To Decide

My heart thumped heavily with anxiety, as I waited and listened. Rolling for the umpteenth time on my bed, I glanced at the time in the alarm device; 2:17 am. If I hadn't known my father well, I'd have thought him completely rid of sleep. But I knew more, all the same. Daybreak, mom wakes me up to clear off the flask of cold coffee with the mugs..

But that has been the everyday routine, even before dad took on this one project. The Ultimate Project, he had called it. One that could change our family's status forever.

Though the machine had been completed some weeks ago, dad was paranoid. "The machine is completed, yes. But there could be some hitch, some problem, some malfunction, some...some..." He often trailed off, explaining to mom.

A time machine. The very first only, ever. The only thing needed was a tester. But, dad had been too psychological about it. "He could die in the middle of the experiment".

The next twenty minutes seemed to stretch for a long time, but sooner than later, the sound of snoring drifted into my ears. After making sure that he was deeply in sleep, I slipped out of the bed and through the door, bumping into someone. Lily.

"He's asleep", the brown-haired, round-faced girl mouthed.

Good thing she wasn't sleep, this time. It would've been a hard job waking her.

Cat-walking through the creaky floor board was no easy feat. Nonetheless, we were down the stairs and out the front door, into the chilly, autumn October night.

Shivering, my thirteen-year-old sister clinged closely to my side. Feeling her by my side brought up mixed feelings. Why was I really doing this after all? Why did I choose to be the... tester?

Well, it wasn't exactly my fault. I only wanted to prove to him that I wasn't that pathetic, dimwitted, sixteen-year-old kid he thought I was.

Yet, the doubts were overrating the confidence I had consciously built.

"You're afraid, Tom, aren't you?" Lily seemed to sense my slackness.

"Yeah", I had to admit.

"Can we sit...for a while?"

Her eyes were teary, I noticed, as I bent to sit with her on the top front step. She had the doubts, too. She was uncertain I might not make it out. Stretching my hand over her shoulder, we stared at the starless sky together. Just as we always did when dad had to work late in his garage and mom in the hospital.

"You don't have to do this, don't you think?"

"It's not all my choice. I have to..."

"Not your choice? Tom, it's all your choice. Its for you to decide. You...you may never come back. You might even get stuck in the future. You- you..." She trailed off, and buried her face and her tears on my shoulder.

I wouldn't have replied her even if I had some better answer to tell, especially knowing that she would probably blame herself for all time if I never make it back.

So, instead, all I could say was, "I have to, Lily".

"Let's go then", she headed off abruptly to the garage, which slidded open, automatically, for her.

The garage was already some machine in itself, seeing as it was stacked with many devices and connections here and there. But none of them caught my eye than the platform that dad had made. The main thing.

The time portal!

Dad designed- with the help of some engineers- the platform with three metal-like pillars that were connected together at the top. These he made to move, averagely, at the speed of light.

"Since one cannot move at the speed of light and survive it," he had explained to us during breakfast, "I have created the Time-spinner- he had so called it- to perform that task".

And when it had done so, with heavy magnetic inductance, it can be able to reduce gravity and expand time. And it will all be successful when a tiny wormhole is created. Tiny enough as to suck the user and deliver him at the designated period and, also, by the configured time.

But I wasn't about to explain all that to Lily. "Lily, you remember how we planned?" I asked, instead.

"Yes", she replied.

"Once I turn the machine on, you" all set the..."

"I'll set the date and you the time period, I know. And we'll do it quickly before mom and dad barge in and screw up your whole perfect plan when they hear the alarm", she cut in, nonchalantly.

Yet, all the same, we did all that. Exactly 30 seconds later, I stood on the platform, looking straight over at Lily, wondering if she would really push the red 'go' button.

"You know, Tom, if you didn't come back mom will pretty much kill me over and over again".

"I'm sorry, Lily".

She gave a deep sigh, "three minutes, then".

"Yeah".

And she would've pushed it, if not for the...

"LILY!" They both screamed; mom and dad.

"Lily," dad started, "get out of there, please".

"No, Lily", I had to voice out. Lily never disobeyed dad's orders.

"Yes, Lily. Listen to your dad, honey", mom seemed kind of frantic.

As Lily stood debating, I could tell she was hellishly confused, even as waves of mixed expressions washed over her pretty, little face, I realised something. This plan wasn't all mine. It was hers too, to decide.

And just when I was already giving up, she chose, "I'm sorry, dad", and pressed the button.

Mom fainted right away. Gosh, she was really frantic.

