“THE YEAR 2033”

A young Mary Maximus is working on her theory, a theory she thinks could change the way humans look at time. She is trying to do the impossible. She is trying to break from the captivity of time. She is tired but hopeful, she has tried countless times to find the link of the human body with time, but she has failed always.

She has almost given up when she remembers something, her professor’s words repeat in her head, “Even the complex of problems can be solved if the first steps are correct, focus on them and the rest will unravel itself!” Mary scratches everything off and shreds all the research, “Fuck! Guess I’ll start again. I’ll get it done this time, I’m fucking sure!” This time instead of repeating the same first steps she tries to do something different.

She starts looking towards the human body, through the advanced microscope of her time she scans a colleague, she can see her organs and the tissues that make them, she zooms in further and the microscope takes time to break down the tissue to a cellular level. Zooming in further she sees the DNA, she zooms in even more till the only thing visible are atoms, the fundamental blocks that we are made of, when she zooms in even more, she sees something strange.

Yes, there are protons and electrons revolving the nucleus, but zooming in even more she discovers a strange particle. The particle is a part of almost every atom in her body. She calculates the age of the particle, subtracting its age with the age of her colleague, the difference in minutes is 394200 which are approximately 9 months.

This particle came into existence when her colleague was inside her mother’s womb, when she was merely a particle. Mary gasps in awe and says, “This particle was the start of your time!” she analyzes it further to find out its quality and strength. The reports showed that her particle’s strength was 75%, next she scanned someone older than her colleague.

She called the janitor Ruben who was pretty old. She scanned him and his particle’s strength was 35%. Mary deduced that the particle’s strength is different for different people. She researched further and named this particle “Chronoton” the particle of time. Over the years Mary did extensive research on how to manipulate the chronotons inside a person, many volunteers died and it had started affecting her morale. People were promised wealth in return for their bodies for research, but this was a heavy burden to bear for her. After many failed experiments finally in the year 2035 Mary found out a way to travel in time.

She built a device called the chronoton enhancer, one step at a time she made people travel in time, sometimes minutes in the past, sometimes hours and back to their current time again. They were ordered not to change anything from the past because it would disturb the flow of time and create unseen paradoxes, but things weren’t so simple.

When the people who traveled in time came back, they would suffer from different delusions. They would often be confused of what time they are from, some even lost their memories. Mary overlooked this and decided to send people back 10 or 20 years for longer duration. They were instructed to return after a specific amount of days but none of them had returned.

A team was sent to find them and when they returned with their bodies Mary watched in horror. Their chronoton structure was completely destroyed, because their chronotons were not preserved. One of them was still alive but he was completely out of his mind. He had tried to manipulate time, but time had manipulated him. He had lost his memories and talked gibberish, not knowing who he was and what was going on. Mary and her team watched in horror as he suffered for their gains. When Mary couldn’t see him in that state anymore she gave him a pill that would put him out of misery.

When she went back home she saw herself in the mirror. She questioned herself, “What have I become? Why can’t I stop, sacrifices have to be made but in this case too many have been made. Maybe I am making mistakes because it’s not my life on the line! Thinking that these people are expendable!”

After that day Mary decided that she will keep on working till every possible circumstance has been looked at, every little calculation is made and every scenario accounted for, the method of trial and error had already taken too many lives. She worked hard to find a way to stabilize the chronotons and keep them in their original state for a longer duration. She made improvements to the chronoton enhancer making it more advanced and refining it day by day.

She added features to the enhancer, now it allowed you to travel to a specific place at a specific time. It also stabilized your chronotons and showed you the time frame and percentage of the stability. Her research was going well and the best part was no one was dying anymore, her morality was intact and she was moving forward. Until one day she realized that she had missed something, there were different universes out there, parallel universes. Universes where some things are different and some things are the same.

