𝕭𝖔𝖔𝖐 𝕺𝖓𝖊
𝔖𝔲𝔪𝔪𝔞𝔯𝔶: A high-school project gone wrong sends Astraea Aphelion fifteen centuries back in time, where she has to face a world of dragons, magic, and evil sorcerers. Luckily, she is not alone. In between hardships, she finds a...
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📍 San Antonio, Texas
⏳ May, 2021
"I still don't get why ya' couldn't simply build a volcano or somethin' along those lines," my teammate's older sister, Bianca, commented from her spot atop a stack of hay bales. "Because a first grade project won't win us the scholarship," Leo replied with an eye-roll as he tightened a screw that had become loose at some point. "Fair enough. But did you have to go as far as attemptin' to build a f*cking time machine?" the dirty blonde girl asked, raising her eyebrows.
May is a hectic month for every High-Schooler. Especially for those about to graduate – which was exactly Leo, Henry, Mason and I's case. The burden was amplified because our school would be participating in a state-wide science fair in mid-June that would award a full scholarship at UCLA to whomever brought the best project. Everyone in our generation had been forced to participate in the internal contest to see which three projects would be sent to the fair.
To be honest, my mind is not wired for science at all – though I do enjoy learning it. Lucky for me, my teammates, are the nerds of my class; and they often go out of their way to prove just that.
The project was assigned in October and we had our first meeting at Mason's house on the same day to decide what we would be doing. I would've settled with creating an AI system resemblant of Iron Man's JARVIS, or perhaps coming up with a new way to power cars...but the boys decided that nothing less than a time machine would ensure we got the big prize. Initially, like any other rational person, I argued that their idea was impossible to achieve and that we should come up with something easier before everything blew up in our faces. But my teammates proved to be surprisingly stubborn and I agreed to at least give their idea a shot.
During our third project meeting, Mason came to us with a game-changing surprise when he revealed that he is related to Robert Trump, a man who was in charge of going over the documents left behind by Nikola Tesla after the great genius passed away; and, after talking to some relatives about his great uncle's work, he was able to sneak some (illegal) copies of Tesla's sketches and ideas for a time machine. This was the foundation for all our work.
After three months of extremely hard work, we finally had a realistic blueprint for the machine and most of the physics worked out. That at least according to the guys, as I frankly had no clue what we were doing half the time – as much as it embarrasses me to admit it. The next month went by fast as we brought the machine to life: it was basically like a very big and futuristic-looking phone booth with a computer attached to it.
Finally, as February came around, it was ready to begin testing.
The tests began with sending small, insignificant objects a few moments into the future. Two weeks later we had sent a rat to the year 2050 (we assumed it was successful, since we couldn't really tell); and a month later we were making quick trips to the next few days, careful to arrive in remote locations and only check the time to confirm success before returning.
