"Gosh darn it, I must have set the dials wrong on this stupid thing," you mutter to yourself as you step out from your time machine to find that you have arrived in a time and place where NBA player Brook Lopez has just scored 33 points. Scrutinizing the arcane control panel, the configuration of which should have sent you forward to the year 3060 but apparently sent you backward to 2013, you slowly realize that the dials are all correct. If the time machine is functional, which you are quite sure it is, you should currently be inhabiting an era of man that takes place a full millennium after your own era. Perhaps there's another Brook Lopez in this era, although the picture on your phone certainly looks exactly like the Brook Lopez of your memories.
A normal-looking woman, dressed in a normal-looking outfit and not the shimmery space-age clothes that people in the future would probably wear, walks by. You get her attention. "Excuse me, could you tell me what year it is?"
"2021" is the answer you are given by the unsettled woman, who probably thinks she is interacting with some addled, drunk vagrant. You thank her for her time and return to your thoughts. The average citizen of this planet would have no reason to lie about something as easily verified as the current year. Yet, there is no way the Brook Lopez of 2021 could score 33 points in an NBA contest. There is simply no way. The only possible explanation is that the time machine has taken you back to 2013, where All-Star Brook Lopez of the Brooklyn Nets is a night-in night-out 20 PPG scorer, and could be reasonably expected to score 33 in a single contest.
But the evidence against this conclusion mounts. The picture on your phone depicts Lopez in a green-hued jersey. The Nets have never incorporated the color green into their color scheme. The headline on your phone mentions the Bucks beating the Hawks, but neither of those teams is the Nets. Your head spins. Nothing makes sense anymore. For Brook Lopez to dominate a playoff game in such a manner should be impossible if the year is, in fact, 2021. The very suggestion of it absurd. You are the one who is destined to hold dominion over the concept of time - Brook Lopez is not supposed to be able to turn back the hands of time by himself.
You cast your gaze disgustedly around your environment, then step back into your time machine. This time, you heedlessly spin the dials at random, brazenly setting a chrono-destination that is several million years in the future. Your mind can only think of one thing: getting as temporally distant from Brook Lopez and his 33 points as it is possible to get. With imagined scenes of hook shots and powerful dunks flashing in your mind, you slap the big red button and pray that you are whisked away into a future where such disrespectful displays of on-court dominance are a thing of the past.
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