[Space Time 02.0] A Stranger From Time

by Atri Kundu

  “Yes, this was always one of the solutions to the paradox but then why did you come…”

  “It’s a chance, one in infinity that you’ll end up in the Universe you intend to. This was my third time.”

  “Your chance of finding him was one out of infinity, which is nothing but ZERO!” I bellowed, taken aback by her foolishness. “Those rashes, the fever could kill…” I couldn’t continue anymore.

  “That probability used to be enough for me,” she paused. She was looking away from me but I felt her smiling. “Until I met you.” My heart paused as she said the last words, until I met you echoed inside my ears.

  “How are you planning to go back then?”

  “Before Steve’s incident no one had any idea of parallel Universes but after that, we thought on it seriously. A friend of mine built a device that my time-machine can detect from any Universe and land exactly where the device is routed.”

  Now that she had told me her secret, I wanted to tell her mine but I couldn’t and I could hardly face her anymore. I must meet Eric, just to confirm his news before she leaves.

  “Promise me, you’ll one day come looking for me,” she said suddenly.

  Did this mean she wanted me to do what she did? Build a time-machine? “I want you to excel me,” she intervened my thoughts. Excel her?

  “Don’t take a leap into the infinity. Change the probability to a hundred percent. Build something that will surely take you to me.”

  After she finished, I kept staring at her and wondering whether I was really the man she could trust.

  ***

  “Time and memory are true artists; they remold reality nearer to heart's desire.” —John Dewey

  I got two more days to spend with her, courtesy to the minor problems in her time machine that was caused by the crash landing. Then finally, it was time for her to leave.

  The journey reminded me of a poem by Robert Browning, The Last Ride Together. We drove fast, as fast as my old truck could and we paused at a desolate ground far away from the main city. She wanted no attention while she would start the machine.

  It was a big abandoned field in the outskirts of the town, which was supposed to be turned into a complex but for some reason, it didn’t. She got out of the car without saying anything and out came her time machine. She turned, staring at me.

  I came out of the truck and walked up to her silently. She stood still, staring deep inside my eyes, the hazel green eyes she said she could trust. Then she took a step towards me. The physical space between us was reduced to a bare minimum.

  Without moving my feet, I leant forward until our foreheads touched. Her soft, warm breaths brushed against my skin. I shivered. In a blink, all the memories of the past few days flooded my mind and a sudden overwhelming fear of losing it all. This would be the last time I was seeing her, touching her, feeling her this close to me. Her voice, her theories and her presence I’d miss them so much.

  I tried to breathe but the lump in my throat made it difficult. Now or never, I wouldn't get another chance. "Can I?" I whispered. This wasn't the right time, I knew, but we might not have any time to be together ever again.

  She said nothing. Something glittered on her cheeks under the light from that machine. Tears. And in that second, I felt a strange connection between her tears and the shooting stars. This is the law of physics, when something gets heavier than it can bear it falls. Like the universe which couldn't bear the burden of those stars even the strongest girl couldn't bear her sorrows forever.

  She grasped the hem of my shirt and pulled me. I got my answer.

  I moved my lips closer, the distance went from centimeters to millimeters until nothing separated us anymore. Like a photograph in an album, that moment froze in the frame of our hearts and we kissed. Most intensely and most passionately that any human ever could. Space-time-universe-unified theory they all seemed so meaningless and insignificant now, like we were above all of them. We were dimensionless.

  We were in Love.

  For the universe, it might have lasted for seconds or minutes but for us, it was just a moment, a moment that we both wouldn’t forget for the rest of our lives. A moment, which for us, won’t be restricted by the laws of time.

  A moment that became Eternity.

  Then slowly I pulled myself from her. We've had our eternity but in this universe, nothing lasts forever and not even the eternity.

  She took a step back. Then another towards her timeship.

  I stood still, watching her retreating figure. I forced the tears inside but I feared they’d overpower me any moment now. Finally she stood on the pavement.

  Her eyes were still affixed at me. She forced a smile and I know I should have too, but I didn’t. I stood like a stone statue, heartless and emotionless. Or maybe my heart was filled with so many emotions that it felt numb.

  A portion of the wall on the ship slid open. She walked up the pavement and then stepped inside. The door slid shut.

  I felt a spasm inside my heart. My throat choked and I could hardly breathe.

  Through the glass-like windshield I could still see her. She pressed a wide range of switches and rotated a big dial. A lever protruded out, she placed her hand on it.

  It was the time.

  She pulled the lever.

  The entire body of the ship rattled like the hands of a watch gone mad. Even the air started vibrating in the same frequency and I felt the sudden change in air pressure. The thing rose a foot in the air, floating like helium balloons. She raised her left hand and waved at me.

  I forced my arm but the wave was weaker, lacking the intensity. They said it right, goodbyes are hardest when you know you will never say hello ever again.

  A transparent bluish layer slowly shrouded her and then the layer started solidifying and became thicker. Now I could hardly see her. Her figure was fading more each second as the opacity of the layer increased and what remained was just an image of her etched in my mind.

