As a scientist, firmly believing in his duty to help all of mankind wherever possible, he devoted his research to that final unconquered frontier: time travel. After years of tireless effort, the machine was ready for his voyage into the future. He hoped to find a wonderland of technology with panacea for all, a world free of pain and suffering that he could import back into the here and now of his own time.
The temporal vortex was a whirling maelstrom of innumerable colors and sensations. The magnetic flux seemed stronger than he had expected, but it was within acceptable parameters. It was too late to abort the time transit now, in any case.
He emerged immediately aware something had gone terribly wrong. A low, droning tone, metallic like some great iron cog struggling to turn, bored into his ears. The pressure of this noise was deafening, omnipresent and relentless. He vomited until it turned to a dry heave, and still the sound pounded on. Acclimating to the conditions as much as possible, he was horrified as he saw that instead of a glittering paradise, the city was a flaming heap of rubble. Shattered concrete and twisted steel lay under a smog-choked sky. What catastrophe had caused this? Could it be averted? He had to know and do whatever was within his power to set things right.
On and on, that noise pounded ominously as he traversed the ruins. Reaching the peak of a slope of debris and rubble, he stood on a precipice before an obliterated landscape. His jaw dropped, but not merely from the scale of the devastation. He'd found the source of the sound.
It was gigantic, a colossus looming over everything, it looked like a walking junkyard or an upright, nightmarish factory. Standing upright on two legs made of mangled girders, crumpled catwalks, and intertwined metal cables, it stomped with boots like immense bricks of lead, each step an earthquake, at a ponderous pace, shaking the very earth. It had two arms like piles of broken-down vehicles, the remains of old appliances, and disfigured armor plating. Its body resembled a mound of crushed junk, like some twisted, animate sculpture made of all the world's wreckage. Two smoldering molten kilns flared blazing orange glow from its head like eyes. Its torso was a mess of industrial machinery mashed together for some unfathomable purpose, with rusted pistons, gears, and pipes spewing smoke and steam. It lumbered forward, crushing the standing buildings and structures underfoot with ease, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. It was like a force of nature, unstoppable and indiscriminate.
Far away in the distance, in the shadow of the metal monstrosity, figures scurried, like ants compared to it. The leviathan plucked them up, placing them in its maw to be gnashed and ground. Conveyor belts on the surface of its structure processed people into place for pistons to pulp and rollers to churn. Its chest cavity fed them into boiler openings where flames belched and engulfed them. From chimneys jutting from its shoulders, blackened smoke billowed out in noxious clouds. It was a mobile, mechanized murder mill, striding over the earth, laying waste to everything in its path.
The scientist quivered. This dark future could not be allowed to come to pass. He re-engaged the timestream, vowing to find some way to prevent this abomination from coming to be. Again, a kaleidoscope of color flashed before him. His thoughts preoccupied with whatever could have originated that iron behemoth, it was too late to respond before a tidal wave of magnetic force slammed into him.
Tumbling out of control, he tumbled through time as his atoms were realigned by unimaginable forces. Flickering helplessly through dimensions, a cloud of vaporized steel was drawn to his magnetized body, bonding and fusing molecularly with his skin and bones, coating him in and out with alloy.
The time machine stopped its work, depositing him sprawled in a fetal pose. More a lump of metal than man, unable to move yet conscious and wracked with pain, he lay there on the sidewalk like a distasteful statue. Pedestrians gave him a wide berth, uncertain what to think of this grotesque art installation that had appeared overnight. "Help me… why won't you help me?" he pleaded within his ferrite brain, powerless against their indifference.
Seasons passed, cold winters and harsh summers. His shape was worn and eroded, rusting in the rain. He turned bitter. Neglected, abandoned like so much refuse while children scrawled graffiti onto him or ran past unknowing and uncaring as the clock ticked ever onward. He vowed revenge. There would be no more charity or goodwill, only malice and hatred for all that ignored him in his time of need. They would suffer, and all who came after them.
As he stewed with impotent fury, by force of willpower a sense he'd not felt in ages came to him: motion. A tiny creak of articulation turned into a grinding, halting movement. Slowly, awkwardly, he managed to lumber his weight of tons to his feet. With monumental effort, he took one ponderous step, then another. Pavement