Jay stared at the wall. What were the options? None. He couldn’t get the elevator down to escape in time. What would that even earn him? Maybe a day, if he was lucky. A day was all he needed, but the test would take more than a day to come back, so maybe all he needed was to just finish the machine today. Then he could fix everything. Or… he could give himself some wiggle room and buy some extra time.

The door creaked as it opened into his lab. A stern-faced phlebotomy technician stepped in. His gaze hovered about, taking in the various panels of circuitry and setting his gaze on Jay's supercomputer setup before fixing his eyes forward.

"Mr. Cooper," he said. "My name is Kent. Just need to take a quick blood sample. Would you like to sit?"

Jay shook his head. He wasn't queasy, even if he did feel a bit light-headed at the moment. Kent nodded and attempted to feign a smile. He removed an alcohol pad, a fingerstick, and a cotton ball. Kent wiped Jay's finger with the alcohol pad, the scent stinging his nose. Then he pricked him, and immediately applied the cotton ball.

Kent looked at the handheld machine. “Just hold that on whatever way you like, and that’s…”

“I saw you were taking a look at the computer setup,” Jay interrupted, his idea of a distraction blossoming. All he needed was to break the fingerstick somehow. But he needed Kent to set it down or an excuse to bump into him hard enough that wouldn’t look suspicious or get an assault charge. He would not be finishing his machine if he got the latter.

Kent’s mouth expressed indifference as he shook his head. “Just don’t usually go into labs filled with… whatever this is.”

“Well this...” Jay bounced toward his computer setup. His mind raced, spinning in different directions, strategies, possibilities… but one thing all of those trains of thought agreed on was that he must fake comfort and control. It won’t seem like a distraction if Kent just assumes this is what he’s like normally. “This is a supercomputer. When we switched out computers for the building, I took as many as I could, wired them together, and now I can process so much data at once that NASA won’t leave me alone about it.”

“That’s… interesting,” Kent said, not moving, but also completely disengaged from what Jay was saying. He needed to go bigger to pique his interest. Was he really going to open the door to a room filled with classified information?

It can be undone.

Jay popped open the door to his inner lab saying, “This is where the good stuff happens though. All that data isn’t for nothing.” Kent leaned in, peaking through the door. “This is what we’re working on, funded by the U. S. of A. itself. A time machine.” Jay spread his arms, directing Kent’s attention to the large cylindrical machine in the middle.

A little bigger than a New York Studio apartment with a conic top and a concave band running around that to make this squished effect.

“I don’t really have time for jokes,” Kent said.

“No, I’m serious, dead serious. This is the greatest technological innovation ever. I can explain it all.” Jay pointed at the top of the machine, waving his hand for Kent to come in. Kent did - somewhat reluctantly - join Jay in the room, crossing his arms. “See what’s the biggest problem with time travel?”

“Um… paradoxes?” he said.

“Well… yes… but that’s really up to personal decisions for the most part. No, the biggest problem is entropy. See, the laws of physics allow for time travel. Nothing in the inner workings of the universe dictate why things move in a specific direction, because the equations work going both ways. So there are several things that keep us from breaking free from that arrow of time,” Jay directed his hand forward, trying to illustrate an arrow. “One is entropy, the concept that all things in a closed system are headed toward a state of ultimate randomness. That’s thermodynamics, but the keyword there is ‘closed system.’ So if you can tap into the infinite amount of quantum energy, then you make your system open. So that’s what’s inside that machine, the only open system in the universe, where entropy no longer applies. That way when I rip myself free from the arrow of time, I don’t dissolve into a pile of… goop… or something.”

Jay scratched his neck, catching a whiff of himself again. Nope, don’t unleash that beast in front of the kind scientist, who seemed to be taking an interest now. Keep arms inside the vehicle. Okay, good… keep reeling him in. Maybe walk to a table where he could set down that fingerstick. Jay moved toward one of his desks in this room and said, “Now the other issue is causality itself, which we measure by the speed of light. So most people think that you have to just zoom faster than the speed of light and hope you end up somewhere good, but what if you change your relation to causality entirely?”

Kent held up his hands. “You lost me. Look I’m not even a doctor. I just take these tests.”

“I haven’t talked to anyone in like…” Jay threw a quizzical look at his fingers as he raised them up and down attempting to determine how many weeks it may have been. He scrapped the thought entirely and continued, “Here, set down your fingerstick down on the desk, I’ll show you.”

The throbbing in Jay’s finger sped up as his mind worked. Kent was setting down the fingerstick. Not only was he having fun explaining things, but now… the dominos were in place. He just needed to knock them down. But not yet.

Jay grabbed a piece of paper and a pen then signaled for Kent to step over to another desk. He drew a line on the paper and said, “Okay, this line… that’s the succession of all events in human history. Everything that has happened and ever will. So most people spend their research attempting to force themselves one way or another on that line.”

“Okay…” Kent nodded.

“But…” Jay made a small dot off to the side of the line. “What if you were in this space instead? Infinite and vast and a completely different reality to our own?”

“Are you asking me? That doesn’t even sound possible.”

