It’s 1991 and my parents unveil a small grey box with a small dark screen. They have bought a special table for it. They plug it in and stand back. It is the future, they say. A time machine. The screen emanates light. The box is quiet, smells of static. They place me in front of it. I am to be captain, it’s understood. I am eight and suddenly here is a thing I will always know more about than my parents. What a development! I click around. My parents gasp as I squiggle something in paint. A marvel like a moon landing. In its low light, my parents are projected back to their own childhoods; an old anticipation. Vannevar Bush in 1945: ‘The world has arrived at an age of cheap, complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it.’ They watch me and wait. Dad smokes, chews his nails.

Each day after school I spend an hour in front of an educational game designed to teach geography and history. Mum hovers, excited, but it’s boring. I like the TV more—a pool you fall into, accepting each wave as it comes. The time machine knows that in the future children will not be bored like this, and in the future I will be an adult who feels nostalgic for this boredom. When I am a child I tell mum I’m bored and she says go run around the block. I never take this suggestion but somehow I fill the time and years pass. We put a faded sheet over the time machine so the dust won’t damage its gears.