justin watched the sky turn red, fragments of hollow memories flooded his mind lingering long enough for him to name them and then they faded back towards something else less lucid, more etheric and part of something greater. carefully he pulled out a spanner and made some adjustments to the quantum engine on his time machine. of all the places to end up this place was the most remote. the furthest from where he had come.
above him clouds started to roll in as the sky darkened itself.
invisible angels payed mandolins.
he could see where the displacement had occurred. it was an awkward fix, intricate. he didn’t want to loose his hand or any fingers this time. he needed to compose himself, take a deep breathe and focus his mind but at the moment he was distracted by the terrible roar as the landscape shifted around him, it’s uncertain geology reformatting itself. the last rays of sunlight glinted upon the metallic surface, twin moons rose in the eastern sky, starts shot through making strange patterns, constellations moved rapidly across the howling of time, the whisper of the past, the looming present and the forever now.
justin was protected within the energy field, he could breath and sustain his normal functions for at least until the engine totally failed, after that he would age at a tremendous rate, his body would reach entropy in a matter of seconds until it caught up with the environment and natures flow. he could fix it, he knew he could but he was tired, his eyes strained and he couldn’t focus, couldn’t think clearly. there was an awful ringing in his ears, something irritating, like discordant bells ringing through distortion.
forms and their long shadows moved past the bubble, beings of some kind, maybe human, maybe something beyond humanity. it had been a long journey; he was still travelling and wouldn’t be able to stop until he fixed the q- engine.
after waiting for a while he thought to try again, his hand steaded itself as it plunged into the field, the spanner finding its way with its own certainty. justin was an accomplished mechanic, he had built time machines since he was 17. but there was a zen art to these type of mechanics, it was both physical and mental, the two dimensions linked both influencing the other.
as he made his adjustments he thought back to his first journey back on his mothers farm, how he’d spent two years working on the theoretical aspects and 6 months building the device in the old barn. he’d used scraps from university lab and parts from the old aero industry complex on the outskirts of town. his mother left him alone most of the time but occasionally brought him hot chocolate to drink and cupcakes she had baked, she would never disturb him, just set them down in a tray on his cluttered bench. the smell would eventually attract his attention.
that first time, his first jump, he set the chronograph, 5 years, a small hop into the past, just before his father died. that was the only reason he built the machine in the first place, so that he could see his father again.
and now here he was, so far forwards in time there were no dates on the chronograph.
something must have gone wrong when he set off, some miscalculation, an error in his equations perhaps.
not once did he even contemplate travelling this far forwards.
it’s strange how it work’s, you can travel forwards while thinking back, but the internal time machine of memory also has it’s own built in frailties, it’s discrepancies and weaknesses.
he wished his father was with him, he should have stayed in the past, its charted territory, its well navigated terrain and familiar traits. that’s what he should be doing, but curiosity about the future was also overwhelming, like a strange gravity it had pulled him forwards, and was pulling him faster forwards like a vortex stretched out, times awful arrow moving closer to it’s target.

he watched his father from a distance; he was working at his desk, the same one justin uses now. he was designing something, it looked like some kind of windmill, but it had large solar sails at either end. the sails rotated in opposite directions, it was designed for space travel. justin recalled this was his father’s final project, before the heart attack. he had found him slumped over his work, steam still rising from his tea cup, a half eaten biscuit by its side. that was a terrible moment, the loss, the helplessness, the things left unsaid, all combined into a bottomless hole that he had carried in his solar plexus for many years, until he started to apply himself to the equations and theorize a potential solution.
although people considered time travel a possibility it was common knowledge and accepted in physicist circles that one cannot travel backwards before the invention of the machine itself, lest we have knowledge of travellers from the future. but justin had thought differently, he considered time in terms of fractals, each moment containing all moments, he called this p for potentiality. incorporating p into his calculations it would be possible to travel back further than standard physics deemed plausible.
his will was driven, his mind and heart focused on seeing his father one more time.
and there he was, looking at his dad, looking once more at his dads’ strangely slow animation, his careful consideration as he designed space sails. he could see the concentration upon his dads face, he looked at peace, a feeling justin himself understood can only be found through absorption in ones work.
justin wanted to reach out beyond the field but knew he couldn’t, the laws of time travel were as certain as the laws of gravity. thinking about that moment he felt tears well up in his eyes. fighting them back, he refocused on the quantum engine, the mechanism seemed reset. the anomaly corrected. he looked around as the environment seemed to come to a standstill, the light frozen, the shadows still.
and outside perfection lay waiting. the universe had evolved beyond humanity, beyond life and death. outside lay peace.