“Peter”
I heard someone calling me. The voice was faint.
“Peter” I heard the same voice again, this time it was loud and clear. They were definitely calling me.
“Wake up Peter. Open your eyes” The voice was too familiar but I couldn’t remember who it was.
A sudden sense of pain on my cheek brought me to my senses. It felt like someone slapped me.
“Wake up you piece of shit, how long are you going to lie down there?” I heard the voice yelling at me.
Now I remember that the voice belonged to my beloved evil sister, Gwen. I slowly tried to open my eyes, but it was too bright out there to open them completely. I rubbed my eyes, trying to adjust to the light. I finally got myself up and looked around to find where she went. She was there talking to dad who was in his usual lab coat. I was standing on a huge rock and I was probably lying there unconscious when she came to wake me up. The area is completely filled with trees and grass. That made me wonder, where I was and what I am doing in such place. I tried to remember what I was doing before I ended up here unconscious, but nothing came to my mind.
When I looked back at them, they were still seriously talking about something and she was pointing her hand towards something. I turned towards the direction she was pointing and found a house that was in a bad shape. It’s a miracle that it is still standing. Something felt odd about that house; it felt like I knew it from somewhere.
“Are we in a forest?” I thought to myself. I started walking towards them thinking of what could have happened. I was soon close enough to listen to them.
“What are we going to do now, Dad? This is completely your fault that we got stuck here.” Gwen was shouting in a serious tone, but dad was in his usual cheerful mode and he looked happy, like he was enjoying the situation.
“Are you alright son?” He asked me as I reached them.
“I’m fine, I think” I said, asking “Where are we dad? How did we get here and why was I unconscious?” I asked them looking confused.
“You don’t remember what happened?” Gwen asked in her doctor’s tone, that she uses with her patients.
“No” I said.
“You got hit on your head. It was not a serious injury though. You will be fine, may be you will remember it slowly.” she said like it was nothing to worry about.
“Got hit on my head? What the hell? How did this happen?” I mumbled, checking my head. There was cloth wrapped around it. I felt a sharp pain when I touched my injury. It’s not completely healed yet.
“Okay, where are we anyway? And that house, what about it? It looks a little familiar.” I asked.
“Familiar? That was f**king ours. May be you really got hit on your head harder than I thought? And you better ask our father what happened; this is all because of him.” She said in an angry voice and walked away.
“Our house?!” That was something unexpected. I immediately turned towards my father with a puzzled look, wanting to know what happened.
“Dad, can you explain what’s going on here?” I asked, waiting for his answer.
“Hmm, I’m not sure where we are but I think we time travelled.” He said in a simple tone.
“Time travelled? Dad, I was the one that got hit on my head. Do you understand what you are saying?” I asked him in disbelief.
“Yes son. I know this is insane, but I’m sure that we time travelled” He said confirming what he said before.
“But how could this…”
“My machine, it finally worked Peter!” He said with excitement, before I finished my question. He looked so happy and proud with a sense of achievement.
I never thought that it could actually work and it looks it did work at last. I was kind of happy for him though it cost us ending up in an unknown place in an unknown time and a destroyed house. It was his dream. He was working on that time portal machine thing for his entire life, but the machine never worked. He lost his name, job, status and everything he had as a scientist due to an accident that occurred 12 years ago. Several scientists and technicians including the person sponsoring his project were injured during that incident. The project was stopped. Everyone thought he was crazy for believing in such an idea. They even gave him the title “Mad scientist”. But he never gave up. He brought his machine home and continued working on it. His experiment was finally a success.
A lot of things started running on my mind, I finally asked him “Do you have any idea where we might be and why is our house here?”
“I don’t really know son, but maybe we could find something if we explore this area. And I think there is still some problem with the machine. When we time travelled it warped us here including the house.”
I asked him if there was a chance to go back and he started explaining the possibilities in his scientific terms most of which I didn’t understand. But what I clearly knew from what he said was
1. There is no guarantee that we have a chance to go back. 2. We don’t know if we travelled to past or future. 3. We don’t know where it took us. We might still be in America or we could’ve ended up somewhere in Africa or any other part of the world. 4. Even if we succeed in time travelling again, we can’t be sure that we will go back to our time. We may end up in another complex situation than this, assuming we can make it in one piece.
I never thought that any day of my life would begin like this. And I thought this is going to freakily interesting. Thinking of what’s going to happen to us now, I went looking for Gwen.
----- END OF CHAPTER 1 -----