“No, I’m just making you think. So one thing is that you would need an infinite amount of energy. Otherwise, you’d tear yourself apart doing this. So I have infinite energy. Now the next thing you would need is something that can momentarily navigate causality. It doesn’t need to navigate causality for long. Just enough to break the stream, then reenter it.”

“So you’re saying that you can just move in and out of… like… the universe?”

“Yes, and time. Space and time. When I’m in this other place, time literally won’t have meaning. Then I reenter at whatever point in space-time I choose. So at the end of the day, I’m going to test it and move it 30 years in the future outside of my parents’ house in northern New Jersey. I planted a tree there a few years ago, and in thirty years, it will be the size of a… well a thirty-three-year-old tree. It will be bigger. So I can verify that I’ve moved in space and time as soon as I open the door.”

“What are you going to use it for?” Kent asked, still looking at the sheet.

Jay paused. To go back and change everything. Stop the altered-human virus from spreading, even reaching one person. Then tell himself to build the time machine and do it all over again to complete the loop and avoid a paradox. That may have been the answer, but that wasn’t the answer he was going to give.

Jay shrugged. “It’s funded in the military budget, so you can extrapolate from there. All I want it to be is an instrument of peace, but there’s a double-edged sword when you need government funding to operate. I made a lot of money helping start up this company, developing small fusion technology and whatnot, but that wasn’t enough to cover the research and the parts needed for this.”

“Well, I’d better get back to work,” Kent said, backing away from the desk.

“Thanks for talking,” Jay said, clutching one of Kent’s hands in one of his, and reaching the other hand to the desk where the fingerstick sat. “Let me get that for you.”

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

Kent reached out as well to swipe it first saying, “No that’s okay. I’ve got it.”

This is it.

Jay pushed the fingerstick, knocking it out of Kent’s hand, and it fell toward the floor, the screen shattering when it crashed against the concrete. Kent threw his hands in the air, “Great, thanks for the help.” He shook his head, muttering something as he stooped to pick it up. “Now I gotta come back in tomorrow.”

“I’m so sorry,” Jay said, taking a step back. “I can help compensate for the machine if your place needs it. Send me a bill.”

Kent’s mouth twisted and he shook his head, “Yeah okay, I’ll be back tomorrow.”

Jay smiled and nodded, holding the door for Kent and watching him leave before letting out a breath. His hands trembled, and sweat beaded his neck. “Okay…” he shook his arms out. “This better work.”

Jay became aware of his shaking legs as he approached the exosuits. Not a huge deal. The suit did all the heavy lifting, as well as carrying out other specialized purposes. The suit he needed today was the mechanic suit, which allowed for fine-tuning of electronics, splicing, and picking up about 400 pounds, but that was the baseline for this particular exosuit model he designed.

He did have a suit that picked up 1500 pounds, and that was most of what he used it for. Then another he mostly used for particle exchange and storage. Now that he was looking at them, he realized they too looked a little different than they used to.

He walked across his lab, the expanse of a concrete floor, past the supercomputer, and up to the wall, where his exosuits hung in suspension. He pressed the button to lower his primary suit to the ground, the dirty white surface of the metal plating on the outside contrasting his memory of the crisp retro-futuristic look everything in this room had at the beginning. He kept up with some of the cleaning, but stains of forgotten meals and the dust and grease that naturally came from machinery had soiled that.

The metal was cold as his fingers pressed to it, sliding his hand on the breastplate. He reached his hand under an arch to press a button, allowing the exosuit to open up in the front.

As he stepped in, the neuro-sensors tapped his skin, connecting the motion of the suit to his body. It tingled and shocked in places. There was no getting used to it, either, the point was to seize muscles for a second as the body entered so a rogue leg couldn’t send a signal to knock down the suit and crush him.

The suit closed around him, and the cooling system kicked in. He took a few steps forward, recalibrating the system, and he was ready.

Oh yeah, I forgot to disinfect the suit. Well… already in it.

Jay walked back into the machine room and powered on the machine. The strip lights flickered as the generator kicked on. He needed a little more electricity than the city of New York would allow him to pull for his project.

He opened the door and looked inside. The center console, or the “uncausulator” as he liked to call it when talking to himself, shone the standby light. He switched the machine on, opening a panel on the side, his heart racing. He just needed to run the diagnostics, splice some wires, and then input information into the operating computer so he could move it around.

It took about four or five hours, but he finished.

All thoughts of fear left his mind. It was done. His heart fluttered to the beat of a different type of anxiousness. Expectation. His suit clanked as he ran out of the machine, unplugging the external wires. His smile grew every time he unplugged a wire and the machine stayed on. He ripped the last wire out, and the machine continued to whirr.

“It’s self-sustaining,” he whispered to himself. He jumped, the suit thudding as he crashed to the ground. He pumped his fist, “Yes! It works!”

He ran inside the machine, slamming the door shut and swinging the handle to hermetically seal it.

Jay stood in front of the computer, magnetically locking his suit to the ground. The fusion batteries hummed and sang as he raised power levels. Processing cosmic energy and inputting the equation made the machine’s engines make a sort of rolling sound, the hum moving up and down. The light spun around the interior of the cabin and slowed down. The room was dark just for a second, then all of the lights flashed back on, and Jay knew where he was. Outside of everything.

