2562: Precious Time

2562 - PREFACE

The Professor adjusted his bifocals as he programmed the finishing touches to his machine. His apprentice peaked from over his shoulder barely able to contain her  excitement. It had been going on three years since she had been asked by the professor to assist him with a secret project that was bound to change history. Long before Ava had become apart of the picture the professor had been creating his machine which would travel time.

 

For Ava everything had come together sooner than expected. While she helped the professor for  the past three years in any way possible, she had little to do with the his progress. The professor needed someone to travel time, and that was all Ava is agreed to.

 

“Are you ready?” The professor asked.

 

She had heard many things around campus about Professor Schulz. For any student who had the pleasure of taking a course in computer programming, he taught the class that was almost impossible to pass.  For everyone else he was a lunatic, who possibly spent a few years in a crazy asylum before taking his position as a college professor.  Ava would call his personality “vibrant” more than anything else, but she knew everyone just thought he was insane. And Ava clearly understood why because three years ago when Professor Schulz approached her to help with his research she thought, like everyone else, he was insane.

 

He kept his thinning curly grey hair in a wild bush, and at every lecture you would see him sporting a bright neon green tie covered in pictures of old computer monitors. Not only that, but his bifocals were archaic in appearance and while no one discredited Schulz for his vast knowledge in computers and their programming; no one understood how he could be so excited during lecture talking about hardware and binary code.

 

“I’m as ready as I ever could be.”

 

She watched him mess with some buttons on the machine. She still could not believe the speed of everything. Ava always had respected Schulz, but now she looked to him as her mentor and fatherly figure. That crazy man had saw her drive and vision before she had acknowledged it herself. She had been no standout student in his class. Never visited him during his office hours, and it was seldom she answered his questions during lecture, (but then again he never really asked many questions). That is why it was a surprise when he approached her after lecture to ask to be his assistant. In a hall of over a hundred students, how did he even know she existed?

 

“You have a brilliant mind! Did you know some of your assignments helped me build my machine?” Is what he had said in the midst of feverous programming.

 

It was patiently waiting for Schulz that Ava had realized she had not even said goodbye to her family. The professor had said that one month in the past is like one day in the present, and apart from the ankle brace and some money from the past, she was pretty much empty handed.

“Well”, Ava thought to herself.

She marched over to the spot in the center of the machine that would manage to travel her back in time. It was too late now. All she could do was pray that by the first half of her day in the past, her mother hadn’t called the authorities. She looked over at the professor and told him she was ready.

“I only gave you a month, so please don’t take any longer.” The Professor looked extremely worried.

“No problem! And do you mind calling my mom?” The professor let a laugh escape his tense lips.

“Tell her anything! I don’t know; I lost my phone, something believable.”  I pleaded.   

“Yeah, yeah, yeah” he dismissed with a wave of his hand.

“Don’t lose the brace, and remember don’t forget why you're there.”  Ava was done with the professors ranting and she just needed him to press the go button. She waited patiently and in her head listed all the things she would need to remember when she arrived in the past.

“Okay” he said to himself as he typed in the last thing. He signaled his hand off and began counting down from three.  Ava’s adrenaline was at the max, and for a second she wanted to scream ‘wait!’

 

Of course she far too excited to say such a thing. Instead she clenched her fist and wished for the best.

Once the professor had pressed the button to start the machine Ava gave him a small wave. Then she proceeded to let her body be taken by the machine. It felt like she was being pulled down by a thousand tons, but in reality the machine was breaking down her body into individual molecules. Quickly her body vanished.

“Time to call her mother,” The professor groaned.