Timecrunch

A superb and delicately written story, Timecrunch: the Trails of Death, is a compelling tale of the Adam family, who were wiped out in 2012. The mother, daughter and son were killed in their own house and the father, who found their bodies, put together a time capsule before killing himself. The time capsule is found seven thousand years later and the family is cloned from hairs found in the box. The family's journey in their new world exposes them to the wonders and delights of an advanced civilisation and a genuinely caring society based on neighbourly love. The son, 20-year old Brumin fails to adapt to his new life and develops feelings of revenge for those who ended the lives of his mother, sister and himself. The plan he hatches involves mastering the cloning process so that he can reproduce multiple copies of one of the killers - a hair of whom had found its way into the time capsule - and kill them off one by one. He greatly succeeds in his plan, but is stopped while his blade hurtles down to end the life of one of his victims. In the end Brumin wants to be punished, but the manner in which society responds to his crimes is an embarrassment to the justice system of the 21st century. The story contains a number of gems, from presentations of technologies of the future, to sobering critiques of 21st century society and interesting takes on science and popular music. All-in-all a shocking story that in the end cannot fail to lift the heart, as it points to the wonderful future that must be lying ahead.