▶The Long Way Home
“It is important to direct our intelligence with good intentions. Without intelligence, we cannot accomplish very much. Without good intentions, the way we exercise of our intelligence may have destructive results.” ~Dalai Lama
The first thing Dan noticed about 2026 was how loud it was. Not because the world itself had changed during the months he and Chris had been gone, but because after spending what felt like a lifetime in the year 2326, surrounded by towering cities that hummed with artificial intelligence, silent transportation systems, and technology so advanced it seemed almost magical, the sounds of small-town Tennessee hit him like a wave. The rumble of old pickup trucks, the distant bark of dogs, the creak of porch swings, and even the chirping of insects felt foreign now, as if he were visiting a place he had only read about in a history book.
The strange part was that Smithville still looked the same. The courthouse still stood in the center of town. The familiar restaurants are still where they have always remained. Gas stations till on the same corners, while the same hills rolled into the distance beneath a bright almost summer sky. Yet everything felt different. Maybe because Dan had changed. Maybe because Chris had changed. Or maybe because once a man had seen three hundred years into humanity's future, he could never truly come home again.
Dan stood outside the old house he shared with Luca and stared at the front door. His hands trembled. He had survived futuristic wars and had escaped impossible situations. He had faced things that should not have existed, yet he was terrified of turning a simple doorknob. Chris, also terrified but tried hiding it, stood beside him.
“You okay?” he asked quietly.
Dan laughed nervously.
“No.”
Chris nodded.
“Me neither.”
For several moments neither man moved. It was just months earlier they had both vanished. To everyone in 2026, they disappeared without explanation. Searches had been conducted, police reports filed, rumors spread, the family mourned all the while their lives had to continue. And now, both brothers were back and back at the exact moment they had left. They were back carrying memories nobody would ever fully believe.
Dan finally reached for the door. With his heart pounding, he opened it. The smells of coffee, laundry detergent and even his fiancé Luca’s candles, hit him as he entered inside. But the real smell that nearly gave out his knees, was the smell of home, real home.
“Dad?”
The familiar voice came from the living room. Dan froze in place and his breath stopped for a brief moment. Then a teenage boy stepped around the corner. Seventeen years old with dark hair and familiar eyes. The same eyes Dan saw every morning in the mirror…Elias.
For a moment neither moved. Both seemed unsure whether the other was real. Then Elias crossed the room in three quick strides.
“Dad!”
Dan barely had time to react before his son slammed into him. The hug nearly knocked him backward. Dan wrapped his arms around the teenager and held him tighter than he had ever held anyone in his life. It had been months…months he'd wondered whether he would ever see his son again. Months he'd feared he would die centuries away from everyone he loved. Now Elias was here. He was alive…safe…real. Dan felt tears burning behind his eyes.
“I missed you, buddy.”
His voice cracked, but Elias didn't care as the teenager was crying too.
“You disappeared,” Elias whispered. “We looked everywhere.”
“I know.”
“We thought…”
Elias couldn't finish. Dan didn't need him to because he'd imagined that exact conversation countless times. Then another voice spoke from the hallway. It was soft…emotional…almost afraid.
“Dan?”
Dan looked up to see Luca frozen in the doorway. For a second the entire world disappeared. It was three hundred years of future history that simply vanished. Everley single terrifying memory gone. Nothing existed except him. Luca’s eyes filled with tears instantly. Dan crossed the room before he could move. The moment they embraced felt like stepping into sunlight after a lifetime of darkness. Neither spoke to the other, as words weren’t enough. Not after everything; believing they may never see each other again. Chris quietly stepped outside, giving them privacy. For the first time since returning, Dan truly felt safe. But safety, he would later realize, was an illusion.
The following days were difficult. Not because life was bad, but because life was normal. Normal had become strange to both brothers as they tried returning to routines. They attended family dinners, visited friends, walked through town, and even answered endless questions about their disappearance with carefully crafted lies nobody honestly believed. The truth sounded impossible.
“We accidentally traveled three hundred years into the future.”
Nobody would have believed them, so the stories remained unspoken. But silence didn't erase the memories. Every day, Dan found himself thinking about Anthropolis…the endless towers disappearing into the clouds, the perpetual glow of artificial light, and the constant tension of living in a place where danger felt as common as breathing. He remembered the screams, the bloodshed, and the countless moments when survival had seemed impossible. Chris carried the same ghosts. Neither man belonged entirely in Smithville anymore because a part of them was still walking the streets of that distant city, still fighting battles long since ended, still haunted by people they had failed to save. They had returned home, but Anthropolis had come back with them.
