Story Test - Time

Here's a bit of writing I did today. Not quite a story, but it will hopefully be a decent read nonetheless.


James opened the steel door and led the group into the room beyond. Inside, on top of a table, sat a large machine with various cords and parts.

“Before we begin, an explanation is in order,” James began. “We perceive time as constant, always moving ahead. But that’s wrong.”

“So I’m not aging right now?” said Silvia, with a smirk.

“You are,” James replied, “but at the same time, you’re already dead.”

Standing next to Silvia, Gulliver chuckled. Silvia shot him a look, an eyebrow raised.

“For us, time is moving,” James continued, “but overall, time is a thing that exists, as a whole. From beginning to end, it’s all there already.”

“There was a beginning to time?” asked Marsha.

“And there’s an end?” chimed Scott.

James smiled and said, “Things beyond human understanding. I can’t explain what existed before time or what exists after, and even if I could, none of you would understand it.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Gulliver said under his breath.

James just widened his smile at the comment. “The entirety of time exists, all at once. We are living in one moment, and it’s moving to use, but in actuality, it’s already happened. We’re dead and gone, as are the multitude of generations after us. Until the end of time.”

Seeing the perplexed expressions of the group, James shook his head. “All that doesn’t matter much though. What matters is that the future exists already, just like the past does. What I am saying is that if we can look at the past, and we can, then we can also look at the future.”

“Won’t what we see just be a possibility though?” asked Scott.

“No, because like I said, all of time already exists.”

“What about free will?” asked Marsha. “If the future’s already set in stone, how can we decide anything for ourselves?”

“You can still make your own decisions,” said James. “It’s just that the decisions you make will always end up being . . . the decisions you make.” He let out a small laugh.

“So we can look at the future, but we can’t change anything?” Gulliver crossed his arms as he spoke. “How does that work?”

Silvia turned to him. “Maybe the future we see will be one where we’ve already seen the future.”

  

Scott let out a loud sigh. “That’s a head-scratcher.”

“I guess that’s the point,” Marsha said.

“Well, part of the point.” James turned around to the machine on the table. “This device should allow us to see the future, or at least the most powerful parts of it. I was able to design it thanks to the machine we found a while ago.”

“The one that let us see the past,” Silvia said.

“That was a load of fun, wasn’t it?” Gulliver said with a hint of derision.

“We got to see some very interesting things,” said Marsha.

“And some very crappy things,” added Scott.

“Whatever we see is in the pursuit of knowledge,” James said, his voice a bit higher than normal to silence the group. “This will be different from looking into the past. We’ll be able to look ahead a hundred years, maybe a thousand, see what the human race is like, things we’ll never get to see during our own time.”

“Or we could see another murder,” said Gulliver.

“Or worse,” said Silvia with a shiver.

“We’ll see events in the area, whatever happened in this spot, one year from now or a hundred, that involved incredibly strong emotions by the participants,” Marsha said. “Is that right?”

“That’s the way it should go,” replied James.

“So we could see anything,” Marsha continued. “A crime, a war, a visit from aliens.”

Gulliver stifled a laugh.

Silvia eyed him again. “In a thousand years, we could have found life on other planets.”

“Or even be part of a group of alien races,” added Scott, “dedicated to keeping the peace in the universe. Some sort of federation, maybe?”

“Or it could be much, much worse.” James slowly looked at each of the four faces before him as he spoke. “With this machine, we could wind up seeing an alien invasion that destroys the human race as we know it. We could see the end of humanity.”

The group silently stood, thinking about the possibilities.

Gulliver broke the silence. “Or we could see nothing. For all we know, the world ends tonight.” He smiled.