Messing with time

“Hey Alan! Look at this. I’ve finally found the right combination of ingredients  and now we can make the vaccine to cure millions of people suffering from the virus”, his voice shaking with triumph and excitement, Michael banged the door open and entered into the Department of Experimental Physics. 

He had been here a couple of times before along with his friend and roommate Alan.  They were postdocs at the Institute of Advanced Experimental Research in the city of Pasadena. They both had started working there around the same time. It had now been close to 5 years during which time they had grown close to each other and far away to their inventions and discoveries which were confiscated by the institution they worked for. It was in their contract that since they worked for the organisation which had been raising quite an amount for their research, it had a right to reap the fruits of their hard work. As a result, the institution now enjoyed the big bucks the patents brought them, now and then throwing a bone to the actual contributors.  

Many such instances in the past had put some sense into their heads and now fully conscious that they had no hope of real progress in their careers unless they worked for themselves, they began to snatch snippets of time from their usual working hours and devote them to their personal research at their own expense.  Despite being best buddies, they hardly discussed their work with each other; might be mainly because they had been betrayed by friends in the past. Alan knew Michael being an organic chemistry scientist was working on some kind of drug. Michael was aware that Alan being an AI buff was working on an advanced robot.  Apart from that they knew nothing about the other's personal research.

As Michael entered the Physics lab, he found it deserted. Alan was nowhere to be seen but Michael knew where he could find him. So he proceeded towards the equipment storage room where Alan had hidden the object of his personal research in a quiet and dark corner seldom visited by a soul. He had been to the storage area previously but never anywhere near Alan’s  personal space. When he entered he found that the storage area was deserted too.  Generally when Alan wasn't available in his lab, he would be present in the storage area working on what Michael considered was a robot. As he stood there, a strange phenomenon caught his attention. There appeared at the farthest corner of the room a blinking red light against a bright green background. He proceeded towards it, curious to know what it was. It looked more or less like a well-equipped go kart car and Michael could not help but laugh at Alan in his heart regarding the ‘greatness’ of his personal research. Nevertheless he wanted to examine it much closer to be able to mock his friend much better. So he put his flask down on the seat;  the flask that contained a remedy to the global pandemic; a solution to the greatest problem mankind had never encountered in decades.

The peculiar shape of the buttons inside the car fascinated him. They looked like a circle from one angle, a pentagon from another angle and resembled a triangle from yet another. Intrigued by their shape and the absence of any symbols on them save for their different colours, he pressed one of them and all hell broke loose.  The go kart car was suddenly completely covered by a roof that sprung up from within its body and the next moment it was gone; vanished before his eyes. There was not a trace or evidence that it stood there a fraction of a second ago. Along with it, was gone the exilir of life for people suffering all around the world.

Even as he struggled to come to terms with the sudden developments, he heard the voice of a pistol clicking behind him. 

“Don't try to act smart . I know you have the vaccine in your hand. Give it to me”, echoed the bloodcurdling voice of Bob, his fellow researcher from the Department of Chemical Research.

“I don't know what you're talking about, Bob”,  Michael tried to play it down but Bob was relentless. "Think you can fool me? I heard you blurt it out as you entered this lab”.

“Oh that! I was just joking”.

“Oh really! What was that flask in your hand?”, he growled, “Where did you keep it?”

“What flask? Do you see any flask in my hand now?”. Michael wasn’t ready to give up either.

A sudden movement made them turn around to see who had arrived. Alan stood there looking from one to the other, confusion etched upon his face. 

“What’s going on?” he asked. Turning his attention towards Bob he threatened him, “You better leave Michael or I call the cops”.

Bob was a novice when it came to guns and was holding one for the first time in his life. He had borrowed it out of curiosity from a friend. The word ‘cops’ had sent a shot of panic through his body and in the chaos, the trigger was pulled and the bullet was fired. The next thing they knew Micahel was falling to the ground in slow motion, blood gushing out of his chest. Alan ran forward to grab his body before it hit the ground while Bob ran straight out of the lab.  

“Alan, lis..ten, Al..an”, Michael spoke with great difficulty. “This is im.por...tant. I..I’ve prepared a vac...cine to cure the vi vi..virus. I pu.. put it on the go cart tha..that stood there”, Michael could barely lift his finger to point at the place. “But now it.. it’s gone”.

Alan turned to look at the direction he pointed and for a moment, shock dealt a cruel blow upon his senses. HIs time machine was gone. 

“It’s your res...pons….ibility Alan. Bring that back. It c..can save lives”, Michael pleaded with Alan. 

“First let us try to save yours”, Alan almost barked into his face while doubling up under Michael’s weight as he carried him out of the lab. Soon with the help of colleagues, he was able to shift him to a hospital where he remained critical.

Now Alan knew what had happened at the lab. The object of his research, the time machine had remained a secret until that moment. He had been working on it for a long time now. Even Michael hadn't known about it. He had told him he was working on a Robotic car. He knew, after Michael had kept the flask on the seat, he must have pressed the Activate button whose testing he had been avoiding, saving it for the last. He had been testing every other aspect of the time machine for days now, as he wanted to ensure everything was in place before he started to test the working of that crucial button Michael had been so careless with.

It wasn’t Michael’s fault after all. The poor thing had no idea of it. His move was just out of curiosity. Curiosity can be a strange thing; sometimes it may lead to a discovery; at others, it might lead to a fatality.

Now with Michael on the deathbed, the sole responsibility of bringing back two years of their hardwork which had the potential to save humanity lay upon his shoulders and he was clueless how to do it. There was no chance of knowing to what extent Michael had tampered with the machine. The buttons on it resembling different shapes from different angles also performed different functions when pressed along the different shapes. There could be no telling along which shape Michael had pressed the Activation button. He did not know in what age and time the machine lay at present and at what place? What were the settings of the time when it took off? Had it gone 30 minutes or 45 days or 60 years into the past? Or into the future? There was a seemingly impossible chase in front of him. 

Now, literally his race was against time. Time he had messed up with. Time he had not yet fully understood.