  Then the bluish layer started reflecting light in all directions, dazzling bluish light rays. It almost blinded me. But I squinted and kept staring at it, my eyes pained and felt like burning. Tears slid down my cheeks, but I stared.

  I couldn’t afford to lose any sight of her.

  The ball of light began squeezing rapidly, its radius shrinking from two meters to two centimeters until with one last glow, it became invisible completely.

  Before my eyes was only a void field that stretched into a world of infinite darkness.

  A cold wind kissed past my cheeks, it smelled sweet with her fragrance still entangled in it. My eyes closed and I took in a deep breath, filling my heart, lungs and soul with the last sign of her presence. Seconds or minutes later I opened my eyes.

  And then even the last trace of her scent was also gone forever.

  In a flash, I remembered about the souvenir she left for me. I quickly felt inside my pockets and pulled out the pen drive. It had the notes on Unified Field theory. Her words replayed in my mind, “Maybe someday you will find a way to me.”

  I felt a promise building inside every cell of my body. I will.I promise I will.

  ***

  “How did it gate late so soon?

  Its night before its afternoon.

  December is here before its June.

  My goodness, how the time has flown.

  How did it get late so soon?” —Dr. Seuss

  A sudden commotion surrounding me send ripples into my senses, I wake up. I try but fail to open my eyes.

  But I know where I am. In the city’s best hospital, the country’s best doctors are attending me and a huge crowd is gathered outside to pray for me. Every social media is now abuzz with prayers for my health, I can tell it from here.

  Yet, all of this was so artificial and I don’t feel any need for this anymore. Because I know this is the end of line for me. Even today, amidst all this commotion, there is a huge void that nothing could fill except something that I had only for four days in my life
, something which made me what I am today. Raymond Dreyar, the most respected scientist of this age, the man who solved almost every equation on space and time and the man who first looked into the future.

  Yes, my inventions saved the world more than once and made human life easier beyond imagination but they were never mine to begin with. My entire life is a lie!

  That day I lied to her and since then I lied to everyone, including myself.

  Now in these last moments, I feel that age-old guilt churning inside my stomach. I feel a spasm inside my heart. I wince. I hear someone calling for the doctors, footsteps rush inside the room. But this is out of their hands now.

  That day I couldn’t bring myself to say her that when Eric called me, he actually had information on a certain machine that landed on Earth on a certain island in the Atlantic Ocean. He had a hazy video feed from the satellite. A machine appeared in the sky out of nowhere, crashed hard into a huge rock. Cracks rippled through the machine body, a human in a black and blue suit came out, stained in blood.

  Steve Johnston! Brother of Ameline Johnston.

  For some minutes, the stranger observed his surroundings, looking for something to take care of his wounds. He found none in the deserted island and returned inside the machine. Minutes later, the machine shivered and quaked, the cracks deepened on the walls of the machine and a layer of light shrouded it.

  Slowly the light layer turned to a reflecting ball and disappeared. But the cracks in the light ball were visible clearly. I suppressed all this inside me those fifty-seven years back.

  If you are lost, then there is always some hope that you’d come back but not if you’re… And I just couldn’t take this hope away from her.

  She gave me everything, a new life, a new inspiration and a new urge to strive forward. In return, what I could give her were lies only. But are lies always that bad, even when they can give hope? Eric and I both believed that Steve wouldn’t make it safely to wherever he was going.

  I couldn’t say this to her. If I did, she would kill herself from travelling back and forth in time, trying to stop this from happening. But maybe she’d find that out by now, hiding things from a time traveler isn’t easy and she might hate me for that.

  My eyes are shut but my senses half-awake. I know when the doctor left my room, shaking his head in despair. Finally I manage to slide open a part of my eyes.

  I did everything that she asked me to. I studied the huge set of notes she left for me, and rebuild the world in the way she wanted. I developed science to help human beings without turning them into machines.

  I built my own company, Alpha Corps and in these last fifty-seven years I own almost the entire world, which will all go to the charity funds today. Yet, this void. I could never heal it.

  That night when I thought eternity doesn't last forever, I was wrong. Our eternity is as long as we are alive physically and then in the memories of someone we care about. And I know, she was always alive in mine and I was in hers.

  And I am happy to have lived my eternity with the memory of a girl whom I loved even more than myself.

  Slowly I felt my eyelids turning heavier and becoming tougher to keep them open. I tried, I really tried Ameline. I really wanted to see you once more. All through my life I worked hard day and night to find a way out to reach you. But every way turned into a dead-end.

  I failed. I failed you, I failed myself. I failed us.

  Travelling in time is taking a blind leap into the infinity. I understood that and stopped trying a decade ago and accepted my fate. There might be an infinite number of alternate histories possible and never would it lead me to you.

  Tears slowly streame down my eyes, down my cheeks and into the bed sheet. I wish I can wipe them but I guess, I am too old and too weak for that. My vision is fading every moment, the doctors and nurses are running around to save one life but my eyes are hardly recording any movement now. Maybe they are calling out to me, shrieking and yelling but my ears let in no sound.

