What happens when you ask a dumb fatso and Miss I-have-it-all prom queen to save the world from collapsing?
The only thing this story misses is zombies. You heard it right, we have it all - UFOs, aliens, time-travel. This is the one-stop Sci-Fi book...
On day one of their training Aurelia told them exactly what the next two days were going to be like. On the first day she would take them to meet and familiarize with the team at their headquarters who would be assisting them in their quest. The team comprises of a technical head who would be monitoring the portals and the devices through the duration of their mission, a logistics head will make sure they know all the possible entry and exit points around them, a security head will ensure there are no unwanted eyes or ears on them and that there are no accidental (or intentional) stowaways in the time tube that could sabotage the success of the mission and an emergency extraction head to do exactly what his title says. Aurelia as the head programmer and as the one who assembled the team including Charlotte and Toby will be overseeing them all. Day two will be hardcore field day. They will be trained and assessed in 3 categories of high stress situations related to the domain of time, space and a miscellaneous one to give them an idea of what it was all going to be like travelling in and out of the tube, handling devices etc. "Any questions?" asked Aurelia after finishing up her explanation. Charlotte had a couple of questions. She was obviously not happy with the position she was stuck in but she sure as hell was not going into what could be a potential battlefield of incomprehensible concepts without understanding the full extent of each and every minute detail. "Tell me Ms. Winterblossoms-" "Please call me Aurelia," she interrupted, "we are going to spend a lot of time together. I think formalities of this sort are hardly necessary." "Tell me, Aurelia, what are these categories that we are being tested on? I mean do they have some specific purpose? Should we not be learning about controlling our powers and the basic concepts of the 'loops' instead? I turned my bed into a park bench last night. I literally had to sleep on the bean bags in my bakery. And just this morning I opened the cereal box to find it filled with butterflies. It's a good thing I have an affinity with them so I quite enjoyed this early morning mishap. Otherwise, boy oh boy it could have gone sideways." Toby blushed. She was thinking about him as much as he was remembering her. He had woken up to find his body covered in red lipstick marks shaped like kisses. The kiss. Anyway, he had the same question, but for different reasons. He just did not want to accidentally embarrass himself in front of her. "There is actually a very specific reason. Charlotte, all of your quirks are space related. You can make things happen in your surroundings, the things you have touched and especially the ones you have owned. Toby's quirks are time related. All the things that happen to him are results of the experiences he has had that he is capable of weaving into the surroundings. Between the two of you it should not be too hard to manipulate any matter. What is important is that you be able to collaborate and be able to think on your feet because there's always the Murphy's Law. So that's what the last category will be for." "Oh and one more very important thing. NEVER take a device into the portal. You do not want to know what happens, trust me. Now we're ready." With that she held both of their hands, dragged them to her bathroom, jumped into a puddle in her bathtub, and off they went to the headquarters.
The Ministry of Loops is nothing like what anyone would ever imagine. It is a cylindrical what humans would best perceive as a building, but is rather just a pocket of space. In the centre of the cylindrical building (let's just call it that for the sake of simplicity), there is an enormous globe that Charlotte estimated would be 10 feet in diameter. It was a perfect representation of Earth. This globe, it seemed to Toby, was alive, but it was really just updating itself in real-time. The globe seemed to be rotating ever so slowly, the clouds swayed, the motion of the water was visible, and somehow even the land seemed to be bustling with activity. This replica of the earth was supported on a bronze circular dial with dates inscribed on it. An arrowhead pointed towards the current date. Seeing the curiosity in their eyes, Aurelia briefly explained that inside the ministry, time was ambiguous. They needed a mechanism to monitor the time and the goings-on at Earth which the globe perfectly fulfilled.
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Looking around Toby noticed that the cylindrical building had no ceiling, or even if there was one, it was so far up that it produced an illusion of being unending. Charlotte on the other hand marvelled at how the architecture was a genius play on the purpose of the ministry. The structure of the building was cylindrical, or in a way, a loop in itself! The building had countless floors. A department of the ministry was designated to each sector of the cylinder, with aisles and corridors that branched outwards. There were elevators accompanying every department. Dozens of rooms lined the corridors and hundreds of people came in and out of them, which produced an air of busyness. Aurelia led them to an elevator. They got inside and the elevator went down with a sudden jerk. They got out and noticed they had reached the top-most floor. Toby looked down leaning against the railing and saw that the building that appeared to have no top now appeared to have no bottom. It felt like staring into a never-ending abyss. By now, one would expect Charlotte and Toby to get accustomed to such absurdities, but they continued to be dumbstruck by every new finding. Loop, Aurelia mouthed and winked.
