In the chill pre-dawn glow, six armed men crept quietly through the snowy woodland just south of Anchorage. It was just before 5:30 am on March 20, and on a typical day, their target, former Duluth-Superior Magazine publisher Marti Buscaglia, would just be waking up. But as soon as they kicked open the downstairs window of her house, they knew something was wrong. There were no barking dogs to be subdued, no alarms to disable. Worse: the target was gone.
“I barely escaped in time,” Buscaglia said.
An appropriate choice of words, considering her destination. For Buscaglia had truly fled in time. Forensics experts at the site discovered an energy signature proving Buscaglia had left the era in a crude but functional time machine. The 50-something magazine publisher, known for her strict leadership and negotiating prowess, had decided to risk everything to gain a new title: savior of print media.
It hadn’t always been this way. When Buscaglia started her career in advertising and made her way up the corporate ladder to publisher of the Duluth News-Tribune, she just knew she enjoyed the challenge of running a major organization. “Duluth is a great community,” Buscaglia said over a transdimensional phone call [Ed: $4999 a minute on AT&T but surprisingly just $19.99 a minute on Skype]. “I wanted to help it grow.”
But, while traveling to California to take a job there, everything changed. On her way to her hotel late one night, the road exploded with gunfire in front of her. She fled into the woods on foot but was confronted by several armed soldiers in futuristic metal skinsuits. Suddenly, the soldiers fell back one by one as light flashed. A woman wearing a jetpack and holding a laser rifle floated down into the clearing. When she flipped up her visor, Buscaglia was shocked.
“It was me,” Buscaglia says. “From the future.”
An alternative future, to be precise. The other woman (who introduced herself as Commander Marti Buscaglia), said she had come from a version of 2055 where the last publishers of newspapers were engaged in an epic battle with armed soldiers from the cable news networks. The TV shock troops’ goal? To destroy all knowledge not related to sports or reality shows among the common people, so that only the 1% would be educated.
“They say knowledge is power,” Buscaglia said. “So I knew I had to fight.”
Future Marti said that even in this timeline, it was already too late to save California; the state that gave the world Baywatch and The Hills. (She said New Jersey was a lost cause too). But Minnesota could still possibly be saved. Future Marti would have to venture back and start a magazine to get people reading again.
“Also,” Future Marti suggested, “You should hire a good looking restaurant writer and web editor.”
So she (Present Tense Buscaglia) did. Duluth-Superior Magazine was established, the handsome young writer  {Editors note: The Northland Inquirer’s notoriously meticulous fact checker has been unable to ascertain the accuracy of the previous statement} joined the team,and the publication began to flourish. But trouble soon came to the Zenith City. After a performance of The Nutcracker, five heavily armored men in cybernetic suits knocked on the doors of the Minnesota Ballet.
“They said they wanted to be dancers and needed a place to stay,” artistic director Robert Gardener said. “They had these weird synthesized sounding voices. I told them we already had enough dancers, and besides, they couldn’t bring weapons into the studio, so they got mad and left. It was actually kind of funny once you got over how weird it was.”
When Gardener recounted the story to Present Tense Buscaglia, though, her reaction was quite different.
“Marti really took it hard,” he recalls. “She just kept saying, ‘I’ve got to get out of here.’”
Present Tense Buscaglia knew what few others could have. The men weren’t just aspiring dancers with nothing but a dream in their hearts and a few hundred pounds of robotically controlled lethal weaponry on their bodies. They were that, of course,  but also much more than that.
“It was Good Morning America from the other timeline,” she said. “I had to escape.”
Newspapers were dying and now the TV people were here. It was already too late for this world’s print media. She realized her only hope was to do what her mentor had done--travel back in time and make changes.
But to create a time machine, she would need allies. As the future’s shock troops closed in, she approached a long-time foe--the Duluth News-Tribune’s Robin Washington.
“I was shocked to see her in my office,” Washington says. “After she explained, she said, ‘Robin, we’ve had our differences. But print media? That’s bigger than all of us. And it needs our help.’
Washington asked Buscaglia why she would turn to him (Washington) of all people?
Present Tense Buscaglia’ response galvanized Washington: “Who else could I turn to. Ken Browall?”
“I couldn’t say no.”
She moved to Alaska and Washington stayed back in Duluth, keeping watch over the situation. And then, in late February this year, things came to a head.
“I couldn’t keep funding Duluth-Superior Magazine and continue building my time machine,” Present Tense Buscaglia (hereafter abbreviated as P.T. ) said. “So it had to go.”
And just in time. For just a day after the magazine shut its doors, Washington burst into the offices of the Alaska newspaper where P.T. Buscaglia had been hiding.
“It’s the Today Show from tomorrow,” he gasped. “They know where you are.”
The two hopped on to Washington’s Harley and raced across the tundra. It would be mere hours before the Today Show’s hovercraft made it to the house.
“It was a desperate race,” P.T. Buscaglia says. “We took every shortcut we could, skipped every safety precaution, but it still wasn’t enough.”
Just before dawn, Washington put the final microchip in place; and the rudimentary time machine began warming up. Suddenly, there was a strange noise outside…
“I almost had a heart attack,” P.T. Buscaglia says. “I grabbed my dogs, Robin jumped in behind me, and we flipped the switch.”
The room sizzled with energy and the four disappeared. The television troops arrived less than a minute later. Duluth-Superior Magazine may be gone. But print media? Perhaps that will be saved.

Time, as they say, will tell.