Tevun-Krus #100

21 - Reset - @lhansenauthor - Big Bang

Reset 

by Lina Hansen lhansenauthor

"Heavens, what is wrong with you?"

Professor Caleb Anon Faifai Bronsky, "Calf" to his friends, circled the time machine with increasing despair in an ever-decreasing radius. But no matter how hard he tried, his tired grey matter could find neither faults in the manufacturing nor flaws in the design of his creation.

The drum-like structure waiting in the middle of the clean room sported cutting-edge technology. The last silicon had gone into the chips running the controls, and the last precious drop of petrol had got processed to form the appliance's smooth coating. Bronsky's invention represented the last hope of a civilisation clinging to an overcrowded, polluted planet. Well, to be precise, it represented hope only for a select few of them.

And that was assuming the machine would actually function.

What if he recalculated? No point, he had tried many times before.

What if he ran more system tests from the snow-white console, checking the performance against the design blueprint? Nope. He had done that more often than he could remember.

Hell, no, he would have to admit defeat.

Tonight, facing the board of Global Industries, who had sponsored this desperate attempt at finding a backdoor into the past, a way of escaping the inevitable end. Planet Earth's population was gasping for air, murdering each other for a drop of water or a morsel of synth-bread. So far, the chosen few, an elite to which he soon would belong no longer, had been spared. But now time was up.

Panic rose at the back his throat, scorching the soft tissue of his throat like the acid rain drumming on the roof of the clean room. Bronsky shoved his emotions back down and squared his shoulders. He was a scientist. A physicist. An engineering god. He could do it. And he really should stop drinking vintage Coca-Cola; it only gave him heartburn.

Bronsky hiccuped once, manoeuvred his thin body through the narrow entrance and, still clutching the bottle to his chest, lowered himself onto the translucent Gel-O-chair in front of the console.

The lights shone, the engine sent warm vibrations through the seat, the computer was fully functional.

So why the devil did they not achieve shift off?

"Close!" Bronsky snapped at the voice-control and, obediently, the sliding doors hissed shut.

He sipped his Cola, the metallic-sweet tang of his precious drink soothing his anger. A hint of fizz remained in the fluid, worth every credit he had spent.

Bronsky stared at the console. Then he stared at the screen, taunting him with a question mark instead of the "Enter" command, the control panel with its array of LEDs, all winking green at him and finally at the levers that set the year.

As if there were any choice. The latter part of the Victorian era it would be. Far enough away but not too far to harbour dangerous diseases or horrid military conflicts that could not be avoided by being on another continent. It had all been settled and agreed. They only needed a few test drives.

"Aye, there's the rub," Bronsky addressed the console and belched once.

Movement caught his eye, and he scanned the rows and rows of coded countdown sequence scrolling over the control screen in softly glowing amber.

As he had done many times before—his heart skipped a beat and adrenaline spiked in his veins.

"Freeze screen," he shouted, and the scrolling stopped.