marbleglove (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
marbleglove) wrote2009-02-02 11:24 pm
marbleglove) wrote2009-02-02 11:24 pm
Entry tags:
Original Fic: So Much Time Later
I archive all of my fanfic at fanfiction.net or tthfanfic.org, but don't have any particular place where I've put original fic. Thus, I think I'll use this as my forum and clean out some of my old original fic files.
First up, a story exploring time travel:
So Much Time Later, So Little Time Now
------------
“This platform barely qualifies as a time-machine,” Hugo told the camera documenting his solitary work in the lab. “A real time-machine should be able to work from whenever you were and take you to whenever you wanted to be. This is a time-machine like two paper cups connected by a string is a telephone.
“None the less, it is a good first step and considerably better than anything anyone else has managed. Once the platform has these final screws put in I can turn it on and use it to move to any other point in time in the past when the platform exists and is turned on. Which means, of course, that it is useless for exploring times that haven’t already been thoroughly documented.
“No visiting the dinosaurs. No meeting famous historical figures. Nothing to match the exciting adventures had by all the time-travelers in the movies.
“This is merely a practical test of my theory of time. If it works I should see myself appear, perhaps try brainstorming with my older self about the next stage of development, and then, after an hour, I’ll step onto the platform for the first time and send myself back in time an hour to when I first turned on the platform and appeared to my hour-younger self.
“An amusing experience, and certainly a good demonstration of my theory, but not immediately useful in any practical sense.”
Hugo kept reminding himself and his funders, who would later watch the video, that this was not a miracle machine. He still had much to do to make it actually useful. But it was so easy to get caught up in the excitement of this first practical experiment with something larger than a lima bean and longer than a minute. It should work. There was no reason for it to not work regardless of the doubts of the animal rights people who had denied him the use of monkeys. He had no fear of damaging himself by traveling back in time. But he still intended to give the platform time to warm up (and crash if he had messed it up somehow) before sending himself back to ten minutes after he first turned it on.
Despite intentions, Hugo had barely gotten the plug into its socket before he appeared and everything suddenly happened at once.
He still had his hand on the plug when he appeared covered in blood, holding a battery, and shouting at himself to “shut it off!” The words were not even out of his older-self’s mouth when the others appeared. Hugo got only a second to see them as his older-self tackled him and as the others appeared in their full body-armor, shooting guns that sent out long thin needles that went straight through his older self and into him. The tackle that left Hugo covered by his own dead body had also pulled the plug for his time-machine. Only four of the faceless armored beings, soldiers, murderers, had managed to come through intact in the few seconds available.
The next pair had only partly materialized before the machine shut down and Hugo could see the grey sludge that was all that remained at either end of an interrupted transfer dribbling onto the floor. In shock from pain, surprise and horror, Hugo just watched their boots from his vantage point under his body, trying to breathe against the weight and the needles. The boots walked around his lab for a very long minute before exiting by the door. As he lay in his quiet lab watching the sludge on the platform drip down, he realized that he had opened Pandora’s box.
There were screams out in the hallway.
It was a useless time-machine from his perspective, certainly, taking him nowhere that he hadn’t already been, but it was apparently quite useful for other time-travelers who needed a place to land. And there was an awful lot of time in the future. Were his murderers from ten years in the future, a hundred, a thousand, a million even? Were they human or alien? He had to destroy the machine before it got turned on again. But even more importantly he needed to warn himself to turn it off. That the warning would be an act of suicide was obvious, Hugo realized as he extracted his arms out from under the body on top of him and hugged it to him.
There were a few gunshots but not very many. The needle guns were nearly silent. More screams echoed down the hallway to his lab but they were getting further and further away.
Carefully, carefully he rolled both of his selves over so that he was on top, the needles still piercing them both. The act pushed them further into him and he gasped at the pain and tried to stop himself from coughing the blood that was filling his lungs. Pushing himself up as smoothly and as vertically as possible to pull himself off of the needles, he looked into his own dead face and wondered if there was any way to not go back to this fate. What if he just didn’t go back? He could go to the hospital and probably get fixed. Maybe. And he could confess that he was at fault for the massacre even now taking place. He could help to fix it.
Finally standing upright with the support of one of his lab tables, breathing shallowly to avoid coughing, he knew it would only get worse. At some point in the future he came back to the past bloody and scared and willing to die. He was bloody and scared right now. Did he really want to survive and hope for a future that included him at some later point being bloody and scared and willing to die?
He wouldn’t destroy his notes because they might be needed to figure out what had happened and there was the video camera that should still be recording the events as they were happening. Hopefully someone else would realize the importance of destroying the machine.
He whispered his apology to the camera and to whomever would watch it in the future. “I’m sorry. All I thought of was how little time there was now. I didn’t even consider how very much time there was later. All it would take, really, is some bad guys at some time in all that future who had the technology and the desire to use it. And there’s a lot of time available for them to develop in. You’ll need to destroy the platform.”
It was a slow and painful process to find a battery and an AC/DC transformer, to chop off the plug to his platform, to strip the wires and make all the connections but the last one that would complete the circuit. He would hold the battery in his hands and bring it back with him, creating an automatic off-switch for the platform. “And,” he whispered to the video, “maybe if the other come back, they’ll try to plug the wire into a wall socket without a transformer and destroy the platform for me.”
Maybe, maybe, but he wouldn’t be around to know who it all turned out. He was dead after all. At least he knew without a doubt that the battery would provide enough energy to make the trip. His corpse lying on the floor by the wall was proof that he would make it through without turning to sludge. Hugo almost laughed at the thought because he wasn’t sure how else to respond. It made him gag. Looking at a clock he realized that it was not even ten minutes yet since he had first turned the time-machine on. It felt like it had been days.
