Mind Alterations and Time Adjustment Laboratory

I.

Enclosed in a remote valley of a barren world was a small lake brimmed by an ever-luscious forest of beautiful trees. Tucked sporadically between pines were quaint buildings decorated with flowers and connected by perfectly maintained paths. The buildings stood innocently one-story above ground which masked the depths of floors that stretched down deeper than their surrounding mountains were high.

The complex was one of a few such structures in the Outer Arm that intended to position themselves outside of Kentrolian jurisdiction, O.A.C. jurisdiction, and any other form of intra-galactic jurisdiction. It was a research facility that served a purpose outside any formal government sponsor. They had no oversight and were not looking for any. For if any governing body were to catch wind of what went on, it would be shut down in an instant.

Nonetheless, it was here and had been long enough to be extensively built up. As far as he could see in every direction were people, buildings, and ideas that should not exist and for all intents and purposes did not exist. So, how did it all get there? How did any of it get built? How did anyone get there? To build something so complex, to bring so many people together and sustain their lives and somehow stay hidden. It all felt impossible.

Yet, he was here. Anxious, tired, and in too deep to back out.

Dennis watched intently as his nurse approached the door of his home. She was supposed to wake him and get him prepared for the day, but that would have meant he had slept the night before, which he had not. Before she had time to knock, the door was opened.

“Oh, good morning, Dennis. You startled me.”

“Didn’t mean to startle you. Just couldn’t wait to start the day.”

“Understandable, it is a very exciting day for you! It seems now we are a bit ahead of schedule, so why don’t we go on a quick walk around the lake.”

Dennis agreed without a sound and began down the path. He knew that was the plan all along. Every morning since he arrived there the week before he had seen her walk along the lake path with patients. He figured it was supposed to be calming before they delved down into the depths of the labs.

“Well, Dennis, how are you feeling?”

“Honestly a bit nervous.”

“And why is that?”

“It just all seems so elaborate.”

“What does?”

“I mean, this place, the promise of healing, the traveling back in time. It is a lot to take in, especially with such a quick and secretive turnaround time between my learning about it and ending up here.”

“It is a lot to take in, but well worth it. People often get worried about the time traveling aspect, but I can assure you it is nothing like what you’re thinking. No physical changes will occur; there’s no risk of altering the material state of the present. All that will happen is that you will go back in your life and heal the moments that have damaged your soul the most.”

Dennis did not feel the need to give a response. Her explanation was not much different from any of the others he had been given. Just as vague, just as unhelpful in preventing the knotting sensation from increasing within his stomach.

The nurse stopped them at a particularly beautiful scene and took a deep breath. The beauty of the place was unnatural, and Dennis could not overlook that. So orchestrated, so intentional. Every inch served a purpose, and he still did not feel assured that its purpose would be as good as they promised him.

“Have you been rehearsing the moment you want to return to as we instructed you?”

Dennis scoffed.

“I’ve been reliving nothing else for the past eight years of my life.”

The room was small, and it felt like the walls were closing in by the second. The sounds of explosions and screams tormented the dense, moist air in every direction. Tallen returned from scouting out the back exit. He threw himself onto the wall next to Dennis and wiped sweat off his face.

“They’re crawling everywhere out the back. We can’t leave that way. Are we clear to flee out the front?”

Dennis gave him no response. He was paralyzed in fear.

“Dennis, are you alright?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“Well, that’s a relief. Let’s get out of here.”

It was a misunderstanding. Dennis meant that he was alright, not that they were clear to exit out the front. Before he could correct himself, before his arm could grab Tallen to stop him, before…

Tallen threw open the door.

His body flew.

Their eyes met one final time before the light left his.

“Dennis.”

The nurse pulled him back to reality, wiping a tear off his cheek.

“Dennis, are you ready?”

He released a deep sigh and fought back tears.

“Yes, let’s get this over with.”

II.

Supposedly, there were over 200 probes within his brain. It seemed like a lot less to him, however after the fourth was placed he stopped keeping track. Partially because they were so small he could barely see them, and partially because after the fourth one was placed, he could no longer see. A few minutes later he lost his hearing. Sometime in between he lost the rest of his senses, however they were not as noticeable after a slurry of medicines were pumped into him.

A while later, how long he was not sure because he lost his sense of time as well, the voice of the head doctor spoke to him.

“Dennis, can you hear me.”

Somehow, Dennis communicated with her despite having no control over himself.

“Excellent. We’re finished with all initial calibrations. It is going perfectly. Within a few minutes you’ll be sent back in time. We have localized and tethered your chosen memory. When you’re back there, don’t get distracted. Get in, save Tallen and we will extract you.”