She started working on finding as many parallel universes as possible, charting them out and connecting them together on a map. Measuring their resonating frequencies which were just a little different from her universe, but there was a universe which had a completely different frequency. She kept it on top of her parallel universe chart and named it “P: ?”

Years went by and a lot of things changed, her father Tom died leaving the company to her. Her children grew up, Reed was a promising business man and took the seat of the owner of the company from Mary. Since she was only interested in research rather than marketing and selling. Reed turned MSAT into a technology giant. Anna followed the footsteps of her mother and headed many projects that changed the landscape of technology for Hawkesbay and the world.

Mary kept working on her project secretly, now with even more intensity because her father was no more. She wanted to say so much to him, she wanted to tell him that she loved him, but this research had severed their relation and he had died alone with no one around him. Finally, the day came when everything was taken care of. Mary had found a way to stabilize the chronotons for 20 days, she had reached her limit and decided that she will personally travel to different universes at different times and watch how those universes were different than hers.

She traveled numerous times, seeing amazing changes in all the universes. In some universe Anna decided to be a book writer, in some Reed became an actor, Peter was a famous cook in one universe. Yes, there were differences in these universes, but there were some constants too. Like her father’s death, in all these universes her father always died on 4 March, 2040 and in all these universes Mary was always a scientist, although she never really decided to work on time travel in those universes.

Only one universe remained, the one at the top “P: ?” Mary saw it in fear, with uncertainty in her heart she decided to travel to it. She sets the year to 2006, setting her destination to an alley near Maximus tower. She hits the initiate button and warps through time and teleports to the alley. She wears her scarf and covers her face, roaming around the tower, looking at people doing their daily chores, cars with wheels which were ancient in her time. Smoke from chimneys, kids playing on the streets.

She stops at the front door of Maximus tower and sees a black Mercedes arrive, out steps Mary of this universe and goes inside the tower. She finds her peculiar, wearing a black gown which Mary would have never worn. Her fashion sense was different from hers. She decides to spy on her to know more about her. Mary finds out that in this universe, she is not a scientist; she is a kindergarten teacher. Everything in this Mary is different. She follows Mary to Grab-a-Grub there she sees her meet a man, they both smile at each other and kiss as they move towards the diner.

Mary seeing this from a distance says to herself, “Well, at least she has a handsome boyfriend! Although I really don’t know who he is.” seeing enough of this universe, she decided to leave and upon return to her universe changes the name of this universe to “P:V01D” a universe that is void. A universe with no connection to hers and where everything is so much different than other universes.

She decides to travel one last time to the day her father died, she arrives hours before he passed away. On the hospital bed her father sleeps peacefully and she calls out, “Dad? It’s me!” Tom wakes up and sees Mary standing next to him. “I’m so sorry dad, I never thought about you! Never spent time with you!” tears start falling from her eyes and she starts sobbing. Tom smiles at her and says, “Mary, my love, you look so old, so tired. I never wanted you to work so hard, but I am proud of what you have become!”

Mary tells him that she is from the future and informs him of her accomplishments. Tom smiles a little but then with fear in his eyes says, “I am proud, but one should not meddle with time. Mary, you have the power of undoing reality as we know it. What if this power was to fall in the wrong hands? The aftermath of changing the smallest of details could be catastrophic not only for this world, but many more. Do not play God my daughter!” hearing her father’s warnings something changes in her. She starts to realize that if time travel was introduced it would plunge it into chaos. Not everyone is good at heart, not everyone would time travel for good. She takes a deep breath and makes up her mind.

When she returns to her time, she asks her team to destroy all their research and all records of the things they did. When all the calculations and blueprints were shredded and burnt and all the computers wiped and destroyed, she asked her team to quit their jobs and settle for pension pay which was a way of making sure that they didn’t tell anyone about the things they had done. She closes the research wing doors and marks it for termination. As the termination sequence begins she watches the research wing in fire and says ,”As humans we corrupt everything we build, but time, it must not be corrupted. No one should wield this power not even me!”