Henry Harbinger has spent years living a life so orderly it has drained the color from everything around him. His work is precise, his habits are rigid, and every evening ends the same way—staring at the same dull wall, wondering how long he can endure it. Then one night, the wall answers back.
What begins as an impossible conversation with a drifting pair of eyes and a disembodied voice turns into something far more dangerous: a connection across time. On the other side is a man just as weary as Harbinger, trapped in a future where perfection has erased purpose and effort has no reward. Between them grows a bold idea—one that promises escape, reinvention, and a chance to live a life that finally feels real.
The plan is simple in theory: trade places. Step into a new identity. Walk into a different century and start again. For Harbinger, it means becoming someone else entirely—someone with freedom, resources, and the chance to break away from everything that has held him in place. But time is not a place you can enter without risk.
As the moment of exchange arrives, a single careless mistake ripples through the machinery meant to carry him forward. Instead of a clean escape, something far stranger happens—something neither man can control, and neither can undo.
Now, glimpses of them appear in the most unlikely places—seen for only an instant, heard for only a moment—before vanishing again. And if you happen to catch one of those fleeting signs, you may be left with the same unsettling question: Which of them is still trying to find his way back?
Mel Hunter’s “Or Darwin, If You Prefer” blends quiet humor with eerie imagination, turning a simple desire for change into a haunting encounter with time itself. It’s a story that begins with boredom and ends somewhere far less certain.
Mel Hunter was an American illustrator and writer whose work appeared in science fiction magazines during the 1950s and 1960s.
