Hey, guys! I’ll keep it short... Basically, one more chapter is out because I was bored.

Enjoy!

V1C2: Grief

To say the situation is strange would be an understatement. Yesterday we were in the middle of the dessert and now all I can see before me is a huge jungle. At the beginning, we thought it might be an illusion, another accident created by one of those prototypes in the basement. But it’s definitely real

Well, the house is the same but there are some things that look strange.

First of all, the electricity cables are no more. Our power comes from the emergency generator that activated automatically. Furthermore, the phones are down and even the emergency subterranean Morse code transmitter doesn’t seem to work.

In this situation, the next action we need to take is to wake up Sy. From the three of us, she is the most knowledgeable. If she is in the mist like we are then there is literary no hope remaining.

Sy is still sleeping in the underground lobby without knowing anything. Both I and Jake move towards her with fastened steps and panicked faces.

“Sy! Wake up!”

I don’t even wait to reach her properly to try to wake her up. Hey, don’t blame me! I’m really panicked here, you know?

“Uhh... Five more minutes please!”

God damn it... She has always been a heavy sleeper but now is really not the time. Before I was able to do anything else, Jake grabs her blanket and pull it fast. Sy, who was kinda wrapped in the blanket, falls from the sofa on the ground but still doesn’t wake up properly.

Her eyes crack open and take a peek at our panicked expressions. Then, in a feeble but cold voice, she starts muttering slowly.

“Unless the dessert outside has been replaced by a forest I don’t care what happened. Now let me...”

““How did you know?!?””

Both I and Jake have silly expressions on our faces filled with confusion.

Sy’s eyes snap open and she rises from the ground. Then, with fastened steps, without even caring about her messed hair or half covered body in paint, she starts walking towards a certain room on the other side of the bunker. We follow her and soon reach our destination.

Inside the room is a huge cylindrical object connected to a lot of computers through some cables. Sy goes to one of the computers that looks to be the main commanding unit and starts tapping fast, like searching for something.

We wait in silence for a few minutes. Soon, she turns around and starts walking again towards the elevator.

This time her destination is the outside exit of the house. She stops in place and looks around with a slightly confused expression.

“This is strange...”

“”You don’t say!””

A few more minutes goes by in silence until I finally decide to make haste and understand our situation.

“Sy, what is going on?”

“We travelled in time... In the future to be more exact...”

Uhhh... Jake has an extremely confused expression on his face... As for me, there is no confusion, only anger.

“You knew this was going to happen, right?”

“No.”

I am not satisfied with this answer Sy! Why the hell can’t you read the mood and give a proper explanation for once?

“Start from the beginning!”

While still looking in the distance towards the boundless sky that can be seen through the branches, Sy starts talking in a relaxed manner.

“Last year I started working on a time machine prototype. Although I like to call it a time machine, in reality, is just a device that can slow the time in a certain area.

All tests were failures and I stopped trying after a while. In the end, I realised that what the device needed was a huge amount of solar radiations combined with a power overload.

This is why I constructed a device on the roof that should have collected the solar radiation and redirected it towards the device.

During the last night storm, there were a lot of mega-lightning that, from the looks of it, happened at the same time as a huge solar storm hit the planet. This combination created a situation where the power needed to start the device was more than enough.

But even so..."

“And you never thought about telling us about this?”

I am really angry this time. Sy has always done a lot of things that I did not agree with, but this is too big.

“Let me finish, please.

Like I was saying, this shouldn’t have happened. The time-freezing device should have frozen the time in a small isolated area inside itself. But, from the looks of it, the whole house, basically a sphere with a radius of about four hundred meters, have been part of it.

This can only be explained if the solar flare was so huge that it overloaded the device and the field was forcefully expanded. If you look around the house, you can still see sand from the former dessert. As for the jungle before us, it appeared in tens of thousands of years.”

“”TENS OF THOUSANDS OF FREAKING YEARS?!?””

“Yes.”

How can she be so calm in this situation? I just don’t understand ...

“O.K. Let’s calm down and think about this. Sy, can you reverse this phenomenon and send us back in time?”

“No!”

“Why not?”

This time it looks like even Jake is at his limit as he asks in a quite elevated tone filled with anger.

“It was proved over twenty years ago that time travel is impossible. In those conditions, we are stuck here.”

“Is there really no way around it?”

“No. But you know... This is actually a blessing in disguise.”

The hell? Has she gone insane or what?

“Why is that?”

‘Drip’

A drop of rain falls to the ground hitting the hard concrete. But there are no clouds...

I move a little to the left so that I can see Sy’s face.

Tear... It was not rain, but a tear. This is the first time I’ve seen Sy crying.

The Ice Queen that I’ve never seen saddened or upset in years is now crying with a distorted face. I and Jake are stunned by this. Just what could have happened to make her this sad out of the sudden?

I approach her slowly on her left while Jake gets closer on her right side. We pot place our hands on her shoulders and whisper in a calm, low tone.

“Sy, are you ok?”

“What happened?”

She didn’t respond for a little while... Her face still filled with tears that continued streaming downwards like a waterfall.

In the end, she starts muttering words of which half are incomprehensible.

“The solar storm... But how? ... It hit the whole planet and the shield...

No ... It was not enough. But then this jungle. Why is this here?

Maybe?

No!

But then ... How? Why? ”

She continued to mutter random words formulated in questions towards herself while shivering.

‘Slap’

Jake slaps her hard on the right cheek. Sy stops trembling and looks at Jake in shock...

“Pull yourself together! Whatever happened, it can’t be changed anymore. In those conditions, we can only stride forward. Stop whining around and tell us what happened. We are your friends and no matter what happened we are together to the end!”

Nice words man! Even I was impressed by them.

Sy finally stops crying. With her left hand, she wipes away those remaining tears from the corner of her eye and gives both of us a short look before starting talking in an honest tone.

“You are right! Thank you, Jake! I lost myself there for a second.

Haah... To put it bluntly, a storm big enough to expand the temporary field was more than enough to wipe out almost all life on our planet.

In those conditions, if we were not to be transported in the future, protected by the temporary field, we, together with the rest of the humanity, would have been wiped out last night.”

...................

‘Sillence’

All of us are silent for a long time...

My mind stopped there for a little while. If what Sy is true, then everyone we know is dead. Father, Deth, Neth, Zeth... In my case, away from Jake and Sy, those are the only people that I care about. And they are all dead. Furthermore, we can’t do anything to change this absolute truth.

“Hahh... Well... That is fucked up!”

“Indeed!”

“At least we are still together...”

Sy mutters those words in a very low tone... At some point, I started thinking that she didn’t say anything and it was only my imagination.

To be honest, it doesn’t matter. Those words are the only good news we heard today.