A MATTER OF TIME

 

The machine stirs, yet nothing happens. I press the “Start” button again but there's no change. What is wrong with this! My palms are sweating and my head is spinning but I try to look calm and composed. If I panic, everyone will panic. Cool down Dan! I check some of the connections. All of them are fine. What is wrong?! I don’t know much about its mechanisms either!

“Guys,” I say turning to face my friends, “I… don’t know how to break this to you. Everything seems perfect to me but… it’s not working. It just isn’t happening! I don’t have so much knowledge to detect what’s wrong!”

“What. Do. You. Mean?” Mike asks, stressing each syllable.

“Uh..I..I mean…” I struggle.

“No way.” Amanda breaths out.

“So you are telling us that...that we are stuck here? And…that there is no way back?” Mike stammers, frantic and wide eyed. “Here? In…In time?”

In time. The words sink into my brain slowly and I fall back against the wall of the Time Machine

 “Oh God. Why the hell did we do this? What do we do now?” I take deep breaths, trying to control my erratic breathing.

“What if we wait for something to happen by itself?” Mike asks unsure.

“Are you out of your mind?” I snap.

“No we can’t, Mike. We could try but for how long? We don’t have any basic supplies too if are to try it.” Amanda explains calmly.

“What if we go out of the Machine?” He tries again.

“Are you serious?” I ask exasperated. “It’s TIME we are stuck in! It’s a completely different dimension! It’s not matter! We don’t even know what is outside!”

“There was a small window right?” Mike asks with a small voice.

“Yeah it’s there.” I say and point to it. Amanda rushes to it and tries to look outside but pitch black.

Impatient, I say, “We should wake my uncle up. I don’t understand how he just dozed off in the middle of all of this.” I walk up to my uncle who is on the opposite side. I shake him a little and he wakes up slowly, adjusting to the light and sits up.

“What are you doing, Dan? Where are we? Why are all your friends here?” He asks confused.

“UNCLE!! Are you serious? This is not funny! That too when we are stuck in time!”

“Stuck in time? Daniel, you are making no sense.” He replies calmly.

“What's wrong with you uncle?! This isn't time to be kidding!”

Amanda is startled and wide eyed, the look she always has when she realizes something.

“Don’t you remember anything?”

“What?” My uncle asks confused again.

“Uncle!” I try explaining. “We were trying to visit the past with this Time Machine you built but now it’s not working! We don’t know what to do.”

“What? I don’t know!”

“I think it’s probably because we are stuck in the past and he fell asleep as a side effect or something and doesn’t remember anything.” Amanda tries reasoning.

She sounds right. I try remembering anything useful my uncle had told me before getting on this humungous machine but there were none of vital importance for this situation. Mike starts pacing up and down the machine and Amanda looks freaked out. Their reaction isn’t helping at all. I’m unconsciously tapping my foot and biting on my nails. Frustrated I hit the wall next to me.

And something opens out wide. A door. My friends gasp. My uncle remains sitting in the same place, a mix of both curiousness and confusion etched on his face. I can’t see anything beyond the door. I want to go see but am too scared to enter. What if it leads into space? Or a Black hole? A Nebula? I don’t know. Silence empowers.

Mike broke the ice, “So…who wants to go and see what’s inside?”

“Well, unless it decides to explode or I vanish, I’m ready to go in.” I say, a little bit calm.

My uncle gets up, tensed, “Look Dan, I don’t know what you are talking about but seeing all your reactions, I can say things are pretty messed up. And I’m not allowing you to go into that room or whatever if you are unsure of what is inside there.”

“But--”

“No. I’ll go see what is inside. All of you stay here.” He orders and steps out of that strange door.

Scowling, I follow him inside ignoring his ‘stay here’ command. I bump into him as he abruptly stops and gives me a stern look.

“Everything is alright kids.” My uncle says. Amanda and Mike join us. Inside are four small machines and a transparent door leading to another room. The room looked like a machine itself with wires, gears and chips. On each of the small machines were a set of numbers with a button just above them. I wander into the room, inspecting all of them.

“I think… I think these are all years of the future…” Mike theorizes.

“What?” I ask.

“Look at the last four digits of the numbers on them. Its 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020.”

“Huh? Oh ya…But why are there only four? Why does it stop at 2020?”

“It's a year after that past year we were supposed to visit and the present year are in!” Amanda exclaims. “2016 was the year we were going to, so, it starts from 2017 and 2020 is the year we came from! But…how does it help?”

I press of the buttons but it bounces back to its position. I press it again and again but it refuses to do anything.

“Why is it there if it does not work?” I question.

Mike and Amanda try to do the same with two other of the switches. Mike’s switch bounced back too but Amanda’s stayed in position. The room beyond the transparent door jerked a bit.

I grin at my friends. “What if this is the way to go back?”

“Probably.” Mike answers as he tries the switch again. This time it stays. The room shakes more than the last time.

“This is a series! Amanda did the 2017 switch. Mike did 2018 and now we have to press the 2019 and 2020 ones.” I say and press the 2019 switch and the room reared up and kept vibrating. Then my uncle pressed the 2020 switch. The vibration continued.

“I think we need to get in there!” Amanda exclaims pointing towards the vibrating room. We dash to the door and get in. The room swung back and forth and the impact threw us off our balance. Abruptly, the machine stopped. 

We look at each other.

“Are we…safe now?” I ask astounded.

“Let’s pray it worked.” Amanda says walking over to the door.

Hoping we are back home, we step out of the room, with our eyes closed, We step out of the room. Just as we step out, it jerks and all of us fall again.

And slowly I open my eyes; scared that it had not worked and probably we went back in time again, but I see brick walls instead of the machine….Wait…this is my room walls! Did I miss something? I run out of my room to check if anything is there but there was nothing. I slowly come back into my room and look at my clock. Its early in the morning. Wait! What? Was this…was this all just a dream? Oh gosh! It was a dream. Thank God it was only a dream. But I think I need to go check upon my uncle. Quite a disturbing dream. I get ready, have breakfast and persuade my parents to take me to visit my uncle. He was perfectly alright; busy with some of his research papers. I think I just over thought things. Everything was fine. But it was such a specific and weird dream.

Little did poor Daniel know that his uncle would actually go on to create this Time Machine and as for their adventures in that, let’s just pray to god that we would not get to see the future for now.