He stepped onto the platform, set it to the same second at which he had first turned it on nine minutes and fifty-eight seconds ago, and connected the final wire to the battery.
“Shut if off!” Hugo screamed as best he could and tackled his younger self to the ground.
First up, a story exploring time travel:
So Much Time Later, So Little Time Now
------------
“This platform barely qualifies as a time-machine,” Hugo told the camera documenting his solitary work in the lab. “A real time-machine should be able to work from whenever you were and take you to whenever you wanted to be. This is a time-machine like two paper cups connected by a string is a telephone.
“None the less, it is a good first step and considerably better than anything anyone else has managed. Once the platform has these final screws put in I can turn it on and use it to move to any other point in time in the past when the platform exists and is turned on. Which means, of course, that it is useless for exploring times that haven’t already been thoroughly documented.
“No visiting the dinosaurs. No meeting famous historical figures. Nothing to match the exciting adventures had by all the time-travelers in the movies.
“This is merely a practical test of my theory of time. If it works I should see myself appear, perhaps try brainstorming with my older self about the next stage of development, and then, after an hour, I’ll step onto the platform for the first time and send myself back in time an hour to when I first turned on the platform and appeared to my hour-younger self.
“An amusing experience, and certainly a good demonstration of my theory, but not immediately useful in any practical sense.”
Hugo kept reminding himself and his funders, who would later watch the video, that this was not a miracle machine. He still had much to do to make it actually useful. But it was so easy to get caught up in the excitement of this first practical experiment with something larger than a lima bean and longer than a minute. It should work. There was no reason for it to not work regardless of the doubts of the animal rights people who had denied him the use of monkeys. He had no fear of damaging himself by traveling back in time. But he still intended to give the platform time to warm up (and crash if he had messed it up somehow) before sending himself back to ten minutes after he first turned it on.
Despite intentions, Hugo had barely gotten the plug into its socket before he appeared and everything suddenly happened at once.
He still had his hand on the plug when he appeared covered in blood, holding a battery, and shouting at himself to “shut it off!” The words were not even out of his older-self’s mouth when the others appeared. Hugo got only a second to see them as his older-self tackled him and as the others appeared in their full body-armor, shooting guns that sent out long thin needles that went straight through his older self and into him. The tackle that left Hugo covered by his own dead body had also pulled the plug for his time-machine. Only four of the faceless armored beings, soldiers, murderers, had managed to come through intact in the few seconds available.
The next pair had only partly materialized before the machine shut down and Hugo could see the grey sludge that was all that remained at either end of an interrupted transfer dribbling onto the floor. In shock from pain, surprise and horror, Hugo just watched their boots from his vantage point under his body, trying to breathe against the weight and the needles. The boots walked around his lab for a very long minute before exiting by the door. As he lay in his quiet lab watching the sludge on the platform drip down, he realized that he had opened Pandora’s box.
There were screams out in the hallway.
It was a useless time-machine from his perspective, certainly, taking him nowhere that he hadn’t already been, but it was apparently quite useful for other time-travelers who needed a place to land. And there was an awful lot of time in the future. Were his murderers from ten years in the future, a hundred, a thousand, a million even? Were they human or alien? He had to destroy the machine before it got turned on again. But even more importantly he needed to warn himself to turn it off. That the warning would be an act of suicide was obvious, Hugo realized as he extracted his arms out from under the body on top of him and hugged it to him.
There were a few gunshots but not very many. The needle guns were nearly silent. More screams echoed down the hallway to his lab but they were getting further and further away.
Carefully, carefully he rolled both of his selves over so that he was on top, the needles still piercing them both. The act pushed them further into him and he gasped at the pain and tried to stop himself from coughing the blood that was filling his lungs. Pushing himself up as smoothly and as vertically as possible to pull himself off of the needles, he looked into his own dead face and wondered if there was any way to not go back to this fate. What if he just didn’t go back? He could go to the hospital and probably get fixed. Maybe. And he could confess that he was at fault for the massacre even now taking place. He could help to fix it.
Finally standing upright with the support of one of his lab tables, breathing shallowly to avoid coughing, he knew it would only get worse. At some point in the future he came back to the past bloody and scared and willing to die. He was bloody and scared right now. Did he really want to survive and hope for a future that included him at some later point being bloody and scared and willing to die?
He wouldn’t destroy his notes because they might be needed to figure out what had happened and there was the video camera that should still be recording the events as they were happening. Hopefully someone else would realize the importance of destroying the machine.
He whispered his apology to the camera and to whomever would watch it in the future. “I’m sorry. All I thought of was how little time there was now. I didn’t even consider how very much time there was later. All it would take, really, is some bad guys at some time in all that future who had the technology and the desire to use it. And there’s a lot of time available for them to develop in. You’ll need to destroy the platform.”
It was a slow and painful process to find a battery and an AC/DC transformer, to chop off the plug to his platform, to strip the wires and make all the connections but the last one that would complete the circuit. He would hold the battery in his hands and bring it back with him, creating an automatic off-switch for the platform. “And,” he whispered to the video, “maybe if the other come back, they’ll try to plug the wire into a wall socket without a transformer and destroy the platform for me.”
Maybe, maybe, but he wouldn’t be around to know who it all turned out. He was dead after all. At least he knew without a doubt that the battery would provide enough energy to make the trip. His corpse lying on the floor by the wall was proof that he would make it through without turning to sludge. Hugo almost laughed at the thought because he wasn’t sure how else to respond. It made him gag. Looking at a clock he realized that it was not even ten minutes yet since he had first turned the time-machine on. It felt like it had been days.
He stepped onto the platform, set it to the same second at which he had first turned it on nine minutes and fifty-eight seconds ago, and connected the final wire to the battery.
“Shut if off!” Hugo screamed as best he could and tackled his younger self to the ground.