"T-minus forty seconds," the mission controller counted. Dox released her mother from their tight embrace, the two of them holding themselves as much as each other. Her mother assisted her in sealing the canister, then she strapped herself in.

"We're doing the right thing," her mother said, voice breaking against the tears. "I just wish it didn't have to be me."

Dox put her hand against the window. Their hands met against the glass, mirrored one another, one final gesture. Mother, daughter: they were only whole together; broken, apart. The machine whined to life, the temporal rift tearing open, washing the room in an unnatural glow.

"Me too, mom. I love me," she answered, choking tears.

Her mother sobbed, laughed.

"You vain bitch," her mother said, voice cracking with a bittersweet smile. "I love me, too."

Dox gagged, frantically clawing at the straps of her helmet, at the controls of the canister keypad. Air. She needed fresh air. The air in the canister tasted stale and foul, bitter and carbolic. She tapped the controls, then banged furiously, until the canister finally opened. She gasped, coughed, gasped again, relishing the stale stink of the hot, muggy lab she had arrived in.

In a frenetic rush, Dox tore herself free of the straps and buckles, ripping the safety helmet from her chronosuit. Long, sweaty hair scythed through the darkness, throwing a glittering blade of sweaty droplets into the night as she threw her head back. She felt cooked, and trapped, and buzzing with a peculiar manic energy that she attributed to the time travel. She dropped the helmet, unzipped the chronosuit, steam rolling from her skin as she bared herself to the past.

Also there in the laboratory, still working long after everyone else had left for the evening, sat the soon-to-be-famous Herbert Wells. Grad student, former physics dropout, current engineering TA. He blinked--slowly, stupidly--at the three meter capsule which had just materialized. In his hands was a cup; on the floor immediately below this cup, was most of the tea he had just finished making, forgotten.

Staring at Dox as she stepped out of the time travel canister and peeled off her chronosuit, as the attractive woman from elsewhen stripped to the skin before him, the young man could perhaps be forgiven for forgetting his tea.

"Dox," he grinned, lopsided and roguish. "You keep telling me to fuck off, but you know I'm going to keep asking. There's got to be a story behind a name like that."

She pinched him, then nibbled his neck to distract him.

"Fuck off, Herbert."

He squirmed, then submitted. They sighed together, breathing each other.

The pair lay in bed, wrapped around one another, languid and lewd. The scent of sex hung heavy in the room. On the floor were their clothes, discarded hurriedly, as they often were. On each wall, there were corkboards and whiteboards, decorated with the arcane mathematics of time travel, as they often were.

Herbert Wells was the man who was going to invent time travel. The answer had fallen into his lap, fait accompli; now he just had to reverse engineer the question. He had to figure out how, someday, he would send himself the love of his life.

Dox had clearly proven it was possible, by arriving. All Herbert had to do was figure out how to get from the now to the then, or perhaps from the then to the now. To reach the moment he could send her back to him. For months, they had worked on little else. His previous life as an anonymous engineering student was over.

Of course, the canister had initially been confiscated by very nervous men with very important titles and other men with very heavy weapons. But it turned out that the canister, and its control system, was programmed entirely in Herbert's own proprietary coding language that he had, until recently, been in the process of quietly inventing as part of his thesis. That, and the confusing but insistent testimony of Dox, was enough to sway at least a few important opinions on the nature of the impossible. Realizing the potential implications, the university--and eventually the government--had decided to shower him with grant money, assistants, lab space.

They wanted for nothing. They worked at their leisure. Herbert and Dox were perhaps the two most important people on the planet. They were permitted everything but to leave. Being scientists, they only blinked owlishly at the bars of their gilded cage, shrugged, then went right back to working like bees and screwing like rats.

After all, Szilard and Oppenheimer, Seaborg and Fuchs had spent the whole of the Manhattan Project in a similar situatuon. And from their own de facto prison, those great minds had changed the world forever. Besides, it was nice to have someone sent around to do the laundry for them.

"Dox?" he said, mildly surprised at his own boldness.

"Mmm?" she purred.

"I love you," he admitted.

I can't do this, he realized. It's beyond me.

They lay in bed, and he listened to Dox softly snore in the dark. For weeks they had stalled, making no progress. He had gone back, checked his work, checked again.

