Like
every other man or woman, my highschool years were mostly filled with
immaturity. I didn't want to popular, or “cool”, or anything like
that. I just wanted to get the fuck out of that mess.
Most
learned maturity though education, common sense, or an act of god. My
came from none of these, but a peculiar event that began some time
ago. This is the story of how I found the time machine.
It
was a winter day as I previously described, it was a winter day in
the middle of the school year. As the clock began to count down I was
bored out of my mind, everyone else intently listening to every
single word that came out of that damn hole called a teacher.
Fortunately I got it easy – I was a straight-A student, not exactly
sure how I was able to pull it off, but I did nonetheless. The
teacher, in this case the teacher of our geometry class, normally
ignored me as I left into the vast, empty space called my mind.
Every
once in a while, I wish for something. I mean, it can't hurt to wish,
does it? Sometimes I wish for few million dollars from a mysterious
donator, or the love of a crush, but my all time greatest wish was a
time machine.
Now,
while most of my previous wishes sometimes backfire (like I lose some
money, or my crush starts dating some other asshole) the time machine
is flawless. It's a simple device – similar in size and features to
a walkman or any other cassette player, the machine is a small little
lad with only four buttons – play, pause, slow down, and speed up.
The buttons themselves are self-explanatory, but the system itself
does have a few rules (in my favor, of course):
- When in pause, the user has no “needs”. He is not hungry, thirsty, or tired (meaning he can run forever at top speed if he wanted to).
- While time is paused, no one else anywhere has any conscious. When time freezes, its like nothing happens: in a blink of the eye, whatever the user changed is immediately shown.
- Whilst time is paused, the user cannot be damaged or hurt. He is immune to anything, because anything that does not happen while time is playing doesn't happen.
If
it wasn't clear enough to you, the pause feature was the one I most
wanted. I could do ANYTHING while time was frozen – if I really
wanted to, I could drive a fucking sedan straight into the Bank of
America and steal all the money I could ever want, and set it up as
if it was caused by some other poor bastard.
Anyway,
every day while walking home I would just imagine opening the door
and sitting right there at the table would be this beautiful machine.
And every single day when I opened the door, of course nothing was
there.
However,
this day was a little different. I wished and wished and imagined me
coming through the door, looking at it, and even touching it. I
thought of all the things I could possibly do with it, and I got
excited. Then I opened the door.
I
had to do at least three double takes before I realized what was on
the table – the time machine.
The
last time something this insane of a coincidence happened was when I
wished for a card to be on my table symbolizing either red (for the
love of a crush) or blue (for fifty million dollars). In the end, a
red card with a heart showed up, even though the crush ended up
banging at least half of the football team later that week.
But
this, this was different. Nothing in my house could've symbolized the
machine – yet it was right there in front of me, buttons and all.
My hand shaking, I grabbed it and held it for a closer examination –
every inch of detail was right on point. A black stripe was right
above the buttons, and even the small scratch I thought up to make
sure what I was seeing was real, was there – same size and same
look.
I
had to try it out. I opened the door, ran outside and pressed the
button. Instantly, the trees stopped swaying and the birds stopped
chirping – a couple on a bench sat looking straight at each other
smiling like statues, and a man on his porch frozen smoking, in which
the smoke stayed suspended straight in the air.
I
was so shocked I nearly dropped the damn thing. Next though, I had to
make sure the rules were correct. As fast as I could, I ran to one
side of the road and then back, straight into the wall of my house.
Instead of possibly breaking my arm on the impact, I bounced off with
zero damage to my body, and no tiredness. Both rules worked.
I
ran up to the couple. No reaction. I began to wave my hand back and
forth between them, knocking on their heads. No reaction. Finally, I
slapped the guy as hard as I could (to be fair he did look like an
asswipe.) and walked back to my house. Once I felt safely far away
enough, I unpaused and spectated the once again moving earth.
No
reaction.
Apart
from the guy slightly rubbing his cheek for a second, none of the
world was changed. I didn't all of a sudden start feeling pain, and
it was clear the couple didn't even realize I was standing there. It
worked.
I
decided to ride out my excitement until the next morning at school.
Normally I'd just take this time to read or study or some other
boring mean of keeping myself preoccupied, but this time I strode in
with a purpose.
