The Time Machine (Part One)
I took a breath and hooked up the motor to the Superconductor, engaging the vast amounts of energy that had been stored up over the last three weeks. Then I quickly donned the headset and checked its airtightness. The relative safety of the Time-Machine would protect me from the vacuum but the changes in pressure would, theoretically, blow my head apart, which was something that nearly occurred in my first test run.
The humming of the 5,000,000Kv motor was starting hurt my ears even through the headset so, Making a mental note to wear earmuffs next time, I braced myself for the perpetual motion machine (PMM) to kick in. Right on cue there was a huge BANG as the huge PMM spun up to speed, the chrome rings engaging the magnetism needed to react with the Magnetonium. By this time I felt a weird tingle, like I was on a high, though I knew that this was the Tachyon Bonder connecting to my body and my consciousness being removed. Living organism to computer. Still thinking, I patched myself into the Time-Machines mainframe and found the camera. In a flash I had a view of my body being incinerated by the combative Magnetonium, I shivered, it does things to your mind when you see yourself reduced to a pile of shimmering dust.
Finally, with all equipment activated, I mentally reached out to the mainframe and activated the tachyons. It was the end of the beginning of time travel. I was glad that I had manifested myself into the computers and cameras. After all, how is my mind to survive while my body is gone? A very strange feeling of numbness accompanied having no body, but it was a trade-off, as then and there I was finally understanding the meaning of the word savant. I could do complex calculations in my head without effort, I understood machinery like never before and I had the world at my fingertips. Though all this was nothing compared to what I was seeing through the viewpoints.
The landscape was all blotted, like God had taken his sleeve and smudged the entire world with it. Then the scene started to change. The lush green started to fade and I realised that I had arrived and the computer was preparing to reintegrate me with my body, it would probably have had the tachyons separated and the body reconstructed right now. It was annoying that I couldn’t see it happening. I thought back to the investors saying it wouldn’t work, and smiled, with the footage I have now they it won’t be me grovelling at someone’s feet. Now I could feel my limbs reconstructing I was struck by an extraordinary pain. I grimaced, my nervous system had kicked in, there was of that to come.
As I was released from stasis I slowly regained my vision, a black and cratered world puckered with the signs of war came into view. I did the closest thing a semi-reconstructed body could do to gaping in horror. There was no sign of life what-so-ever, the world dead. We had destroyed ourselves.
End of Part One