Hourglass

Bayert stood on the edge of a mass grave, puffing his pipe which billowed gracefully amidst the fetid effluvium of burning corpses. He constantly shook his head to shake off the pulsating buzz in his cranium.

“Am I really here?” he asked.

“Yes, you are Subject One,” replied a voice through his earpiece.

“All systems are green-lit, proceed with the search.” A different voice rang through the earpiece and Bayert dived into the deep end of the ashy horror. He began by searching the pockets of the badly burnt victims which had nothing in them but fatty ooze which transuded through the charred skin. He stood for a while to process the sanguinary manner with which these scientists had met their death.

“One! Be advised that you are T-minus 50 minutes from Reciprocal Convergence,” warned the voice in his earpiece.

“Something is off here Command, the place where I found my father is empty!” A sudden realisation struck Bayert as glanced over to a side of history he had wished to forget his entire life.

Ten years ago, he had volunteered himself into a secret scientific organisation within the military. The organisation was codenamed Project Hourglass. They had technology which was not very far from magic and they were on the brink of mastering the physics of time-travel. Over the years, travelling into the past for short periods of time became possible but it was the remarkable journey to the future which was the core objective of the organisation. This would enable Governments to assess the impacts of their policies within a matter of hours.

“Could a bad utterance by the President cause a war?” If yes, he or she would jump on the microphone and redact it all based on intelligence from the future. Altering the future was probably safer than altering the past and the key to everything was “A key” which would give the organisation research documents from the early days of Project Hourglass. The rumour was that a very relevant breakthrough was made in one of the labs in the mountain bunker. The research was so ground breaking that anyone who had worked on it had to be permanently retired.  The master key to the lab’s impenetrable doors was lost on the pension day, a more polite name for a brutal mass murder which had also claimed the life of Bayert’s father. Bayert’s primary mission was to recover the key from one of the workers before the bodies totally burned off.

“That is not your primary mission Bayert! Find the key before you literally find yourself.”

Command was getting worried of Bayert’s personal attachments to the place. Stumbling on the unmarked letter the day he volunteered was not an act of coincidence, they knew he was going to sign up to Hourglass for answers, besides, he knew the area around the mountain lab very well as the scientists’ families resided in a compound nearby.

When he turned around to resume his search, a fleshy thud shuttered the sobriety and sent Bayert into a deep slumber.

He phased in and out of consciousness as a man dragged him into the bunker.

“Who are you?” the man asked before he went on, “the location of this place is classified.”

In a feat of disbelief, he regained consciousness.

“Dad?” he mumbled.

“Yes, you will be dead after answering my questions,” replied the man in a bloody lab coat.

“But first, you have to tell me how you have my son’s fingerprints and iris pattern.”

The two men looked at each other for a moment before the walkie talkie in Dr Jonas Bayert Snr’s pockets started crackling.

“Sir, we have the lab techs, they are ready for the pension. Should they proceed?” asked a voice on the other end of the line.

Bayert’s eyes filled with tears when he learnt that the mass grave he had stumbled on thirty years ago was dug by his own father, a man whose portrait hung was his source of inspiration and pride.

“I have your son’s iris pattern and fingerprints because I’m your son Dad.”

When Jonas ran the fingerprints, he made a short prayer hoping it would nullify the reality before him. He rested his head on both palms as his tears poured on the sterile floor below.

“I gave them the wrong differentials. It wasn’t supposed to work,” he muttered to himself as he realised that the only reason his son could be this old, was if Project Hourglass had been a success.

“It worked Dad, Dr Maria solved them all, she survived the pension when you killed them all,” replied Bayert as he slowly freed his hands from their bindings.

“No, you don’t get it my boy,” said Jonas between laughter and tears as a sudden realisation struck him before he went on, “It didn’t work, that is why you are here. I’m talking about time travel to the future. The past was always easy, that is why the likes of Maria could compute it. So, she is a Dr Maria in your time?”

“All we need is the key to your lab Dad, please!” begged Bayert as transitioned between anger and love towards his father.

“You don’t understand Son, going to the future is more dangerous. That is why I have to silence everyone who has seen this work.” Jonas reached for the key his son had come a long way to retrieve and he headed towards the impenetrable door.

A hollow yawn emerged behind the door as he swung it open.

“I know your binds are loose. I knew you were my son when you ignored the dummy knots and untied the ones on your left wrist, I taught you that trick last year. Now come over here and spare me the drama.”

Bayert freed himself and followed his father into the darkness. Inside the lab were twenty military officers inside fume containers. They all had different sorts of boils and skin diseases on them.

“Son, I achieved time travel to the future. The only future I was able to explore was a hundred years from now. It is the only future mathematically possible and that means your people will also go there. The people there have evolved, they can resist virus strains unknown to us. They literally breathe plagues but they are just fine.”

“I’m not a scientist Dad, I don’t get your point,” replied Bayert as he observed the scarred corpses in glass containers.

“The people you will send to the future will bring unspeakable illnesses to your reality. The human body won’t evolve in days to adjust to the viruses. That means mankind will perish and the future you seek to alter will be altered, only there will be nothing there but void and darkness.”

Bayert felt a twinge of trepidation as his father’s voice trembled in his ear.

“Son, all those dead corpses were people who were exposed to the time travellers. I discovered the viruses too late. It wasn’t mass murder. It was mass sacrifice. They all agreed to die to protect their families. As for Maria, she tested negative for any virus so I had her transferred to another branch without any knowledge of the time travellers or what she was being tested for.”

  “What about you Dad?” asked Bayert who was now resonating with his father’s assertions.

“I’m sick too, I will be the last on the grave. The fact that you have spoken to me makes you sick too. So, try by all means to avoid Reciprocal Convergence, don’t meet yourself Bayert! When you go back to your time try not to meet anyone unless you are sure you are okay!”

Jonas headed towards a beaker filled with acid and he threw the key inside. They both watched it dissolve into a liquid.

“That was the spare key Son, the original one is below your bicycle carriage. You will make the choice on your own, I have made mine.”

The buzz in Bayert’s head got more intense as they ran out of the front door. When they reached the glowing grave, Jonas looked over to his son as he pointed a pistol to his head.

“Dad, noooo!” screamed Bayert as his father’s lifeless body got engulfed by the flames

As he knelt down sobbing, a high-pitched screech grew louder behind the trees. It was the ten-year-old Bayert pushing his bicycle. Bayert ran for cover behind the trees to avoid meeting himself. His ten-year-old version knelt down crying as he saw his father’s trademark lab coat burning in a pile of bodies.

“Help!” he screamed to no avail.

The older Bayert sneaked over to his bicycle and retrieved the key to the lab.

“One come in,” the voice in his earpiece came on again.

“I’m here, it’s a negative on the key. It seems it was destroyed long before I got here,” answered Bayert as he broke the key he was holding in his hands.

“We tried One, the old lady Dr Maria has given the order to extract you. You are going to land in any part of the world when you return. Use your life jacket and satellite phone if you land in the ocean. If you land on dry land, find any landline phone and dial triple 9.”

The buzz in Bayert’s head knocked him out cold. As he blacked out, he took one last glance at himself crying behind a wall of smoke.

Bayert opened his eyes in a small shack surrounded by a mob of people. One of them was describing to another, a body spontaneously emerging from nowhere but he appeared mad to everyone.

Finally, a lady with a bottle of water came and handed it over to Bayert.

“You look American Sir. Are you lost?” asked the young lady in a Chinese accent.

“Where am I?” asked Bayert.

“You are in Wuhan Sir,” replied the young lady.