Dad only stood, gawping unbelievably at me as the pillars began rolling.

Soon enough, his face and everything else vanished and the only things that remained were the zooming sound and the whirl of lights. Feeling my body getting sucked up was a gut wrenching one which I shut my eyes to, though it lasted for just a second. As I opened my eyes, seriously hoping it had work, there, leaning on a stick, stood an old man looking straight at me.

"You shouldn't have come here" the old man said, scowling.

"Who are you?" I croaked.

The old man stared deeply at me. He had onyx eyes like mine, I noticed. But unlike me, he was bent, broken and...

"Ancient", he read my mind. "Follow me", he trudged off, minding to avoid scraps of metal that laid around recklessly.

Somehow, I wondered if Lily had mistakenly typed in 500 instead of 50. But that thought was immediately shoved aside when I followed the old man out.

This is my house, I thought. Or it was.

The house and everything in it was in a low state to what it had been. What happened, I wondered.

"Are- are you dad?" I gulped. He did had dad's blonde hair and round face.

The old man turned around. "Do I look like a eighty-year-old man to you?"

Well, you look more to me. "Then, who..."

"I am you, Tom Ethan".

"NO WAY!" I blurted out.

The old man only scowled more deeply and twirled back to his tracks. "Let's get in".

If outside was bad, inside was definitely worse. Everywhere was dusty, several things were lying haphazardly all around and there was a grave stench of dead things, probably rodents.

"What happened here?" I asked.

The old man stuck out a finger at me. "You did".

"Me?"

"Tell me, Tom, have you ever had this notion; our decisions affect our tomorrow?"

"Yes, but..."

"When you decided to embark on this adventure of yours, you created this".

No way. I didn't create this. I never meant to. All I ever wanted to do was to be the tester, and to prove to dad that I could be useful. Then, how come? I needed to find out.

"You have questions", the old man was saying, "to be answered. But there are some things you need to see first".

He lead me into dad's study. Like the other parts of the house, this room was dusty and covered in cobwebs. The walls, however, were cracked, some layers fallen off. It looked like a robbery job. The old man skipped heavily into the room, got to the broken table, reached out under it and got off a folded parchment containing a CD disk.

"It'll help in convincing your parents".

"About what?"

Without an answer, we marched off to the back of the house. And there, beside mom's weed infested garden, lay the grave. Esther Ethan was written on it. Mom. My heart felt like bursting.

"Please, tell me what happened", and this time, he did.

I understood it all. The government. They were the real mastermind. No wonder they had urged dad to keep the project top secret. But they knew it wasn't enough. They had to eliminate loose ends.

"Didn't you do any thing? I mean your past- me", I asked. I wouldn't have been stupid enough to watch it all enfold. To watch the legacy dad tried creating for us being destroyed.

"Yes, I did. I saved us. But they tagged us most wanted criminals. We were fugitives, and we were caged here. Two years later, we got caught. Mom and dad got imprisoned, but they let Lily and I go. It wasn't long after mom...died". The old man explained, gloomily.

This was bad. Everything was messed up. It all seemed like some nightmare. Wasn't there any option left, at all?

"Isn't there anyway I could change all this from happening?" I voiced my thoughts.

"Let them die".

"Why?" It was all just stupendous to think that my future self would say something like that.

"Let the government carry on with their façade. Some band of criminals broke in and killed us all. You grant us merciful death. Better yet, you save Lily a bad future of marrying a butcher. You have about 5 minutes to think about it".

It was all too much for me to bear. My mind felt ready to explode as different thoughts interwove against each other.

"What do you advice me to do, then?" I turned back to him.

He shrugged. "I don't. I'm just a product of your decisions".

Decisions. Decisions

They were mine to choose. I wasn't supposed to follow any man's laid down procedures. And then, it crashed.

"Tom", I called him that for the first time, "if I made another decision, even its the wrong one, somethings in this time might change, right?"

"Right".

Which means my other present would be visiting a different timeline... a different future.

The future's not set, Sarah Connor in 'terminator' was right.

"Buckle up, Tom", I told him, and for once, the old man couldn't read my mind.

"Why?"

"Cause this time we're doing what my other selves didn't do. We're creating a new timeline."

Old Tom still seemed as confused as hell. "How?"

"You're going with me back to the past", I explained, hugging him tightly to myself.

Suddenly, but as I expected, I felt our bodies get sucked in.

I thought of one other person I needed. 'Who?' Some part of my consciousness seemed to ask.

God. Together, we could rewrite our legacy.