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          "Hello?! Hey! You awake?"
          "What? Who the... what time is it?!"
          I fumbled with the phone as I rolled over and squinted at the clock on my dresser, trying to make my eyes focus.
The voice on the other end of the line laughed, half nervous, half excited.
          "I... uh..." The voice stammered a moment before continuing. "Two seventeen. It's two..."
          "Yeah, I see that," I interrupted rudely, not caring. "Why are you calling this freakin' early, Frank? I'm dead tired and..."
          "I know, I know, but listen!" The voice interrupted, returning the favor, but without the clear annoyance I had in my voice.
          I rubbed my eyes and sat up, yawning.
          "Ok, I'll bite. What do you want me to hear?"
          The voice chuckled again, a kind of ‘I-know-something-you-don't-know' chuckle, but said nothing. Instead, random noises could be heard in the background; a shuffling, muffled footsteps, or... well I didn't know.
          Suddenly there was a buzzing, a rumbling, like a thousand angry bees trapped in a drum. Still, the man on the other end said nothing. The buzzing slowly grew louder, until, like a banshee coming screaming through the trees in a child's nightmare-tale, a shrill whine arose. I instinctively held the phone away from my ear.
          "What the hell is that?!" I yelled to the air between my ear and the receiver.
          And, almost as suddenly as the racket began, it ended... all except the memory of it ringing in my ears.
          The voice laughed again.
          I wasn't amused.
          "Frank, you dumb son-of-a..."
          "Do you know what that was?"
          I fought back a thousand curse words and exhaled.
          "What, Frank. What was it?" I said, kicking off the covers and getting out of bed. I was awake now, my ears still ringing.
          "The machine."
          I frowned.
          "The what?"
          The voice was excited again.
          "The machine. It works! I made it work!"
          I stood there for a moment, looking at the sleep-sunken eyes and disheveled hair of a too-old-for-his-age man in the dresser mirror. I frowned again, this time at the unshaven madman staring at me, who in turn frowned back. I ran my fingers through my thick mop of brown hair, the frowning man mocking my every movement. I shook my head and turned away from the mirror, scanning the floor around my bed for the pants I had kicked off the night before. Finding them, I pulled them on, shouldering the receiver.
          "Hello?" The voice said, seemingly out of breath.
          "What? Oh... ah... what did you say again?" I mumbled, coughed, and sat back down at the foot of the bed.
          "The machine, Kevin... that's what that was. It works."
          My right eyebrow shot up, my face twisted into reluctant surprise.
          "You don't mean..."
          "Yes! I do mean! It works! I made it work! It's damn loud, I'll give you that, but it works!"
          Both eyebrows had risen before he finished talking, along with the rest of my body, up again, this time to search for a shirt, socks, shoes. Any remaining sleepiness had been driven away by my racing, stumbling thoughts.
          The voice on the phone laughed again.
          This time I joined in, fumbling with the shoelaces on my old tattered work boots.
          "Well, do you want to see it?" Old Frankie asked, his voice dancing over the phone line.
          "Do I want to see it?" I repeated, smiling, now truly looking like a madman. "What kind of question is that, Frankie, you old fool, you old genius! Of course! Hell, I'm dressed and ready to burst out the door this very instant!"
          "Well, run, buddy! Beat the clock! See you in ten?"
          "Done!"
          I rushed out of my old apartment, dropping the phone into the cradle and snatching up my car keys.
          In exactly nine minutes and thirty-eight seconds I was standing on Frank's front stoop, practically beating down his door. It swung open by the fourth knock and a short, pudgy bald man in thick glasses and a face red with laughter ushered me in and closed the door behind me. He hurried down a long hallway littered with boxes full of notebooks and random pieces of paper. He stopped suddenly and turned to fix his gaze directly at me.
          "You sure you ready for this?" He said, his voice shaking ever so slightly.
          "Yes! Yes, by God!" I shouted, not meaning to. Frank winced a bit, then chuckled again.
          "All right, Kevin," he said, pushing open a door next to him. It creaked open to reveal a huge, open room, with high ballroom ceilings. Even more boxes were piled along the walls, various dates scribbled on the sides. What walls weren't covered in boxes were plastered with hundreds of snapshots, dates written on each of them as well. The snapshots themselves were pictures of seemingly meaningless things; a park bench, a hotel bathroom, an old toothbrush, a broken TV set, yet they all had specific dates on them, and some even had specific times, down to the second. Along one wall in particular were snapshots of Frankie, from when he was little, all the way up through his teens to his mid-thirties and beyond. All dated, some with crude lines scratched into the wall that lead to pictures on the other wall of the same date.
          And there, right in the middle of the junked up room that looked like a scrapbooking session gone horribly, horribly awry, in all it's angles and hinges and cold metal glory...
          ...The machine.

          All I could do was stand, unmoving, unspeaking, for a few seconds, as I drank in the splendor of it all.

          Yes, it was horrendous looking. All jutting elbows of sharp metals that looked more like some kind of hellishly psychotic cybertronic spider than what it really was.

          But I couldn't help it. It transfixed me. It held my gaze. It paralyzed me.

          Because it was real.

          After a few moments, though I couldn't really say how long, I felt a hand on my shoulder.

          "You alright, old buddy?"

          I blinked and cleared my throat.

          "Sorry... sorry Frankie. Yeah. Yes. I'm fine. It's just... there it is..."

          I fell silent again.

          Frank chuckled and squeezed my shoulder.

          "Yes. There it is. Come. Let's talk shop."

