Hour

Thiym is invading Lauwve.

As we’re kept by Thiym in this little room as hostages; sitting by a desk and a simulated window displaying a summer sky with a grass ditch, sensing something that’s foreshadowing our future.

The air is static; the yellow lights flickered on and off rapidly, and the white paint on the wall is peeling, revealing the black gooey substance underneath. At the other side of the room is a door, the only exit, but it’s locked, trapping us inside.

I glanced at him, seeing his face on his skinny frame mirroring mine, pale, bloodless. Our eyes are sunken in, our face are expressionless.

I remember just six hours ago, we both sat at our dining table with glasses of champagne celebrating our biggest accomplishment of the millennium, laughing, cheering. We unravelled the mystery of time, creating the possibility of travel through the fourth dimension of space-time and we could bend it with in whichever way we like and we could used that to fight off the invaders of Lauwve.

I also remember how we are taken from our own home brutally by the soldiers of Thiym in to this cold, lifeless room, waiting for the inevitable to happen.

Suddenly, a speaker dropped down from the ceiling, breaking the deafening silence in the room as we held hands and braced ourselves for what seems like our death sentence:

“This is an announcement for Kismet Lyx and Evic Umi from Thiym:

Under the hostile circumstances we have been left with no choice but to take in hostages and we are sure that you will understand our situation. As generous beings we have decided to leave you with a choice, but bear in mind that your choice will lead to consequences.

In the room you’re in, there will be an exit; if you choose to step into it, both of you will walk on free, unharmed but opening that door will trigger a nuclear hydrogen bomb which will be detonated above the skies of your beloved country, and I am sure you know what happens next.

However, if you choose the other option, just press the button of this device, and it will stop the timer. Your country will be safe for now but it means one of you will die; erased from history and forever forgotten except for the one you love.”  I swallowed hard, our hands held tighter. Still, we listened.

“Nevertheless, if you can’t make a choice, that’s fine as well, if nothing’s done after the time counts to zero, we’ll simply make the decision for you and carry out both options.

We hope you make the right choice. You have exactly one hour, the count-down timer will start as soon as this audio stops playing.

Oh, and lastly,

Good luck.”

The speaker stopped with a beep, and a beam of red light was projected onto the disintegrating walls, counting down in seconds from one hour, fifty-nine minutes and fifty nine seconds, fifty-nine minutes and fifty eight seconds...

Silence filled the air temporarily until Evic punched the table in fury and screamed: “They’re monsters, merciless deformed demons they are! What reason do they have to treat us this way? We’ve done nothing wrong! Why us?”

Tears flowed down my eyes as I stared down at his dark, sorrowful eyes full of white, hot anger. I stepped up to him and gave him a hug, and a brief kiss, making his muscles relaxes a little, and then forced myself away from him.

“Because this is war.” I finally found my voice again, but it came out croaked, barely a whisper but it was enough. “And we’re in the way.”

As the timer counts down, we just sat there; our minds were blank, staring into nothing. We argued about our decisions but fell silent again. I rubbed my temples; my head spins like the world is turning upside-down. My heart pounded against my chest and my stomach twisted in my gut.

“We can’t just sit here like this.” Evic sat up, “We haven’t got time.”

I sighed. He’s right; we don’t have any time at all.

Then something came to me, and like a missing piece of a puzzle, it all clicked together.

“That’s it! We haven’t got time!”

“Wha-“

“Think about this. The answer is right here! Space-time! We’ve just solved mystery of time-travel, defied the laws of physics. We can bend space-time itself; create a wormhole - a shortcut from one space to the other. We can go anywhere, anytime. In fact, we could teleport to another universe for all we care, and they will never be able to know where we are. So if we just travel one hour into the future, to an alternative timeline, they’ll never know how this happened, because to them, it had never happened, and it will never happen in their future.” I explained, waiting for his response.

“But how are we going to do this?”He stared at me.

“Easy.” I replied. “Remember how we used the distortion of energy to manipulate space-time?  Well, if we overload all the systems in this room, it will stop all security systems for an hour and we can use all the components in this room to create a circuit to generate enough distorted energy which will…”

“…Which will create a regional gravitational field, bending space-time and pull in everything around it like a small blackhole, which then can be transported similar to it did in the lab except they can’t trace the information back to us.” He completed my sentence and grinned. I smiled back, knowing that we’re always in sync.

We worked as fast as we could possibly manage, turning the place upside-down building ourselves a miracle before the clock can count to zero. Finally, the machine is complete with the only forty-five seconds projected on the wall.

“Are you ready?” he asked me.

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

We took a deep breath, and connected the circuit.

Time seems to slow down, as our bodies swirled and dissolved into the air around us. The air turned gold by the Midas touch as everything shines brighter by the second before the world vanishes, fading into the darkness, the emptiness…

…Into our hour, together.