Time travel is not like what you think

Story

My name is Clark. I am one of three people who can truthfully say they have time traveled. It is not what you think it's like.

I'm not really certain how they selected us. I was working on my bachelor's degree at my State University when I was approached by the team. "Project bTaOw33" is what they called it. No cool name like "Project-X" or "Project Alpha Time Warp" or something along those lines. Just bTaOw33—whatever that means.

They approached me and asked if I'd like to take part in an experiment in exchange for my tuition being paid for. I only had a year left in school, but those two semesters were going to cost me $32,000. So, of course I said yes. When I asked what the experiment was, they told me it was extremely secretive. I would be finding out details the day of, then I could decide to back out if I didn't want to participate.

About 6 weeks went by and I was basically on-call to be ready to go whenever they needed me. Finally, I got the call. I live in Atlanta, and the team had the three of us meet up in a parking deck about 20 minutes outside the city. Once there, we all got in one of those short school buses, and they took us out to the Northern Georgia mountains.

It was about a two-hour drive and we didn't really get much time to get to know each other. We were under strict rules not to reveal information about ourselves or talk to each other on the bus ride over. The last couple of miles were on a rocky dirt road leading down a mountain.

The bus parked in a small, maybe half-acre stretch of grass. The grass was freshly mowed, and I could tell by sight and smell. The alcove of grass was enclosed by large trees from the surrounding forest.

"Alright," a man stood up from his seat at the front of the bus, "we're here. I'll brief you all once we get inside the house."

As we got off the bus one-by-one, we could see that in the center of the clearing was a building. It had a one very large window on one side, basically encompassing that entire wall. Every other wall was black on the outside, and I could see through the window that the inside was painted white.

There was a large, silver, metal ring that surrounded the house. It came about three inches off the freshly mowed grass, was a foot wide, and had lights coming from drilled holes all the way around it.

"Watch your step, and please do not step on top of this ring," the same man said, "once we get inside just go ahead and take a seat."

We all stepped over the ring and made our way into the house. The "house" as the man called it, was made up of only one room. Inside, there were four chairs around a rather large circular table. The chairs, table, walls, and the one lamp were all white—the only thing that wasn't white in the room were the pair of bookshelves against each wall, both empty.

After we all took our seats, the man introduced himself.

"Alrighty, welcome, welcome. My name is Dr. Olsen. I'm glad you all decided to take part in this—to take part in history. As we told you all, this is extremely sensitive information. After my explanation of what this experiment consists of, I'll ask you if you want to continue. Understand?"

"What if we don't want to continue?" a woman said, about my age with fiery red hair. "Then we know this super-secret information, right? And you're going to let us walk out of here?"

The man gave a smile. He knew this would be asked.

"Yes, you are free to leave here knowing what the experiment consists of. However, the University and I are confident of three things. One—you won't want to leave. Two—the University's attorneys are rather powerful, and you already signed the NDA's. And three—no one will believe you if you tell them."