As we completed signing the documents, the wall-length digital screen of the lab suddenly blacked out, two white lines dividing it into four parts. We looked at each other, confused.

And then each section came up with the names - Cheryl, Aarmen, Dunkin, Lorenzo and their families appeared through a video call.

They all teared up.

The four of them rushed near the screen to wave their final goodbyes, all the moms and dads bursting at how proud they were. Even their siblings were getting emotional.

I was sitting alone on the steel bench of the lab, watching them, when someone placed a hand over my head.

"Dad..." I looked up as he held my arms, eyes glazed with unshed water. Being an archaeologist since my age, he was the head of the field works department of this research lab now. Marking and mapping places to be dug out.

I engulfed him in a hug before my own eyes could well up.

"My daughter is one of those children who makes their childhood dreams come true, isn't it?" His voice wavered as he tenderly ran a hand through my hair, sitting beside me. I blinked back the tears, smiling at him.

"Don't forget to message me. Through the AI book." I snickered, wiping the corner of my eyes. I felt luckier than the rest, that at this last hour, I wasn't separated from my dad through a screen.

"I may forget to have breakfast, but not to message you, my baby," He laughed softly, retrieving a little picture from his lab coat's pocket.

"She is proud of you," he whispered, showing me the only photograph I had with my mom.

It was a Polaroid from a hospital room. I was just born, minutes old, lying on a ventilator. A tinier than usual infant, pale red coloured skin with no visible hair on the head. A premature baby.

Connected with tubes around my little wrists; eyes closed as if it would take a few more days for them to open. Beside the ventilator on the bed was my mom, her feeble hand over the glass case of the machine as she smiled at the camera. Those droopy sky-blue eyes, the same colour as mine. A faltering smile on her face, as if the next second she was going to cry out in pain. My dad held her, his smile no more heartbreaking than hers.

I nodded slowly at the picture. Accepting it. It was the only means I used to not turn into a whimpering mess.

She was an archaeologist, just like dad. And dad always told me how I was just like her. Sweet and beautiful. Studious and adventurous. Unafraid and a bit reckless.

I even specialised in the same field as her's - Ancient and medieval world history. Nothing would interest me as much as this did. It never exhausted me like it often did to the others. I was hypnotised by the ancient civilisations, how the rulers built enormous wonders, which even modern day mechanics had no clue how they were constructed.

To go into the depth of it all, experience it right in front of my eyes... The gates of my imagination were opening today.

Dunkin came to sit beside me, gazing at the Polaroid in silence. Then he just squeezed my hand in reassurance, giving a small smile to my dad. We were the only two to have our specialisation in almost the same field. It was easier to connect with him more than the rest.

"Are you alright, son?" Dad asked worriedly as Dunkin blinked his eyes that were turning red.

"Dax is making me cry," he sniffled, breaking into a laugh. "He's telling me not to go wherever I am going because I look bad," he said, waving over his beard and long hair.

"Dunkin, you need to go to the salon first! The wolf look you've been having for months looks super bad on you! Please come back!" His eleven-year-old brother's voice came from the digital screen. It was sad. The brothers would miss each other a lot.

Even dad wasn't able to suppress his laughs as he looked at Dunkin. "Ancient man, do take care of my ancient daughter." He requested, which in turn made us chuckle.

"Someone thinks the other way round," he snickered, motioning to the screen where his mother looked like she was going to jump into the room from the screen.

"Cors, baby! Do take care of my baby Dunkin! Though I've made him capable of taking care of himself, I just can't help but worry. He's still the little Dunkin to me!" She warbled out in an emotional wreck.

I waved, smiling, screaming a 'yes' to her. She was the closest person to a mother for me. Treating me like a daughter she always wanted to have. Nevertheless, she loved her boys to death.

My best friend sighed, shaking his head to walk back to the screen.

After a few emotional moments, the scientists escorted us to the MRIAT room. I held my father's hand as we walked down the hallways. The same hallways I remembered walking in for the first time at seventeen.

Dr Adrian, the mentor for the ancient man's training, was already waiting in the hall-like room, a warm smile on his face. He was much more lenient compared to Dr Reuseme. An intelligent and wonderful human being, he had helped us the most for not only this project but with our research papers, too.

"The most brilliant group of students I've ever worked with. Are you all ready for this big day?" He asked. He was so confident in us, it instantly calmed whatever nervousness we were feeling at this last moment.

We replied enthusiastically, after which he handed us our AI books. The artificial intelligence book in which we'll be recording our observations of the BCE year.

"I hope Dr Warton already explained the coding to order minor things through it?" He asked as he handed us our respective journals. We nodded again.

That was the coolest aspect of this book.

