numbers were in the low tens of millions!
That’s it.
With no proper information, we can’t time travel, otherwise we might make things worse and even get stuck there, since the machine could implode due to the temporal waves!”
I argued.
“It’s still worth the risk.
Sorry.”
He said jumping in the machine.
“Fuck this…”
I said, going after him.
Slamming the door shut, he gasped.
“What are you doing?
You know that door won’t open until we travelled back in time!”
He shouted.
“I won’t let you idiot go alone.
You might not even survive a day without me there.”
I shrugged.
I didn’t care anymore.
If he wants to wreck his life, and maybe destroy humanity, then at least I shall try to minimize the impact.
“You…
What will your boyfriend think?”
He asked.
“The same thing as your wife, smartass.
That we eloped together.
Nobody with a sane mind would ever think we actually travelled back in time, to a period which is strictly FORBIDDEN.”
I rolled my eyes.
He sighed.
Soon the time-machine started to make a weird whooshing sound.
“We are almost there.”
I said.
David nodded.
With a loud thud, the machine landed.
The screen in the center of the machine read “2111”.
“We are back on Earth…10 years before the calamity was said to have started.”
David said.
“We can still go back…
This is madness.”
I said.
“You can’t persuade me.
The time machine is in stealth mode, and it has plenty of food, you can stay on it if you don’t want to see…Earth.”
He said.
Earth…
Our home planet, that’s where we…humanity … began.
I sighed.
The temptation was too strong.
I followed him out the machine, and we stepped into a rather lush, rich and peaceful looking…forest.
It was beautiful…
Just like in the future, albeit with different herbs and trees, but still.
“This…this isn’t like in the records…
The planet looks healthy…even too healthy…”
I said.
“Trees were like wires, thin and metallic.
Grass, insects and even animals were mutated and poisonous and venomous at the same time…
The air was barely breathable and the sun was scorching the lands, whilst the night sky froze everything underneath it…
This is nothing like that, even though it is but 10 years early…”
David murmured.
He was murmuring something out of a history book of ours.
We were both really interested in ancient history, especially regarding our civilization…
But this was way too different, even if our records are skewed, they shouldn’t be this wrong…
“Let’s go, research a bit, maybe…maybe this is the last sanctuary…”
He said.
We went back to the machine, and changed our clothes.
We had some machines and devices hidden under our skin, nails and so on, but other than those, we had nothing on us, lest we upset history.
We went out and looked for a town.
We quickly found one, and blended in effortlessly, after all, we could speak almost all languages from this period of time. (yes, I am bragging.)
Although, we were a bit taller, better built, and with a strange eye color, nobody seemed to care.
“Cosplayers…
They think we are cosplayers.”
I laughed.
David nodded.
“It’s better this way…but…
The situation is much different than what we learnt about…”
He said.
Indeed.
After an almost world wide war, the countries got together to form an united body of governance, and started to properly tackle problems.
In 6 decades since then, humanity has advanced in a nature friendly way, and the planet’s health started to shine once more.
Technologies are all energy saving ones, and one’s closeness to nature is really valued…
This is a far cry from our current state, in which few galactic civilizations can hold a candle to our technological advancements.
We enjoyed the weather and the people for a  few weeks, before returning to the machine…
But it was gone…
“Do you think someone stole it?”
I asked David.
“Maybe, but I think it’s worse than that…”
He sighed.
I paled.
“We…we are the destroyers, right?”
I said.
He nodded.
“No way that in 10 years this world with mutate into an uninhabitable one…
Not without…external interference…
And the present technology can’t do that, especially since nuclear energy is not used anymore…”
He said.
“Only we can…we can properly…destroy this new balance…”
I said.
He nodded.
“So…you came back to save humanity, and yet, we are now supposed to destroy it.
Let me get this off my chest.
I fucking told you!”
I said, pushing him.
“No problem.
We are saving it!
From mediocrity.”
He said, already fiddling with his devices.
“use those devices before they also disappear…
Also, mediocrity? I find this environment much better than ours…”
I said.
Although I said that, I also started to use my devices to hack the present systems, and start to plan for a…total wasteland project…
It’s not easy to understand time travel…
You plan to become a hero and save someone from a villain, and when you travel back to do so…you find that you need to be the villain…
It’s not easy to understand…