It was a rainy day. Kevin was feeling bored. The power was shut down due to some fault resulting from the rain, so he could not play on the Xbox. He couldn’t go out to play either since it was raining.

But, unlike him, his father, Abraham Alexander, was up and productive. He was in his workshop even though it had a huge hole in it. You see, Abraham Alexander was a scientist who worked for the government. He had forbidden Kevin from coming and disturbing him whenever he was in his workshop.

What Kevin found most interesting was the fact that his father only used his workshop in the rain! Kevin would have really loved to see what his father was up to, but he was going to have to wait to hopefully find out what was the amazing invention his father was working on in his clammy and wet workshop during the rain.

Kevin got so bored that he decided to sleep and just as he was dosing off, he suddenly heard the sound of something cracking. It wasn’t a normal cracking sound, it was a sound as if the whole universe, including the time and space continuum, was being split into half to open a gateway.

Kevin raced outside to find a huge laser going up and disappearing into the infinite sky and coming back into the workshop! He carefully went into the workshop to check on his father.

When he entered, his father only had enough response time to say, “What are you…” and then they were both covered in a blue light. The next moment, they appeared in space between a gateway of blue and purplish smoke.

Kevin asked in a daze, “What is happening dad? Where are we?”

“Well, you see I have been building a time machine that uses water to work and a laser to cut through time and space. The government had asked me to make this machine so that they could make modern technologies more advanced by teaching the people in the past what we know. I realised it could have bad results that we can’t predict or prepare for at the moment and also that if the laser loop gets interrupted, the time paradox will explode taking the user’s life with it.

“Unfortunately, when you came, you interrupted me and we are in the quantum realm through which time travel is possible,” came the reply from his father.

Kevin couldn’t believe it and asked for confirmation, “You built a time machine?”

“Well … yes,” came his father’s reply. “But we have to return and destroy it.”

“How are we going to do that?” asked Kevin.

“It’s simple, we will use the quantum realm to return. Our present time is paused till we return,” said his father.

Not satisfied, Kevin asked, “If our time is paused, then when we return we will have little time to get out and interfere with the laser loop.”

His father then said, “Yes, and if we fail we will create a time loop again, in which we will return and go back from our time to here again and again until we can fix the laser loop.”

So when they returned, the two quickly jumped out and quickly turned off the time machine’s switch. The time machine exploded and miraculously the father and son emerged from the smoke unhurt!

“Well, that’s that,” said Kevin’s father.

He then called the government and told them that the time machine got destroyed and so did the blueprint that was used to make it. And so time travel remains a dream for mankind.

Published in Dawn, Young World, September 7th, 2019