PHOTO PROMPT © David Stewart
“Change the past to save the future,” complained Simon as he trudged through Queens in the October rain.
“Go back to 1946 and kill him as an infant, they said.” He patted the loaded pistol in his pocket. “At least they got me off of death row and out of the joint,” he snarled.
“I’ll show them change. Yeah, I’ll do the kid, but I know where the other guy is in Boston right now.” He turned a corner and headed toward Jamaica Estates. “I’ll hop a train and do him, too. History’ll be really messed up without both Presidents.”
It’s Wednesday and time again to participate in Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ 24 October 2025 edition of Friday Fictioneers. The idea is to use the image above as the prompt for crafting a poem or short story no more than 100 words long. My word count is exactly 100.
Given all the political turmoil over “Orange Man Bad” and “No Kings,” plus the fact that I just finished reading a time travel novel, I decided to go really dark.
According to USA Today:
Trump was born on June 14, 1946, at Jamaica Hospital in Queens, New York, to real estate developer Fredrick Trump, Sr., and Scottish immigrant Mary Anne MacLeod Trump. They raised their five children, Maryanne, Elizabeth, Fred Jr., Donald, and Robert, in a five-bedroom, Tudor-style home in the Jamaica Estates section of Queens, a borough of New York City.
That’s where my fictional time traveling killer Simon would find the four month old in October of 1946.
However, at the same time, according to Google’s AI:
In 1946, twenty-nine year old John F. Kennedy was in Massachusetts, where he ran for and won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. He lived in Boston at the Hotel Bellevue and the Hotel 122 Bowdoin Street, using a room in the latter as his campaign headquarters for his campaign. He was also active in the Boston area for his campaign, giving speeches and participating in parades across the city.
Cover art for the anthology “Fantastic Schools Familiars”
Say either a secret organization within the government or a cabal of billionaire-financed social and political activists built a time machine for the express purpose of changing history in their favor. It probably wouldn’t be easy to find a person willing to kill a baby in his crib (would you murder an infant Adolf Hitler to prevent Nazi atrocities?), so they might have to get a psychopathic killer out of prison to do the job. But what if that killer was so wacked, that, once off the leash, he decided to make some really big changes.
Oh, Bill Clinton was born in August of 1946, just two months after Trump, and I briefly considered using him instead. However, there are tons of time travel stories about changing history by preventing Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. I just decided to twist that in the opposite direction.
Cover art for iSoldiers anthology by Shacklebound Books.
To read other stories based on the prompt, visit inlinkz.
I emailed the publisher and there’s been a small delay in “Fantastic Schools Familiars” going to press (but it will). It features my short story “Dead Cat Fever.”
What happens when a fifteen-year-old girl must retrieve a stolen magic book from a murderer? What happens when her only ally is a dead cat possessed by a demon?
“iSoldiers Anthology of Military Science Fiction” is now available and contains four of my military SciFi drabbles. The skill to create those “100 word” stories was honed right here on “Friday Fictioneers. You can order it at Amazon.
There are several more announcements coming up but I can’t talk about them until the contracts are signed and I get the publisher’s permission. Stay tuned.
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Ahhh… the time-travel conundrum: When one changes one event, one cannot see all the subsequent interactions that are changed as well. Both Star Trek Voyager and Star Trek Enterprise invoked interactions with Starfleet personnel from their future whose job it was to police the timelines (plural). The writers properly envisioned the difficulties of computing multiple possibilities, and even their effects on the memories of affected parties. One needn’t envision anything so gross and misanthropic as the “murder-your-grandfather” paradox. It could be enough merely to change some small event and a person’s life could change entirely. JFK might never become president and thus would not be assassinated. DJT likewise. Even Hitler and his Holocaust could be prevented by a subtle change.
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In Simon’s case, he just wanted to create chaos. Time travel stories can’t be taken too seriously because trying to calculate the consequences of one big change, let alone two, would be impossible.
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Dear James,
And then what…?
Shalom,
Rochelle
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And then what indeed, Rochelle? With Kennedy dead at age twenty-nine, he wouldn’t run against Nixon for President. Would another Democrat take his place as POTUS or would Nixon have one. Once you’ve changed that event, all history would probably be drastically altered. You might not even have to kill Trump, since events might have taken him, the nation, the whole world in fact, on a different trajectory.
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congrats on the publishing success! What an interesting premise, stealing a magical book from a murder per and an ally in a dead cat.
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Now if it will just see the light of day. Zombie cat familiar and disenfranchised teenage girl. What’s not to like? 😀
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Time travel as an observer is a concept I can get my head round. Anything else becomes imponderable.
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And Simon is far more than just an observer. Thanks.
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I enjoyed this – it’s mind blowing, trying to imagine all the variables – with what’s going on over in your country, I am not surprised the idea popped into your head James 🙌
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It was inevitable. Thanks.
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Great research and the provoking
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*thought
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Thank you.
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Going back in time to eliminate a baby means we miss out on all the fun, he will only be replaced by another equally bad man.
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That’s usually how these things play out, James. Thanks.
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Ooh, fascinating! Time travel… yes, please!
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Thanks.
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Who doesn’t love a good time travel story? But changing history could be dicey; a case of the devil we know.
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That’s true, Nancy. A lot of time travel stories end up with the altered present being worse instead of better.
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I think we may need to go back quite a bit farther than that to really bring about change- but I will admit you are off to a good start.
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The further back you go, the most likely you are to change just about everything with less effort. Thanks, Violet.
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I always love a time travel story. At the end I gasped, “why Kennedy?” Probably the family wouldn;t get into politics. Bobby would live and not be assassinated, and Ted wouldn’t become Senator – would he still have that drunk driving accident at Chappadaqua? Maybe they would become like the Trumps and go from bootlegging to grifting. Killing Trump wouldn’t do much to save the US. In the 21st Century there are plenty narcissistic stooges who could become puppets. Although, it would have been nice to grow up in Queens NY without having to read or hear about “The Donald” or as I called him “male chauvinistic pig.” There’s so much to contemplate here.
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The rest of the Kennedys would still get into politics because their whole family was wired for money and power going back to their patriarch Joe during the Prohibition. As to “why Kennedy?” JFK’s assassination is one of the focal points for time travelers, one of the places and times they all visit. I just twisted the point a bit and had him assassinated a decade-and-a-half early. It’s all in fun and no one was really hurt in the writing of my story.
Trump is considered somewhat unique in our political arena, so it’s possible he wouldn’t have a replacement with quite his narcissism. Since all time travel stories are really just wish fulfillment, I guess we’ll never know.
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