Mass traveling backwards in time acted as antimatter. Time travel wasn't enough. He also had to solve for containment, for conversion, prevent annihilation long enough for matter to arrive and begin moving concurrent with local time. It was a problem orders of magnitude more complex than simply describing the function of chronal displacement. They spent months tearing apart the canister Dox had arrived in, scouring it for secrets, but results eluded them. The answers didn't match the questions.

The answers were right there. They already knew the result. Therefore, they--he--had to be asking the wrong questions. The right questions haunted his dreams, tantalizing, dancing just out of reach.

He thought he heard Dox whisper something, there in the dark, in the quiet of their bed.

"Hm?" he tried, afraid of waking her.

To his surprise, she rolled over. With a tenderness he didn't understand, a need he couldn't comprehend, a sorrow he couldn't soothe, she climbed on top of him. They fit together, felt right together, and always had. But this time, her closeness felt less like love, and more like goodbye.

"Dox? What's--what are you doing?" he asked, baffled.

"I'm giving you an answer, while I steal your work and leave you," she explained.

Her movements were rushed, hands shaking, even as her face was a careful mask. She deliberately forced herself to continue stacking papers, all their work together, into a briefcase. Tears stained only a few of the pages.

"A-an answer?"

"You asked my name, remember? Back before you got me pregnant."

"You're... pregnant!?" he managed, voice strained to breaking.

"Her name is--will be--Paradox. Paradox Wells," she explained, touching her stomach. "In the future, I'll nickname her Dox. She will be the very first time traveler."

Stunned, he couldn't think. Couldn't process. All he could manage was a weak protest.

"You can't... I mean, they won't let you leave," he said.

Dox paused, stole one last heartsick look at him, and then snapped her briefcase closed.

"They already did. My mother told me how she escaped," she sighed. "Goodbye, Herbert."

He stared, horrified. His coffee cup slipped from limp fingers, thumping against the carpet, spilling at his feet. Dr. Herbert Wells sputtered, impotent and indignant, at the love of his life, unable or unwilling to stop her as she softly brushed her hand across his cheek. She leaned forward, kissed him tenderly, and slipped through the bars of their gilded cage.

Broken love. Shattered life. The ruins of a man's heart lay scattered around the lab. A tattered man worked obsessively in the wreckage of a disassembled containment canister.

It would take years. Decades, maybe. A thousand years, even. However long it took, he would finish. He would master time. He would find her. He would have his answers. He would win her back.

He would unravel time itself, he would find the woman he loved. He would find his daughter. He would stop her. He would violate causality, unravel paradox. He would move heaven and earth, shake the very foundations of reality.

His hands shook, his fingers ached, his eyes burned. She had broken more than just his heart. But she had been, then. And she would be again, soon. He just had to figure out how to reach her.

It was supposed to be easy: Seduce and dump a lonely scientist with lacking social skills and enough self-doubt to power the greatest scientific revolution since the creation of the steam engine. It had started off fine, the Tachyon Inversion Device has gone dark when I reached the correct time-space coordinates, but that was to be expected, time travel to a time period before the invention of time travel was exceedingly difficult.

It meant I lost contact with headquarters but that wasn’t unexpected and the connection would reestablish itself by the time the professor got his prototype working. Making contact with him had also been a breeze, he’d been immediately smitten by my golden hair and silky smooth skin, all courtesy of personal beauty products created by the Tachyon technology he would soon lay the foundation of.

No seducing him hadn’t been a problem, and as he lay sleeping on my chest after our third month together I knew it was the prime moment to strike. I didn’t even have to say anything, just walk out the door, refuse to answer his calls and leave every message on read. But neither the textfiles in school or the mission briefings had prepared me for the simple undeniable fact that the father of time travel had been so damn cute.

The way he nervously chuckled when he wasn’t quite sure if my comment was a joke or not, how he claimed to hate dancing but never seemed able to stop himself when the music came on, and how he sung for me when we were alone so beautifully earnestly and so terribly out of tune.