Even without any mental connection to his nerves, hearing that name consumed him with pain and sorrow.

“Good luck Dennis and thank you for your willingness to participate in our study. The Mind Alterations and Time Adjustment Laboratory can’t continue to function without brave souls like you willing to push the limits of our universe. And with your help, we are going to change that universe forever.”

III.

Humid and sticky. The air, the ground, grabbing everything that moved, pleading for the day to end. Through the thickness of the air was a stale scent that crept out of every crevice of the once full home. Explosions were the only thing that had no issue being known. Their ringing cries each unique in the fear they embodied. It was exactly as Dennis remembered it, everything in its place as it was and always had been. Everything that was, except him.

Dennis stood still breathing heavily, the reality of his situation becoming more unbelievable by the second. He pulled at his face repeatedly trying to continuously prove to himself that he really was there. He prevented a gasp from becoming a fit of nausea as sweat made its way from himself to the floor. He was wasting too much time already.

He needed no time to familiarize himself with his surroundings. He knew where to go and how to get there quickly.

Out the doorway.

Half-way down the carpet-bottomed hall.

Into the entry way that held the front door.

There he was. Alone, frightened, and punier than Dennis had ever imagined himself. A frail skeleton of a man who he knew was about to cause the death of another because of his weakness.

“Dennis,” he said to himself.

The past Dennis’s eyes broke from their frozen haze of fear, scrambling in frantic disbelief to try to make sense of what he was seeing. He braced himself more firmly against the wall and whipped his rifle into the notch of his shoulder, pointing it directly at Dennis.

“Wait, listen to me. Tallen is about to come around the corner and…”

“Ahhh,” the other Dennis screamed, opening fire on his future self.

Dennis was hit three times in the chest and crumpled to the ground, bleeding out slowly as he continued to try to give his warning.

The scream was loud; the shots were louder. Tallen burst in from the hallway, rifle in hand, and swept its barrel around the room quickly, settling it on the dying Dennis on the floor. He leaned closer to get a better look and could not believe what he was seeing.

“What in the world.”

Unfortunately for him, he did not have any time to find understanding. He was not the only one who had heard the commotion.

The door blew off its hinges and large spheres of metal flew through the place where it used to be. Giving no time for any reaction, the spheres exploded, sending shards of metal in every direction, fatally embedding themselves in the men.

Dennis was motionless, tears flowing from his eyes, watching himself watch himself bleed out as the shrapnel burned its way through any life of theirs that remained.

IV.

“AHHHHHHHHHH!”

Dennis’s screech was shrill and terrifying. In an instant he found himself back in the sterile room for the trial, surrounded by doctors and nurses. The room was exactly as it was when he had left it just minutes ago. The only thing different was his mind.

The memory of the agony of death caused by his return and the feeling of death occurring twice consumed him. He was locked in a perpetual scream. Unable to make words, unable to control anything, not even his mind. He was trapped with nothingness as his brain tried to reconcile both how the rest of his memories could occur after his first death and how he was still able to be making new memories after his second.

The people in the room were franticly moving around him. One after another they injected him with more fluids. None of which he could identify and none of which seemed to be helping. It was not until a nurse burst into the room pushing a cart with a massive piece of machinery on it that he was able to improve. They connected the machine to multiple parts of his body and kept a continuous flow of amber liquid.

Finally, his mind calmed. He could not access any memories or thoughts, but he could comprehend again the world around him.

“Seems like he is finally stable, doctor Emre,” one of the nurse technicians said.

“Good.”

“What should we do now?”

Doctor Emre paced around Dennis’s body, tapping her side slowly as she thought.

“Damn it. We won’t be able to do any more trials with him. I can’t believe we wasted a patient, they’re so hard to come by. We should have known he might have shot himself.”

“We did know, doctor. It was an 8% chance that would occur.”

She slammed her fist viscously on the bed that Dennis was laying on.

“Get him out of my sight. See if any of the other labs might have use for him.”

Dennis looked around scared. He was not sure what that meant or anything at all. The only thing he knew was how he felt. He was not sure why or how he felt that way, but it was clearer than any sensation he had felt before. Fear.

“No! No! No! No!”

He cried out in a manic repetition, desperately trying to remove himself from his restraints as they wheeled him out of the room. The nurses moved swiftly and professionally, numbed to his cries that were almost routine. They left him alone in a room while they waited for his transfer and turned off all the lights. It was time for them to prepare their next patient.