He let go of a breath, and he looked at his computer. Time to put in a destination. This was the tricky part. His work today was all about perfecting this. The coordinates were not only intended for earth but for the universe as a whole, otherwise, the whole thing was moot. But processing coordinates on that scale was nearly impossible. But only nearly impossible. Jay’s supercomputer had done it. Jay could swipe around a 3D map of the universe, initially focused on his location but with the ability to zoom in and out. This map was only accessible in this realm because it was the only place his scanner could read the universe as a whole, but that’s all he needed.

He zeroed in on it. The tree outside his parents’ house. 30 years in the future. Time to go home and show them what their son had done.

The lights whirled around the room, slowing down and flashing once as the machine arrived at its location. The exosuit hissed as Jay released the magnetic lock and turned around. The handle swung open with ease, and the door seal popped. He pulled the door and looked at the world outside.

A figure walked ahead on the brown, scorched earth, the tree gone from where it was planted. Though the blackened log on the ground may have been related. His parents' house was nothing more than a foundation and a pile of burnt rubble.

“What…” Jay began, not sure how to process this.

Heat radiated from the ground, touching his face, and static blasted through his earpieces. The noise of the static dampened as his earpieces adjusted, and Jay lowered the visor, blocking anything from entering his helmet.

His first breath fogged the visor, kicking tiny fans on to move air down through the helmet. The sound of his breathing overtook the sound of the static, and as his visor cleared. He could make out the figure. It was… human… maybe. Something was off about it. The way it walked. It was almost like it wasn’t really walking on the ground. And the skin was too smooth, and the head didn’t seem to move properly. It turned its head, gently and at an odd angle, eyes settling on Jay and his machine.

Jay backed up into the cabin, and the… person… approached at the pace that he retreated. Jay slammed the door shut and locked it turning to his console to get out. A thousand questions bounced inside his head, his surroundings feeling surreal as he locked his suit to the floor and turned on the machine, and removed it from this place.

He hung outside the universe, above the stream of causality, wondering if he should meddle in the future. Research would need to be done in the present time before even attempting to alter the future. If that was something he could do. It was something he could do, right? He put in the home coordinates of his lab, barely noticing the light show that indicated the machine coming back to his plane of reality.

Jay stumbled out of the machine, raising his visor back up so he could get some fresh air, and doubling over his knees. The exosuit was all that supported him as he leaned over himself.

Get your head back on straight. One goal at a time. Maybe fixing the altered-human virus will solve the future.

He shook his head, as much as his less mobile suit would allow. He stood back up, turning to his machine, and froze at the distortion next to it. Some abstract glistening, and ever-changing form arcing around his time machine. How did that get in here?

The distortion collected into a smaller sphere next to the machine, slowly approaching Jay. Jay’s eyes heated up, but he closed them and settled himself down. His body was entering defense mode, but he didn’t want to attack if he didn’t even know what it was. Maybe it didn’t mean harm. Maybe it’s the cause of the scorched earth where his parents’ house stood. Or maybe he accidentally punched a hole in the universe, despite the years of research he did to make sure he didn’t do that.

The sphere changed form once more, spreading long wiry arms to the room. It moved around things like it was scanning, then they all struck out at once, shaking the room. It would have made Jay fall over, if not for the exosuit. They let go of their hold on the wall, lingering the touch like the only goal was to prove itself tactile with the world around it.

The abstract form took a new shape, pulling its arms in and elongating into some sort of inter-dimensional snake. Jay was still frozen in place. A thud echoed as the snake dropped to the ground, forcing a realization in Jay that this thing was real, not some imagination of inter-dimensional travel. He walked with it, following the snake, the world surreal and spinning as he watched it move toward the open public.

Come back to earth, Jay. You can’t let that thing get out.

The realization came over him like a wave, and he chased after it, no longer watching as if observing a dream. He lowered the visor of his suit, just making sure he had an extra layer of protection over his face, and he grabbed the tail of the snake. His suit made a horrible clicking noise he’d only ever heard when lifting up the heavier pieces of machinery. Then he fell backward as the snake stopped resisting and curled around, tiny arms jetting out to push Jay off. They attacked his suit, and from the sound each impact made, Jay could swear the metal plating was prone to bend at any one attack.

Jay pulled away, jumping back and lifting his visor, eyes hot. But for a moment, the creature did nothing. It froze, every part of the anomaly stuck in the last motion it was making. It was solidifying and taking color, becoming less like a crystalline hallucination and more like a fleshy being. It pulled its arms into its body. It had no face. No normal sense of anatomy in any way.

Then a slit formed across the front of its bulbous, ugly head, and it spoke in a distorted but otherwise perfect voice, “Where is it?”

Jay stared. His mouth quivered as it struggled to find the words, “Where… is… what?”

“The creator,” it said so matter-of-factly.

“I… I don’t know.” Jay tilted his head.

The creature seemed to lose interest immediately, turning and slithering for the door. Jay once again found himself motionless. There was no rule book for how to deal with this situation. And Jay didn’t even fully understand what the situation was.