Dr. Mia Patel was a brilliant and ambitious physicist with a keen interest in engineering. Long before time travel became an obsession, she had secured a coveted job at NASA, where she focused on gravitational physics in space. Although Mia was passionate about her work, she also loved tinkering with new projects in her basement laboratory at home. Her dedication to her research meant that she had little time for a social life or dating, but she didn’t mind. Spending her weekends in her lab was an exciting prospect for her.
Mia’s work ethic was unparalleled, and her dedication to her research was unwavering. Evenings throughout the week were spent setting up experiments, and on Saturdays, she would test them, leaving the rest of the weekend to analyze the results.
The Experiment
One of Mia’s recent experiments involved arranging crystals in various patterns and sending voltage through them to test if they could slow down muons on a small scale. Mia’s enthusiasm for her work never waned, and she looked forward to weekends when she could focus on her experiments.
She had set up and failed to get any results with this particular experiment several times before. Close to giving up, she gave it a shot, and to her surprise, although minuscule, she got a reading through the detector, and a small bubble formed around the sensor. That glimmer of hope perhaps made her a little too excited as she moved the sensor out of the way, sat her banana in the middle of the crystals, and cranked the machine back up.
To her surprise, the bubble reappeared. When she turned off the power, she was amazed to see the banana turned green. She then reversed the polarity and fired the machine back up. Again the bubble appeared, and after she shut the machine off, the banana sat there black and yellow as if it had been sitting there for weeks.
Is time travel possible?
Mia was left stunned as she sat back in her chair. Had she really invented time travel? She couldn’t believe it, so off she went for the next several months testing the device and getting the same results. She eventually decided to build a larger version and began testing larger items with more power. Once she fires up the machine, the things would disappear.
After several years of tinkering with her new toy, she eventually figured out how to send things to specific times. The problem was she couldn’t change the location where the item would appear in the next time frame. The objects always ended up two feet from the time machine. She decided the best way forward was to stay out of the future as she didn’t know if the basement would still be there 50 years into the future. But she could perhaps know the layout of an area in the past. So she rented a warehouse on the outskirts of town that use to be grasslands and assembled her machine there.
This time though, she built the machine with two rows of crystals that faced each other so that the whole machine would transport through time. And when she set the time to 5 minutes into the future, sure enough, the entire machine disappeared in a bubble and returned two feet to the left 5 minutes later. Mia was ready to take her new machine for a ride.
Time to travel
Mia had been building the courage to test her new toy for weeks. She had bought some mice at a pet store and tested the machine with them, and they were fine. She named them Jules and Verne; they were her lab mascots now. But she couldn’t send the device too far into the past for fear someone would discover it, so she wasn’t sure it would work as perfectly as it had been. The only way to find out would be to test it herself.
One Friday night, she decided that it was now or never. She would take her first trip in the time machine in the morning.
Too excited to sleep
Try as she might, Mia could not fall asleep at all. Around 3 a.m., she finally gave up and got ready for her big day. She made her way to the warehouse and made a pot of coffee; it would be a long day. After checking everything over one last time, she strapped herself in and typed the coordinates for five minutes into the past. She set up a clock outside the time machine and one inside to verify the results. Mia took a deep breath while rubbing the heart necklace her mother had given her as a child and hit enter on the onboard computer, and then everything went black.
There was no noise or light, like someone had turned off the world. Mia’s senses struggled to detect anything but came up empty. In what seemed like a good minute, everything snapped back into place. She was right back where she started, only the machine was moved over two feet, and the clocks were off by 5 minutes. “It worked!” Mia screamed out in joy.
She unstrapped herself from the machine and went over to pour herself a big cup of coffee. She sat on her stool and sipped at her coffee while staring at the machine with a huge grin on her face. Thinking of all the possibilities, she thought maybe she should try to go five minutes into the future to ensure she can get back to the right time.
Again, she strapped herself in and cranked up the machine. Again everything went blank for a good minute before everything snapped back into existence around her. A quick glance at the clocks, and sure enough, they were perfectly in sync once again.
Blast from the past
Mia was so excited that she had no reason to wait for her first adventure. She had dreamt for a few years now about being able to go back in time to see her mother before she died. Her mother had died in a car crash when she was five.
She hopped out of the time machine and grabbed her go bag that she had prepared over a year ago, with money she had been collecting with older dates on them, along with other items she would need for the time.
She hopped back into the machine and set the time coordinates to March 21st, 1998, the Saturday before her mother’s accident. Mia had chosen this particular warehouse for several reasons; one was that nothing existed here before 2010, and two, it was only a short walk to her childhood home. After hitting enter on the keyboard, everything again went black. The following minute of darkness was excruciating for Mia. But at last, everything snapped back around her; this time, the machine dropped like a log about six inches. She was surrounded by tall grasses and the deafening sound of birds flying away from the noise of the device hitting the ground.
Just a little elevation
She knew the elevation was going to be a problem but she was surprised at how little the elevation was changed when the warehouses were built. Luck seemed to be on her side. Anticipating the problem, Mia had brought a jack and some jack stands to elevate the machine for her return trip. She decided to do that first before venturing off in case she needed to make a hasty retreat. Once she got the machine off the ground she threw the camouflaged tent canopy over the machine to keep away prying eyes and made her way into town.
Home Sweet Home
It took Mia about 10 minutes to reach her childhood home. Now the tricky part was to find a way to get inside without sounding like a weirdo to her folks. She knew her mother loved clocks, so her angle was going to be a clock salesman to attempt to make her way inside. Anxiety nearly overcame Mia as she approached the door; she could hear herself laughing at the cartoons on television from the other side of the door. Finally mustering up enough courage, she rang the doorbell.