One evening Dan sat on his porch and watched the last rays of sunlight stretch across the backyard. The familiar sight should have brought him comfort, yet even after days of being home, there were moments when everything still felt strangely distant, as though he were observing his own life through a window. The future was gone, but the memories remained, and some days they felt heavier than anything he had carried while actually living through them.
Beside him, Elias sat quietly, occasionally glancing over at his father as the evening settled around them. Over the past few days, he had learned that there were moments when Dan would simply drift away, staring at something nobody else could see. The teenager had stopped asking where his father went during those moments because he never seemed to have an answer.
Dan stared toward the horizon, but he wasn't really seeing the Tennessee hills. Instead, flashes of Anthropolis drifted through his thoughts. Towering structures that stretched beyond the clouds. Endless streams of people moving beneath artificial skies. The cold metallic scent that seemed to cling to every street and corridor. No matter how hard he tried, pieces of that city remained lodged in his memory. He took a slow breath. Maybe his son deserved some kind of explanation.
“Do you ever have memories you wish would leave you alone?” Dan asked quietly.
Elias looked over.
“Sure. Why?”
Dan was silent for a moment.
“Because some things stick with you whether you want them to or not.”
Elias frowned slightly but listened. Dan lowered his eyes toward the porch floor.
“You tell yourself they're over. You tell yourself you're home and safe and everything's okay. Then something reminds you of them and suddenly it's like you're right back there again.”
Elias considered that.
“Like nightmares?”
Dan gave a faint smile.
“Something like that.”
The answer barely scratched the surface of the truth, because the man sitting on that porch wasn't the same man who had vanished months earlier. Anthropolis had changed him in ways he was still struggling to understand. There were nights when he woke expecting to hear emergency sirens echoing through steel canyons. There were moments when crowded stores made him think of the endless masses moving through the city's lower levels. There were faces he still saw when he closed his eyes…people he'd fought beside, people he'd lost, people who had never gotten the chance to come home. The future was behind him now, yet some parts of him still walked the streets of Anthropolis every single day.
“What happened while you were gone?” Elias finally asked.
The question lingered between them. Dan stared out across the darkening horizon and felt his chest tighten, because his son wasn't really asking where he'd been. He was asking why his father sometimes fell silent in the middle of conversations. Why he occasionally woke up drenched in sweat. Why there were moments when his eyes seemed fixed on something far away that nobody else could see.
For a moment, Dan considered telling him everything about Anthropolis. The endless city that stretched toward the clouds. The towering structures that blocked out the sky. Violence and fear. The constant struggle to survive another day. He remembered running through corridors lit by emergency lights. He remembered hearing alarms that seemed to echo endlessly through steel and concrete. He remembered battles that left entire sections of the city scarred and burning. The bloody fights that echoed in the concessions stands, and ladder matches that nearly ended his career. Dan swallowed hard. Instead, he offered the only piece of truth he thought his son could understand.
“I learned that some things never really leave you.”
Elias frowned slightly.
“What does that mean?”
Dan was quiet for a moment.
“It means you can walk away from a place... but parts of it stay with you.”
Elias listened carefully.
“You mean like memories?”
“Yeah,” Dan said softly. “Something like that.”
The teenager thought for a moment before nodding.
“I think I get it.”
Dan glanced over.
“You do?”
Elias looked toward the fading sunset.
“When Grandpa died, I kept waiting for it to stop hurting.”
Dan's chest tightened instantly.
“But it never really did," Elias continued. "I just learned how to live with it.”
Silence settled between them. Dan looked away, blinking rapidly, because after everything he had endured in Anthropolis, after every fight, every loss, every impossible situation he had survived, his seventeen-year-old son had somehow explained grief better than he ever could. Maybe Elias was right. Maybe carrying them forward was all anyone could do.
“You know,” Dan said quietly, “you're a lot wiser than I was at seventeen.”
Elias laughed.
“I seriously doubt that.”
A genuine smile crossed Dan's face.
“No,” he replied. “Trust me. You are.”
The two sat together as darkness slowly settled over Smithville. For a while neither spoke. Dan found himself thinking about Anthropolis again. About its endless skyline and artificial lights. About the fear that had become part of everyday life there. About the people who had stood beside him when survival seemed impossible. After coming home, he had convinced himself that a part of him would always remain trapped in that distant city. Maybe it would. Maybe some wounds will never fully heal, especially for his brother who struggled even more. But just like Dan, Chris was determined to put Anthropolis behind even if it meant living in constant torment.
