Conquering Time
The whole table was covered with black, oily soot from the oil lamp, as prof. Birch was lost in his quest to find the answer to time travel. His eyes were dry due to all the mental labour he had put into this. He thought of catching some shut eye but sleep evaded him. He thought he should take a break from his research, so he decided to write a story. He had read somewhere that this could be therapeutic and invigorating. He started thinking, but no idea came to his mind. He turned on the television, still wondering how writers managed to come up with such interesting story plots. Suddenly, he heard a word from the television and phased out.
He saw images of himself, only a lot younger, of exploring and being adventurous. He was driving a go-cart at high speed and crashed into a small wall, getting thrown off his seat. His hand was severely injured with some broken bones, after which he couldn’t recollect anything else. Abruptly, he came out from his stupor. And then out of nowhere, something about time travel struck him.
Prof. Birch sweated it out for almost a year to get the time machine into shape. He tackled every hardship and worked on his prized invention with all his effort. He did pay heed to the objections raised by others or their discouragement. He knew he was going against the tide but he believed in what he was doing and kept at it.
Finally, it was ready! Prof. Birch was amazed at his own creation and his mind was a labyrinth of various emotions. He first wanted to change the unwelcome occurrences of his past life and world history by jumping from one timeline to another. Once he was done, he returned to his original timeline. But he was aghast to find himself in space instead of earth. He was befuddled, wondering where his home was and he couldn’t decipher what was going on. Eventually, he realised that human-beings had advanced and made space breathable. He thought that if humans have revolutionized so much then they must have invented a time machine as well.
But he discovered that a time machine had still not been invented. He was uncomfortable with the changes in his era including the weird language that people seemed to be using to communicate with each other. Immediately, he found a power outlet to charge his machine. He time travelled again to turn everything back to how it was in history. This time, when he returned, he was relieved to see everything back to normal. Strangely though, the pain in his hand from the childhood accident had disappeared. However, he did not want to change anything in history anymore for he now knew the consequences of playing with time. He turned over a new leaf and kept the time machine a secret, understanding that the tiniest change in history can change the whole world.
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