After what seemed like an eternity the door flung open. Mia could feel her knees about to buckle as she gazed at her mother smiling from ear to ear. “May I help you?” her mother asked.
“I was wondering if you would be interested in… in buying a clock from my organization? Mia could barely get the words out. She had a tear run down her cheek.
“Are you okay, sweetie?” Her mother asked with a worried look on her face.
“Yes, I’m fine; it’s been a long week.” Mia tried to recover the best she could.
Her mother invited her in for some tea and cookies while Mia showed her the magazine she had made for the occasion. She spent so much time trying to cover every detail that she didn’t realize that her feelings would cause a problem.
Young Mia
As she sat down, her younger self ran up to her, “Hi, I’m Mia; what’s your name?”
“My name is Mia as well,” older Mia shot back. Younger Mia gasped and slowly looked at her mom as if that was the coolest thing she had ever heard. “Go watch your cartoons, Mia,” her mother said with a laugh. “Ok, mommy!”
Young Mia started to run off but stopped dead in her tracks, “You have a heart necklace just like me!” she said excitedly.
“I sure do; my mommy gave me this when I was younger,” said Mia. Young Mia smiled really big and then ran off to watch her cartoons.
Mia spent the next 30 minutes talking with her mom as much as possible without giving away who she was. She didn’t want it to end. But finally, her mother said she needed to head into town to run some errands. She didn’t buy any clocks, but that was okay, seeing as they didn’t exist. But the two got along great. Mia managed to get her mom to hug her before she left. She had a hard time letting go. Her mom seemed a little put off by her affection. That brought the tears back almost immediately.
A time machine to change history
Mia began her walk back to the time machine. She sat in the field next to the machine and cried for nearly an hour, thinking about her mother’s trip the next day. Suddenly, an idea came to her. If she could prolong the time when her mother left, she might not have had the head-on collision the next day. Mia perked up at the idea. “This could work!” she yelled. So she waited until it was dark and went back to her mother’s home and let the air out of one of her tires.
She then made her way back to the machine and returned to 2023. The return trip worked perfectly; the device dropped maybe an inch as it fell to the warehouse’s concrete floor. The anticipation was killing her; she leaped from the time machine and immediately called her dad’s home phone, hoping her mother would pick up.
To her surprise, her mother answered the phone. “Oh my god, Mom, I love you!” Mia screamed.
“Well, I love you too, honey. Are you okay?” Her mom said with a worried voice.
“I just had a perfect week and wanted to call you. I want to take you and Dad out for dinner tonight; how does that sound?” Mia asked.
“Your father? Honey, are you sure you’re okay? Your father has been gone for 25 years.” her mother said.
One life for another
Mia dropped the phone and screamed out, “No!” While bringing her mother back, she managed to kill her father. She was devastated but quickly realized what she had to do. Mia didn’t even bother asking her mother what had happened; she knew that when her mother noticed the flat tire, her father went to town to shop instead in his car.
She quickly hopped back into the time machine and set the date for March 22nd, 1998, at 6 a.m. Disabling both vehicles may buy her parents enough time to miss the drunk driver. The machine landed hard on the field a few feet from the jack stands.
Wasting no time, Mia ran to her parent’s house to let the air out of the tires of both cars. Her mother’s tire was still flat from the last time she was there, but someone came outside just as she started working on her father’s tire. She crouched down, peeking over the side of the car through the windows, and saw her father coming outside to get the morning paper. She slid down the side of the car and waited patiently for the door to close again so she could continue.
Slash and Dash
Instead, her father appeared around the back side of the car. “What are you doing, young lady!” he demanded. Mia’s heart nearly burst through her chest. She quickly offered up the first thing that came to mind. “I was jogging, and I got lightheaded, so I had to sit down for a second,” she said. “Well, I would appreciate it if you would move away from my car, please.” he didn’t seem to buy into the story. She quickly stood up and began jogging away from him. A hedge at the end of the road adjoined the field where the time machine was located. Mia hid behind the hedge for about 20 minutes giving her father time to get back inside.
Once she was confident he would be out of sight, she ran back to the car and quickly used her knife to cut the valve stem entirely off. Then she ran back to the time machine just as swiftly and began jacking it up for the return trip. She returned to 2023 without incident and quickly called her father’s home phone, hoping to have saved both parents this time around. Instead, a stranger answered the phone. They had never heard of either of her parents and said they had lived there for 15 years.
From drunk driver to trains
Mia, feeling confused, phoned her aunt Becky and asked her to share what had happened to her parents in her own words as Mia was writing a paper on them. Aunt Becky took the bait, saying that Mia’s parents dropped her off at her grandma’s house because her mother was afraid to stay home due to someone vandalizing their vehicles. They both went to do their Sunday shopping in the next town over and were hit and killed by a train. Her grandmother raised her from then on.
Mia must destroy the time machine
Mia was devastated; no matter what she tried to do, one of her parents or both died. She decides to return to when she first sent the rats back in time and destroy the machine. But not thinking, she hits enter on the device just as she remembers that the machine is sitting in that exact location where she will appear. Realizing her mistake, she knew she had one minute to reflect on life.
She thought about her mother’s smile when she opened the door and how her father supported her career in physics growing up. She sat back in her seat with a smile as the blackness turned to light, and the machine appeared in the same space as the existing machine from the past. The result was a devastating blast killing her and instantly destroying both machines.
The Mia from that time line was not at the warehouse yet but was on her way. She pulled up to a blazing inferno and began crying as her years of hard work went up in smoke. The next day she returned to go through the smoldering ruins of her lab, when she stumbled upon a heart necklace blackened by the fire.
She rubbed the heart necklace she was wearing and slowly realized what had happened. She swore never to work on time travel again.
