A Spin Through Time (Gen/SciFic)

Posted on | June 27, 2007 | No Comments

Spinning backwards through time, like a toy top going round and round, fast at the beginning and slowly losing momentum. It’s the slowing down that causes me to careen from side to side, hitting moments of history — hoping deep down that my flight hasn’t caused disaster in the linear line of minutes and hours to jump off track. Splintering wildly and fracturing all that I had known.

Paradox. It has been a word drummed into my head from the very beginning. My colleagues all told me what would happen, from the moment I joined the Time Management Consortium, if something were to happen to fracture our current time line. We may have mastered the ability to move through time, but as we’re still human, lives and histories could change on a single roll of a pair of dice. And I had to hope that my landing would not be reminiscent of Dorothy arriving in the land of Oz.

With another dizzying spin and a lurch, my conveyance came to a stop and the the narrow door to the tube-like structure I was in opened. Before me was a deserted canyon, the beginnings of what would be known historically as the Grand Canyon.

Even though the canyon was not as immense as it would some day be, it was still magnificent in all its glory. The sun was just setting to the west and the edges of the canyon were ablaze with light. The river that ran slowly by, just feet away from where man and machine stood, and fish jumped out of the stream. Down a ways, I noticed what looked like the predecessor to the bear clawing at the fish that where jumping in and out of the water.

I knew I could only stay but a few minutes and to record my observations on the micro lenses covering my eyes that all Travelers were expected to wear on their journey. So I looked around and let me lenses record everything that I personally could see. I knew I would be able to enjoy it again in any of the many HG rooms in my residential facility once the information had been downloaded and processed, then recreated three dimensionally.

My watch beeped the one minute warning indicating that my time was coming to an end and that I would need to return to my present. Wish one last look around, I moved back into my one-person time pod and watched as the preprogrammed flight instructions activated. The ride back was no less disorienting and I had to wonder to myself, why couldn’t the inventors of the time machine make it so that it didn’t have to rotate? Sigh, I would definitely have a headache after my maiden voyage. However, even the constant spinning could not diminish my excitement and the future possibilities of my traveling through time again.

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