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“Fifteen years. Fifteen damn years. Most people hear that number and think about how much can change in that amount of time. Careers rise and fall. Champions come and go. Entire companies are built and destroyed. Fifteen years is a lifetime in this business. For me? It's a wound that never healed…
I finally stand here back in 2026 preparing to head to Philadelphia for the Golden Intentions Rumble, I can feel every single one of those fifteen years sitting on my shoulders. Because the last time I stood in this position, I won. I survived. I outlasted everyone. I earned the right to call myself the Golden Intentions winner. A younger version of me walked into that match with a dream and walked out with a guaranteed World Championship opportunity…
At least that’s what I was told. I was promised a world title match. I earned that very right but promises don’t always mean a damn thing in this industry. My title shot never came, because of the powers that be at the time. My opportunity disappeared. The contract became meaningless. And while everyone else decided to move on, while everyone else forgot about it, I never did. Because every time I stepped into a ring, every championship I won, every scar I collected, there was always that voice in the back of my mind asking one simple question….
“What if?”
What if I had received the opportunity I earned? What if I had gotten my World Championship match? What if history had gone the way it was supposed to? Fifteen years later, I finally have my answer. Because destiny has brought me right back to where this all started, Golden Intentions in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Sixteen confirmed competitors with only one winner and one opportunity. And this time, nobody is taking it away from me…
We have some of the best and most dangerous competitors this company has to offer. And every single one of us has the exact same dream. We all want to be the one standing tall at the end. We want the spotlight, the glory, the world championship opportunity. I understand and respect that. But there's a difference between wanting something and being owed something. I have waited fifteen years for a debt to be paid…
Fifteen years. Do you think Billy or Tyler Anderson understands what that feels like?
Do you think Blind Ambition knows what it's like to have something ripped away from you and spend over a decade carrying that anger? No. Because nobody in this match has lived with what I've lived with. Nobody in this match wakes up every morning remembering a stolen opportunity. Nobody in this match has carried that burden for fifteen years…
Not Brooke Hernandez, Caledonia, Esmeralda von Krauss or even Marva Duke. Not a single one of them. They are fighting for a future opportunity. I'm fighting for one that should have happened a decade and a half ago. That's what makes me dangerous. That's what makes me different. Because this isn't ambition anymore. This isn't hope. This isn't some young rookie chasing a dream. This is unfinished business…
Let's talk about Matthew Knox, the Raven. A man who thrives in darkness. A man who understands suffering. A man who understands pain. I respect that. But suffering isn't enough to stop me. Not when I've spent fifteen years carrying mine...
Let's talk about Ezekiel Graves and The Ripper. Two men whose reputations are built on destruction, violence, and fear. I've fought monsters before. I've become one when necessary. And in Philadelphia, I'm prepared to become the worst monster in the match if that's what it takes. Danny knows what it’s like to win Golden Intentions. But unlike me, you received your world title match, because Danny gets what Danny wants…
John Obvious, Paul Freedom, Silas Arteria, and Dan Highlander. Every one of them is capable of changing the entire landscape of this company with one victory. But so am I. The difference is that my story was supposed to be written fifteen years ago. Now the universe is giving me a second chance. A chance most people never get. And I'm not stupid enough to waste it…
See, everyone is talking about winning the Golden Intentions rumble wand earning that title match. They’re all talking about the future, but I’m looking beyond that. I’m looking beyond because I already know what’s waiting for me…
The World Championship. The prize that slipped through my fingers in 2011. The prize I've been chasing ever since. And here's the part that should terrify the entire locker room. I don't need the World Championship. I already have gold around my waist. I already know what it feels like to be a champion. I already know what it means to carry a division on my back. But I've never forgotten the one championship that got away. I've never forgotten the one opportunity I was denied…
So, imagine what happens if I win. Imagine what happens when Dangerous Dan becomes the first two-time Golden Intentions rumble winner. Imagine what happens when I cash in on that opportunity. Imagine what happens when I finally stand face to face with the World Champion. Imagine what happens when I leave with two championships draped over my shoulders and leave WrestleFest a double champion. A living reminder that time doesn't erase destiny. A living reminder that justice delayed isn't justice denied…
Fifteen years ago, they took my shot. This year, I'm taking it back. I'm looking to finish a story that started in 2011 and has haunted me for the last decade and a half. A story that ends with me throwing the last body over the top rope and hearing my name announced as the winner again.
History isn't repeating itself, it is correcting itself. Philadelphia, when that bell rings you're not watching a man compete in a rumble. You’re watching a man collect a debt. You're watching a man reclaim stolen time. And when the dust settles and the final elimination happens...there will be only one man left standing. The first ever two-time Golden Intentions Rumble winner. The future World Champion. The future double champion: Dangerous Dan. And to everyone standing in my way…the ENDD is near. Can you feel it?”
“So see every opportunity as golden, and keep your eyes on the prize - yours, not anybody else's.” ~Roberta Flack