  Some stories begin only to never have an ending. I have always thought of my life like this. And even now, I think it is the truth.

  In that moment, I see someone standing near the foot of my bed. A female figure. I blink, forcing my treacherous eyelids to open their gates one last time. Ameline. My Amy.

  That’s her, my vision is fading no more. I can see her like I could see the stars. Distinct and dazzling.

  She looks like the day I let her go. For some reason, time seems to have no effect on her. Timeless and ageless like our love, she stands there.

  But how can she be here? Did she find a way to me? Or my mind is having jokes on me at the last hour?

  I wish to ask, but my lips only shiver and no sound comes out. Maybe some other day, I try to console myself. Or maybe I don't need to. I failed her but she didn't. She must have found a way to me. That was so like her, so like the Amy I knew and I loved.

  She takes a step towards me and said something, in that sweet voice of hers. What she said didn’t reach me because buzzing in my ears were the first words she’d said when I found her in our garden, "Hello Stranger."

  ~~~***~~~

  Acknowledgement

  This section is bound to begin with the mention of only one person. I won’t say the name, though. I really don’t know what to say, words aren’t just enough that special person’s effect on my life. It is only because that person ever came in my life that I could do this. That person has given me so many memories—both good and bad, the good ones make me smile even today at the hardest times and the bad ones inspire me to express them through my stories. “You have been my best friend for the last twelve years and will be so forever. Thank You for Everything, my Eternal Best Friend.”

  Next I’d like to thank my English teacher who is more like an elder sister to me. Any acknowledgement also would be incomplete without mentioning about my great buddies—Anubhab, Soham, Sandip, Akash and many more—they all have been great to me always and supported me when I needed them.

  My lovely siblings are also very much instrumental in keeping me going. My mom and dad also need to be thanked for raising and nourishing me to what I am today.

  To the reader, “This Book Belongs to You. Read it, Love it and Treasure it.”

  About the author

  Atri Kundu has had found a new world in his imaginations since childhood. It was only when he reached high-school that he decided to pen them down. Currently residing in India, he decided to publish his first collection of novelettes and began working on 2013. It took him one year to complete and now he is a self-published author.

  Now in the concluding part of his high-school years, Atri is always praised for his academic skills. Even after school and study, he manages to find time for his imaginations. Always a believer in the human power of love, he tries to portray that very concept through his stories.

  For him, pain and hardships are always the best inspirations. Currently, he is busy penning down his first full-length novel, Killer-Victim Bond. To know more about him and his other works,

  Contact him on

  Email— atri.cruizer2129@yahoo.in

  Website— http://atrikundustorytreasure.weebly.com

  Facebook ID— www.facebook.com/atri.arcruiser.kundu

  Facebook Page— www.facebook.com/StoryTreasure

  Twitter— www.twitter.com/AtriKundu2129

  More from Atri Kundu

  Predator

  Every predator is a prey!

  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01E6444QG

  From the author of Present in Love and A Blank Page, comes a dystopian story on mankind’s last effort to save the existance of their race.

  A short space drama filled with breath-taking action that will take you beyond the boundaries of human knowledge and imagination.

  Hundreds of years into the future lies an Earth, broken and devastated by the Forth World War. Silvestre Faulkner is a professional soldier in United Force’s army and a space pilot who never went beyond t
he demo classes. His sister Marlene is a genius astrophysicist but with hardly any knowledge in weapons and artillery. But when they are called for Earth’s last space mission, their actions will decide the fate of human civilization.

  Embark with them on a journey past stars and galaxies to seek life on a newly discovered world Genesis. With the help of Earth’s most advanced machinery and weapon system, will they succeed in building a new Earth on Genesis?

  >>> “Time is a very strange thing,” his father used to say.

  Will Silvestre break through the bonds of space and time? Or will the entire race fall with him? And what darkness awaits the people on Earth?

  >>> “Human beings are born predators” says the most vicious soldier of Earth, Corrie McClenaghan.

  A dark force lurking in the faraway land will haunt the mission. Can Corrie lead the members of the two spaceships Hope and Endeavor and save the human race? Or will their destiny prove that Every Predator is a Prey?

  To find out all the answers, grab your copy of the first installment in The Space Time Saga Today.

  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01E6444QG

  Scenes from Predator

  With slow steps, he walked up to the steel railings and looked up. From that height, the twin-tallest manmade buildings blocked his vision. The Union Nations HQ and United Forces HQ‒ the names were displayed in bold. He wondered if anyone would walk into them ever again. A long bridge connected the two gigantic towers, and above it, the sun was dipping into the horizon. He felt a certain connection with it for a moment.

  It was time for them too. Time to go down. Time to set.

  He looked at the small device in his hand. Similar to the cell phones of 29th century but a slight larger and thicker. On its right side was a little switch and as he pressed it, a three inch stick pushed out of the device, the Antenna. He had made it look a little old-fashioned intentionally.