I wrapped my arms around his sleeping form and pulled him closer to me, he was funny too, but it took time to understand and spot his humor. It usually came in the form of him recognizing the absurdity of everyday life, he would just suddenly start chuckling to himself and I’d follow his eye line to whatever he was looking at and try to reverse engineer his thought process to figure out his private joke.

I held him close to me and wondered how in the world this wonderful man had been shunned and ignored for so long. His chosen study was of course a factor, not many people took time travel seriously as a practical field of study. He really came to life whenever he talked about it though, explaining his ideas in ways he hoped would help me grasp the concept, and I played along, asking the right questions at the right times to keep his explanations going. I could hardly tell him that every cadet at the agency had the 18 essential formula memorized and could recreate the 92 essential components of the Tachyon Inversion Drive with the technology of at least 8 different centuries.

He would work on the device every day as I kept up my cover job as a firefighter. It was a rewarding job in many more ways than I had expected, saving lives was of course the highlight but I got to use my body in ways never expected of people in my era. It took a toll on my body, the flawlessness of my skin faded as my muscles grew instead and the shine of my golden hair was lost when a faulty helmet caused most of it to go up in flames.

Despite my new short haircut and my dull skin I managed to get into a calendar shoot as Mr March, an achievement we celebrated together on one of our last dates together.

It was a beautiful cold Saturday in February and we were sitting at a small cafe eating breakfast when he told me it wasn’t going to work out between us. That I was wonderful but that he couldn’t spend his life with someone who wasn’t willing to be honest with him. He told me that he knew about the lies, he knew about the half-truths, and he knew I loved him.

He knew so much about who I wasn’t, but he didn’t know me. He gave me a chance, begged me to just be open and honest with him so we could build the life together we clearly both wanted.

I couldn’t.

He picked up the bill and left me staring into my half eaten bacon and eggs.

One of my firefighting colleagues picked up my things from his place, soon after I quit the job, didn’t even make it to my month in the calendar. I spent my days preparing my Tachyon Inversion Device for takeoff and in late Juli the machine finally connected with the greater timestream.

He’d done it, just like the history files said he would.

I cried for 2 days before I left.

I never saw his real smiling face with the glint in his eye again, only the sad smile he wore in the history files.

When the director of the organization approached me with the final mission, I knew exactly what it would cost me in the end… and yet I accepted it without hesitation. What does that say about me, I wonder?

I looked over the dossier. The target: Adam Davis. Inventor of the prototype that eventually led to the device on my wrist. Born March 30th, 2189. The objective: without killing the target, stop him from inventing his prototype. This means that I had to pick the right date between his birth and the day of the first time jump, on July 14th, 2214.

A distant explosion sounded overhead. Sounds like the organization has been breached already. It’s only a matter of… time… until it is all over. I look to the director; no words are necessary, so I simply salute. He returns the gesture, and quickly exits the room, giving me the time necessary to make the jump.

I set the device on my wrist to December 31st, 2211, and begin the priming sequence. I spend my last ten minutes looking around my quarters in the organization’s last remaining underground safehouse. It is clean and spartan, with hardly a hint of individuality. That’s to be expected; the devices we use to travel in time do not allow us to bring anything along other than our bodies and the specially designed suits that are hardwired into said device. Travel before the invention of the suits was… awkward, to say the least. I check the integrity of my suit (all clear), and I lower the goggles and raise the face mask into place.

Finally, the priming sequence is completed. Just in time; I can hear the sound of weapons discharging outside my door. Before the enemy can get inside, I set the destination, and activate the device. The world around me begins to fade and distort, though I know it’s really me that is fading and distorting. The safehouse disappears, and a new scene slowly takes its place.

A Christmas tree, haphazardly decorated, stands tall in the corner of the room. A cozy fireplace casts its warm glow into the room, with no other light sources to aid it. A radio can be heard coming from the next room over, playing slow and peaceful Christmas music.

A man is laid out on the couch, grasping an empty bottle in one hand. His sleep is peaceful, but the trails on his cheeks indicate that he did not enter this sleep peacefully.

I approach the man, feeling guilty for choosing such a vulnerable time in his life to do this, but knowing that it is the best (and possibly only) way for this mission to succeed. I gently shake his shoulder. He stirs, then slowly wakes up. His eyes are dull; he barely registers the apparent stranger in his home.

