Daniel Thron in his story, "The Grandchild Paradox", starts off with an introduction to our protagonist with the words, "I could kill them" (pg. 1). This right away captivates the reader and has the reader wondering, what happened and who caused it? Thron continues the story with explaining the setting with our protagonist and Kimmy waiting outside the gate of a house of "a bunch of old grandpas" who are watching TV and eating "MREs". The next paragraph has the protagonist saying if he had a time machine, he would go back in time and kill them all before they could "fuck it all up like they did" (pg. 1). Kimmy is not on the same page. When our protagonist told her that she would do the same thing, she denied it saying that it would be something that only he (our protagonist) would do. Thorn goes on to introduce our character as a kid who hates the world that he lives in and he puts the blame fully on the generation before him. Then, him and Kimmy get on a bike and ride through town while Thorn gives the readers some imagery about the world that our protagonist resides. He describes the town as a torn and beaten up city. With moss walls that look like they're going to peel off like paper. Some people of the town share the same feelings as our protagonist. Sometimes babies die from bad water, causing the parents to blame the tops and run to the top and try to kill one of them for what they did. But, as our protagonist admits, that would be stupid. Later in the story, Kimmy begs the question "[s]o hey. What if we have a baby?" (pg. 6). At first out protagonist is more thinking in the moment. But later, he thinks, what if he has a boy, he finds a girl, gets married, has kids. Then our protagonist will have grandkids who would be in the same predicament if not worse than our protagonist's. After Kimmy pries it out of our protagonist, he tells Kimmy exactly what he was thinking. Kimmy at first takes it as a joke saying, "well, maybe they have a girl" (pg. 9). saying that sort of thing is more of a boy thought. And when our protagonist doesn't see it as a joke, Kimmy says, "Those old guys in the Tops, you know the worst thing they did? They gave up. They thought it was all inevitable. So they fucking gave up. You hate those guys so much, you gotta be careful you don't become like them, you know? There's only now. That's the only time you get to say how things are. You know?" (pg. 9). I think this statement is the message that Thorn has set out to give the reader. The only thing you can control is the now. You can't change the past, and you can't directly control the future. You can influence the future, but only with the things that you do in the present. Thorn shows the story through one character's point of view in order to teach readers who are too absorbed with the past, that the only thing that they can control is the present, and nothing more.