“A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury is a pretty interesting short story. It starts in 2055, when time travel was available. Eckels is a hunter who paid $10,000 to go back in time and hunt a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Time Safari, Inc., the time-travel outfitting agency, wants to make sure its customers understand the risks involved. They do not guarantee safety, relating the deaths of six guides and twelve hunters in the previous year. But they do guarantee dinosaurs, and Eckels cannot refuse this trip of a lifetime.
While Eckels waits his for his expedition to begin, he and a company employee discuss the recent election in which the democratic candidate Keith, the moderate presidential candidate, was elected over Deutscher, the dictatorial candidate described as an anti-everything man. The two suggest that if the election had turned out differently, many people would be running for the time machine just to escape Deutscher’s rule.
Travis, the tour guide, along with his assistant, Lesperance, leads Eckels and two other hunters, Billings and Kramer, into the time machine and they set off to a time 60,002,055 years before the time they left.
When they arrive, Travis gives the hunters two specific instructions: shoot only the dinosaurs marked (they were going to die soon anyway) and stay on the path, which is made of antigravity metal that hovers above the ground. When Eckels asks why, Travis launches into an explanation of how changing the past could have a negative effect on the future: if one mouse is killed in the past, the families of that mouse will also no longer live, along with the animals that would have preyed on the mouse. This would, in turn, cause the animals that preyed on those animals to no longer live, compounding until the effect of the death of that one mouse could mean generations of people may no longer be alive in the present. With everyone sufficiently scared, they head out.
As they anxiously wait for the T. rex, the men hear ‘a sound of thunder’ – the footsteps of the dinosaur – and Eckels is overcome by the beauty and majesty of the beast. He decides he cannot shoot it. Travis, furious that Eckels has chickened out, tells him to return to the machine. Eckels, in a state of shock, moves the wrong direction, catching the eye of the dinosaur. As the T. rex begins to come after the hunters, they fire and kill it.
Upon returning to the time machine, Travis notices that Eckels’ boots are muddy. He stepped off the path! Furious, Travis threatens to leave Eckels in the past unless he collects the bullets from the dinosaur, which they can’t leave. He does so, but Travis still threatens to kill Eckels for disobeying the rules.
Upon arriving back in 2055, Eckels notices that things are a little off. The air smells weird and the spelling of the company sign is a little different. Eckels looks down at his shoes and notices a butterfly stuck to the bottom, dead. In shock, he asks who won the presidential election and the employee exclaims that, thankfully, it was Deutscher. Eckels groans. Travis aims his weapon at Eckels and there is a sound of thunder.
One of the morals of the story is there are consequences for your actions. He chose to go on this expedition, and then bailed out. Because of that, he went off “The Path”, and changed the future. Overall, the story was interesting.