Writer Unblocked

Dedicated to Dr David Grant, Research Scientist

Time travel. A scientist’s dream invention, the ticking clock of science fiction, the hidden hope in so many scientists’ hearts. And the clock will not stop ticking. A future find in countdown.

Dr David Grant fingered his pencil nervously as he noted calculations. This pencil which had just time travelled to five minutes in the future. It had actually worked! Had he invented time travel?

A successful approach to the University of Glasgow resulted in David heading a small research team. His own team, his own project! Together they manufactured the “Capsule Creative,” their chosen name for the new time machine.

As fans of the movie “Back to the Future,” the team furtively played with the notion of making a 1980s Delorean in to a time machine. However the idea was quickly dismissed. What they needed was a bespoke time capsule, custom made and limited only by their imaginations. A blank piece of paper designed to transform history; a piece of paper on which the future would unfurl like a shy flower, a beautiful bloom that could change their forever.

The first experiments were quietly successful. Mice travelled back and forth, first in hours, then in days. They were unscathed and alert. David’s was a compassionate research team: the mice were all rehomed through a local animal rescue; their reward for ploughing in the past to sew a finer future.

They moved on to human time travel. Some of the team travelled back two days, then returned. There were no side-effects; in fact, time travel left them feeling refreshed and energised.

The big mission was coming. The time travel feat that would transform history, haunting their futures with prehistoric whispers. A trip to tantalise the sceptics and to tempt the hopefuls. A journey back in time twelve thousand years.

Denise and Oliver, two of the research team, volunteered for this mission: the first serious time travellers, history’s ghosts, tourists of the unknown.

It was almost time to go. As Denise and Oliver stepped in to Capsule Creative, an identical capsule appeared next to theirs. “This is you! Back five minutes too early!” declared David. “You must go now! You must not encounter your other selves!”

With haste, Denise and Oliver proudly placed themselves at the capsule controls. The door closed and they were gone.

David and the remaining team waited anxiously for the second capsule door to open. Nothing happened. Worry wormed its way in to their hearts like a time traveller on an endgame mission. And still the door did not open.

David ran to the capsule door, pushing his shoulder against it. Why had they not added a door release control to the outside? Eventually, the door slowly shuddered inwards.

There was no one on the capsule. The team stared in horror, an unknown history haunting their eyes. What had happened?

“Look!” gasped Luke. “There is a manuscript on the floor!”

David tentatively touched the mound of paper, a thesis on steroids in his hands. He began to read. A frown unfurled in to a smile on his face. The trip had been successful. Twelve thousand years ago, Denise and Oliver did not find cave dwellers. Instead, they landed in the ancient – the mythical – civilisation called Atlantis. And they had decided to stay. Their words echoed in his head as though spoken aloud: “this is a paradise in plural, a sterling society and wondrous world that we simply do not wish to leave.”

There followed a thousand or more pages on Atlantean lore and life. A smile stuck to David’s face like a super-glued post-it note. They had discovered so much more than time travel, they had actually unearthed an ancient civilisation!

David quickly flicked through the pages to the end. “We have introduced time travel to Atlantis. In a few years we will embark on a mission to the future, the far future, three hundred years beyond your time. We wish to see a world that may have invented space travel. We have already decided on the time and space co-ordinates, if you wish to join us there …”

It was an impossible invitation, one that could not be refused.

The intrepid team arrived in the future, time travel tormenting their hearts with tears of joy.

Denise and Oliver were waiting for them, with a team of blond-haired, white skinned persons bedecked with crystals. These must be the Atlanteans: it looked like hippies were alive and well long before the 1960s. They quickly greeted each other, before glancing up in awe at the sky. Spacecraft were above them.

“What do we do now?” muttered David, disbelief slicing his heart like a knife from the past.

“We join a space mission,” said Denise simply. “What else did we come here to do? The ancient knowledge of Atlantis will merge with the science of the 24^th century. We will create a super race.”

David laughed. He remembered the pencil he had first sent back in time, hundreds of years ago now. He could not have conceived where that simple act would take him.

They discovered that time travel had been abandoned in the year 2020, when a time travel science team had simply vanished. That was them! David pondered a world of space and renewed time travel. The Atlanteans considered moving their entire populace to the future, to avoid the end of their civilisation. David laughed again. The world was new, it was crazy, it was fertile for a better future. And they would build it again, past and future hand in hand like old school friends meeting up after decades. It was time to heal the future, a tortured child from the past, wounds ready to fade back in time.

David fingered the pencil in his pocket, the very first time traveller. It was time to travel beyond time; it was a moment to remember, to forget, and to live again. So they left the past far behind, memories of days gone by forever alive in their hearts. For the human brain is the greatest time traveller ever invented. It was all time, it was no time, it was time to vanquish the universe together.