The room looked like an operation theatre with its huge white lights and steel tables. Enormous equipment and monitors lined against one wall of the room. There were five steel tables, stacked parallel to each other in the centre.

I shivered.

It wasn't just a table. The metal straps, the horrendous wires connecting it, intricate quartz and carbon fibre on the table-top made it look close to a ghastly motherboard.

Aarmen was intently looking at the small clocks and connections on the table.

"If I'm not wrong, I think they will match the impulse of each nerve of our body. Selecting and deselecting time until we reach the desired time?" he inquired.

"Absolutely Aarmen," Dr Adrian praised. "We will match the resonance condition of your body with the plausible time. The era which will equal the frequency of your body at that moment, you'd be transported there," he smiled.

Despite the dread, the idea thrilled me. The ancient world. I was about to step into it.

I couldn't believe it when Mr Adrian had told me what the project was after I had cleared QLAT basics.

That it took carefully calculated algorithms and artificial intelligence to transport back in time.

We have already tested with animals, and some volunteering humans, it has been possible to time travel. But that's limited to the past only. It would help the archaeology department immensely if the little-known facts are studied deeply.

"It was like ascending paradise," Dr Warton sighed dreamily. He was one of the humans to have volunteered for the deadly project a few years back for a test experiment.

Truth was, no one knew his obsession with nymphs and apparently, he had witnessed a nymph-like woman in the woods he was transported to before being whooshed back to the current time.

Cheryl was the first to hop on the torture table for getting strapped. One could tell she wasn't in her sane mind to keep giggling like a twerp.

Lorenzo was crazily sucking on his upper lip in one corner of the gigantic computerized room. His eyes were locked on the laid out figure of Cheryl, not with amusement, but pure horror.

From the looks of it, he wanted nowhere near this torture chamber, but somewhere far, practising his fencing.

Meekly, he walked up to me, glanced around, then leant in to whisper, "Damn Cors, don't they have other ways of transporting us? Like one of those where they touch a stupid artefact or something and get sucked in the past?" He winced when the scientists attached various wires to Cheryl.

"I heard you, Loren!" Dunkin came grinning at us, "Have you been reading some kid's bedtime story books, huh?"

I sputtered in a laugh as Lorenzo grunted. Before he could come with a retort, the officials called him, as it was his turn to be tied up.

"Hallelujah!" he cursed more than prayed and made his way to the table beside Cheryl awkwardly.

He couldn't comprehend what was going on with the girl, who kept chortling like a maniac, as if she wasn't getting an electric shock close to heart fibrillation.

Dad was the one to connect my wires as calmly as possible. I tried focusing my thoughts on mom. She would've been extremely proud of me.

A bit of her recklessness was there in me, which kept me from turning completely insane at the moment.

Dad whispered sweet words of encouragement, gently kissing my forehead as I lay on the steel table. A knot formed in my throat, but I gulped it down.

"Love you, dad. Do take care of yourself..." I whispered. With a last smile, he stepped back when the final announcement started in the room.

"I once again conclude that it isn't a Mars mission that we could keep track of your activities in whichever era you land on.

"Resonance conditions have been set to arrive in a forest, between sixth to second century BCE. I once again remind BCE and not AD..." The dreadful voice of the company's CEO continued to wallow out the speaker.

He was one old man with loads of money and a crazy specialization in this field. His brain cells and a secret permission from the government were the root cause of this project.

"Besides the knowledge you've all gained from this project's preparation, I hope with the help of your specialisation in distinct fields, you'll be able to make this research a successful one." He concluded.

The tesla coil at the far end blared, paralyzing me by its sight alone. Vacuum acceleration had been initiated in the room that didn't let us sweat. Everyone except us donned bodysuits, and lastly, the metal strap was lowered onto our eyes, heightening our other senses.

"Phase one, heart regulation." The female robotic voice echoed in the room.

A low wave of electricity engulfed our bodies that instantly made our frantic hearts beat at their normal pace. The tesla with the motherboard table was controlling our involuntary actions now. It went for a few minutes before another announcement went off.

"Phase two, electric compulsion."

This was the most brutal. Even though my eyes were closed, I squeezed my eyes shut. I've prepared for it. I've prepared for it, was all I chanted in my head.

A thunderbolt of electricity crossed our constricted self, making me want to cry out as the powerful waves felt like travelling through my blood. Killing every cell of the body. But I couldn't make a noise, because of the ability of massive currents that make a person speechless.

Another surge of electricity passed so I could only feel the beating of the palm-sized organ that was my heart.

The feeling was downright sickening.

Just when I thought I couldn't take anymore, my electrocuting heart ready to rip out the rib cage, I felt the soul-lifting up my body before hearing the last word in the twenty-first century.

"Phase three, resonance achieved."