“Adam,” I say, “we need to talk.”

“Who’re you?” he slurs. “If you’re here to rob me, take whatever you want. There’s nothing of value here anymore…”

This is harder than I thought. I almost activate the return function on my device, aborting the mission altogether. Instead, I say, “You are working on something. A device that will change history forever.”

“You want my blueprints? Take them; they’re just theoretical at this point. It’ll be years before a prototype can be realized.”

“Precisely two years, six months, and fifteen days from now.”

That sobers him up a bit. “You sound so sure… but that must mean that you…”

“Yes, Adam. I am from the future.”

“Then it works!” Adam stands up, dropping the empty bottle to the soft carpet with a thud. He reaches his hands to the skies and shouts with joy, tears welling up in his eyes.

I wait for him to sit back down. Eventually he does, and he looks at me eagerly. “I knew I would figure it out one day! It had to be possible! Now I can go back and undo my mistakes!”

“You can’t.”

“What do you mean, I can’t? Sure, it will take some time, but knowing what awaits me at the end…”

“You misunderstand. I can’t let you.”

Adam’s face snaps from joy to fury in an instant. He grabs me by the shoulders and says in a tight but intense voice, “You don’t understand. A year ago, I was married to a beautiful woman. I had a beautiful daughter. I was caught up in my research; I told them to go to the New Years’ Fireworks without me. They got into a car, hit a patch of ice, and…”

His grip on me weakened as he sank back down onto the couch. He looked as if he might burst into tears, but after a moment (and a sharp inhale) he looked up at me. “But that doesn’t matter. Once the machine is ready, I can go back and tell them not to go. Then I can see them again, and-”

I remove my mask and goggles, and his speech stops dead. He looks at me with wide, unbelieving eyes. After a moment that feels like an eternity, he finally speaks again.

“Sophia?”

Every part of me wants to reach out to him, to hold him once again. But I know better. Doing so will only make this more painful, and it might endanger the mission. Keeping my expression neutral, I respond: “Hello, Adam.”

He moves to embrace me, but I hold out a hand to stop him. “Adam, you have to stop this. I know you are in pain; I know all you wanted was to bring me and Charlotte back. You are a brilliant man, but your brilliance is going to have far-reaching repercussions that you can’t even begin to comprehend. I have come back to convince you to never invent time travel.”

I get it all out as quickly as possible, afraid that if I stop, I won’t be able to finish. Unmasking myself had been a risk, and it left me more emotionally vulnerable, but I knew Adam. He wasn’t about to bow to the will of a stranger, so I had to show him that I wasn’t one.

“Sophia, I… I missed you so much. That night, I said such horrible things, and I…”

I can’t stop the sad smile from crossing my face. “It’s all right, Adam. I forgive you. Please don’t beat yourself up over this anymore.”

“Sophia, I can’t stop now. You are here, and that means it worked. I went back and I saved you, and… where’s our daughter?”

“She… didn’t make it.”

“But… how did I…”

“You saved her, but she died in a battle, decades later. A battle that came about because of your invention.”

“You don’t understand! If I don’t invent time travel, then I never went back to save you. If my grasp of time theory is accurate, the universe will self-correct, and you will…”

“I know. It’s what I signed up for when I made the jump. Call me crazy, but if it avoids the future I came from…”

Adam stared at me with longing, but I could see that my words were getting to him. I could also feel it; the world around me was starting to fade. I smiled, knowing that my mission was almost over.

“No… Sophia, what is happening?”

“You realize that I am right… you’re not going to invent the machine…”

“Wait, please, just let us spend one last night together! Just let me hold you one last time!”

“That will only add to your pain. Please, you have to let me go.”

“I can’t… I’m not strong enough.”

“Yes you are, Adam. You’re the one who sent me on this mission.”

Those words are the final nail in the coffin. As the world goes dark around me, I look at his face one last time. Tears are freely flowing down his cheeks, but I can see the shock in his eyes give way to resolve. He nods, and speaks the last words I would hear in this life: “I’ll never forget the time we spent together. Goodbye, my love.”

~Stories by Sol

Welcome to the Prompt! All top-level comments must be a story or poem. Reply here for other comments.

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