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Down in the Dirt v056

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Decrepit Remains
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 Decrepit Remains, the 2008 Down in the Dirt collection book
Litigants

Barton Hill

    Hello, my name is Thomas Wilson, former owner and President of Happy Travel. Happy Travel was the first successful commercial time traveling company in the world geared toward the tourist.
    When time travel was first introduced it was used solely for military and scientific research projects, but as it became more technically and economically advanced Happy Travel came to exist in order to attract the public who clamored to be sent somewhere, or perhaps I should say, to “some time”.
    In the beginning we had more customers than facilities. As business grew we were careful not to over saturate the market, but we also managed to keep competition to a minimum. This was easy to do since we held the majority of patents necessary to build our time travel facilities. Plus, we had low prices and used advertising to our advantage.
    At times, prices were so low that we lost money. As you can imagine, the government levied several large fines against us, but we managed to survive, since the fines could not be so large as to put us out of business.
    Shortly, our mission was accomplished. We had cornered every available market in every inhabitable continent on the planet. Who says crime doesn’t pay?
    So there we were, the pinnacle of success. Not a day went by that people didn’t line up to take a trip to another time.
    Business was booming! People wanted to see their great ancestors or their great-great descendants. Others wanted to witness the Battle of Gettysburg or the Normandy invasion. Some wanted to be present for the birth of Jesus. Nearly any time period was available and for a price Happy Travel sent you there.
    But sadly, as I said earlier, I was the President of Happy Travel. I wasn’t fired, but you could say I was downsized.
    You see Happy Travel no longer exists. In fact, no form of commercial time travel exists. What remains is strictly controlled by the militaries of the world.
    The cause of our downfall is not that we were losing people in space or that folks were successfully evading capture from legal authorities, but rather our downfall came from that most horrendous creature ever to be created by man and society—the Lawyer.
    You have to understand that there were many people who wanted to change history in order to suit their own desires. In some cases these would be minor variations such as buying stock at its IPO in order to amass a fortune in their own time, but in other cases people wanted to prevent the outbreak of war or to stop an epidemic. These subversive acts were corrected by our agents, with the offenders prosecuted to the full extent allowed by law.
    Then things began to change when clients, and even non-clients, claimed Happy Travel was negligent in its business practices. They claimed Happy Travel was negligent in letting a tragedy occur when it was known how to prevent the tragedy.
    For example: let’s assume you knew when your Mother was killed in an accident and by a bit of intervention her death could be prevented. Is it not the company’s responsibility to prevent her death? What about a large industrial accident, or the outbreak of war?
    As the lawsuits mounted our expenses quickly began to overtake our profits. It did not matter that we were successful against these lawsuits. With each new suit we had to defend ourselves against a different technicality or develop a new defense strategy.
    We were hemorrhaging money in the courts and our stocks were plummeting. Eventually, Happy Travel was forced to close its doors forever.
    Perhaps some day someone will figure out how to get rid of all the lawyers, but I don’t think that’s likely since we all know there was at least one lawyer in the Garden of Eden.



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