Beside
me lay “the cunt table”, as I call it – all the football
players and dumb blondes and every other unsavory character in one
nice spot. As I held the machine in my hand, I wondered what possible
antics I could pull. Pull the guy's pants down? Pretty immature even
for my standards. Put them into a bunch of awkward positions? Not
really too interesting.
I
sat there thinking for a good two minutes before I finally had it.
With a sleigh of hand I pushed the pause button, and like expected
all of time stopped. I walked over, and picked up one of the football
players. I wasn't exactly the most muscular person, but the fact that
strength didn't apply in this frozen world worked to my advantage.
It
took about two hours of my time to set it up, but only a millisecond
in true time. I walked slowly back to my position at the table, and
pressed play.
“What
the fuck?” I could hear one of the seniors shouted, holding on to a
pipe for dear life and trying not to fall from the room. One of the
blondes screamed, finding her arms and legs stuck in one of the
fences. Another one, well, wasn't there. He was too busy pissing his
pants as the truck he was on speeded towards the freeway.
It
wasn't the “nicest” thing to do, but you can't say that it wasn't
hilarious. I sat at my table holding in my laughter, trying to
pretend I knew just about as much as any of the other people there
knew.
A
few hours later (that is after a few teachers got them unstuck), I
found myself once again in geometry class. Instead of day dreaming
for a wish, I found myself hung over my desk, staring at it. It was
all real. It felt real, and it felt incredible.
While
the geometry teacher gave some lessons on something probably
important, I was thinking of possible uses for the device when it
came to me.
It
was the final test to see if it would work. Likely risky, but I was
mostly set off by a doubt deep in my mind saying it was a bad idea.
This
was a bad idea. The girl sitting in front of me was asian, with an
average build yet average breast size. She was beautiful.
This
was a bad idea. She wore a sleek, black leather jacket, and shorts
that showed almost the entirety of her thighs. It was clear from the
time paused that this girl was not focused on listening to their
teacher either, but instead on her phone. He hair was pitch dark,
made into a ponytail.
This
was a very bad idea, but I was a teenager. An immature, high school
teenager who's morals normally went around unchecked. As I sat the
machine down on my desk, I motioned towards the girl. No reaction, no
movement other than my own. I waved my hand in her face, similar to
what I did to the couple. No reaction from her, no reaction from any
other person or object in sight. After a final moment of hesitation,
I got behind her, and began to slowly and doubtfully pulled down my
pants.
Fortunately,
something else sparked my attention before I could ever finish what I
was doing. The single sound of something passing by the room. This
was enough to spark my curiosity, as I pulled back up my pants half
relieved something stopped me.
I
looked into the hallway. Everything was about the same as it was
before I went into the class, either that or it was static where ever
it was. Nothing seemed out of place, no movement came from the corner
of my eyes.
“Hello?”
I dumb-foundedly asked. As expected, there was no answer. Just simple
silence. A world frozen in time.
Convinced
I was just hearing things, I walked back to the room. Finally my mind
overtook itself, and the previous idea I had was no longer a viable
option. I motioned towards to the machine to pick it up and play time
again.
But
nothing happened. I did a double take, only to look at my desk in
shock.
It
wasn't there.
I
scrambled around the room. I moved desks, emptied them, and pushed
them to the ground. Yet no amount of looking could help me find it.
It was gone.
To
make a roughly 33 year story short, I've been stuck in this frozen
time. Thankfully I've still never gotten hungry, but staying here is
starting to drive me crazy. I've found that cars and other
electronics still work, but those that require something to be
connected to them (such as the internet, television, and radio) do
not. As I write my story, I'm just south of Zimbabwe. I've
practically traveled the world thanks to the knowledge I've learned
from flying. I guess at one point I just gave up on the machine and
decided to explore.
I
explored everywhere. I've seen every major landmark, every famous
person's house, and even the bottom of every ocean.
I
feel as though the time I've spent in this period has made me much
wiser though. I've found my home on the top of a hill in Reykjavik,
and it is there I often find myself looking at the eternal sunset
wondering what would happen in the world while I was stuck frozen in
time. After all, my eternity is a simple second of your time.
If
your reading this, time started playing again. I don't know when it
will happen or what will happen to me, but that's the only way you
could find me, and so ends the story of how I found the time machine.
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