          I turned and he led me over to a cluttered desk in one corner of the vast room. He hefted a large pile of papers off of a chair and stacked them on top of a box stacked against the wall. He gestured to the chair and I sat down. He pulled another chair up and sat down as well. He leaned back and tapped his fingers on the table for a few seconds.

          I stole another glance at the machine.

          "And... you're sure? It really works?"

          Frank smiled. He swiveled in the chair to face the wall. He scanned it quickly with his eyes, then snatched a snapshot of the wall. He turned again and handed the picture to me. I looked at it, confused. It was the seemingly irrelevant snapshot of the broken television, although, now that I looked closer, it seemed as though a large, heavy object had been used to smash in the screen. I looked back up at Frank.

          "What is this?"

          "That is my proof."

          I looked back down at the picture.

          A smashed in television.

          Nothing else.

          "I... don't understand."

          Frank smiled again and shook his head. He leaned forward and tapped the bottom of the picture.

          "Do you see the date? The time?"

          I followed Frank's tapping finger and read what was scribbled on the bottom.

          October 15^th. 2:57 AM.

          "Okay... that's today's date. But the time's off."

          Frank shook his head.

          "No it's not."

          I glanced at my watch.

          "Well... not by much... but still... it's only 2:55." I paused for a second, thinking. "Wait... why would you put the time it is now, anyway..."

          Frank didn't say a word, he just gestured to his left. I followed where he pointed and saw a television set sitting on the floor.

          It looked identical to the one in the photo.

          But it was not broken.

          "I... still don't..."

          "Just look at it. It's the same television set, right? Same brand? Same model? Right?"

          "Well, yes, but how many of those did they make? Surely thousands. If not..."

          "What time is it?"

          I looked back at him, eyebrow raised.

          "What? What does..."

          "What time?"

          I glanced at my watch again.

          "It's 2:57... why..."

          Without saying a word, Frank grabbed a piece of scrap metal lying on the desk. He turned and threw it directly at the television. It struck the screen, making it implode in a sharp crash. I jumped up, eyes wide.

          "What the hell, Frank!"

          He laughed.

          "Oh, calm down, Kevin. Sit down. Look at the picture again."

          I sat down, slowly, still eyeing Frank. I blinked, shook my head and looked back at the picture.

          Now... they were identical.

          I looked back and forth between the snapshot and the real television now lying in ruin on the floor.

          The gaping hole in the screen. The jagged edges of glass. The glint from a small piece of metal sticking out of the hole. All exactly the same.

          "What? It's..."

          "Yes... they're the same. Look closer. Look at the reflection in the screen."

          I held the picture closer, studying the left side of the television screen. The side that hadn't been smashed in.

          I didn't have to look at it long to see what he was talking about.

          I stared for a few seconds, my mouth opening and closing, no words coming out.

          "That's... me!" I finally gulped.

          And it was. A reflection of myself, sitting exactly how I was sitting, staring not into the broken screen, but at a small square held in my hand.

          A snapshot.

          There was a flash.

          Something clicked and whirred.

          I turned to see Frank holding an old gray Polaroid camera, shaking a snapshot he had just taken.

          "So... that's... this?" I asked, holding up the snapshot I was holding.

          Only I wasn't holding anything anymore.

          "What? It's gone!"

          I looked around on the floor. In my lap.

          I hadn't dropped it.

          Had I?

          "No it's not gone. It's here. I just took it."

          "But... in the photo..."

          "Yes I know. It's all quite confusing. But then again, think how it is for me! I've already had this conversation with you."

          I looked at him, confused.

          "You're saying..."

          "Yes. This already happened. Well... to me. But I figured this was one way I could prove to you the machine worked." He gestured to the walls full of random snapshots. "As you can see, I've been experimenting quite a bit."

          I nodded, scanning the walls.

          Now each seemingly useless snapshot became that much more important. That much more... vital, in a sense.

          "So... how long have far have you gone...?"

          "Not far. Nothing further than a few days in either direction. I was just testing it. And as soon as I thought things were moving smoothly, that's when I called you."

          I nodded.

          A sudden surge of excitement flooded my veins. My eyes grew wide and I jumped up from the chair.

          "It works! It actually works!" I shouted suddenly.

          Frank stood up, laughing. He clapped me on the back.

          "Yes, it does. Now... care to go for a spin?"

          I spun around, nearly losing my balance and falling over, then sprinted like an eight-year-old on a sugar rush over to the machine.

          "Yes! Are you kidding? Let's go!"

          Frank followed behind me, shaking his head.

          "Alright. Where to? To pick up some old memories, eh? Back to the glory days of our youth? Back to feel what we once thought were the best days of our lives? Or further forward? To see what better days might be ahead? Or worse days... but then who knows what we'd see? Either or. Up to you, buddy."

          I turned and smiled.

          "How about even before our glory days? To see... oh God... to see my parents! How they were before... before..."

          Frank held up his hand.

          "Say no more. I understand. Yes, we could do that. And, after, to see my own parents! Or maybe, great great great great grandparents!" Frank said, laughing. "What things we could learn!"

          My heart was racing, my body shaking all over.

          Yes! The first people to actually move back and forth through time! What things we could learn!!!

          "Yes! Fire it up! Let's go!"

          Frank threw a few switches on what looked like a skeletal arm on the right side of the machine, then nodded. I walked into the center of the spider-like mass and he followed. Something clinked as parts of the machine began moving and rotating. Frank turned to me and handed me a set of earplugs.

          "Here. You'll need these. In case you've forgotten, this sucker gets plenty loud."

          I smiled, putting one in each ear.

          That bumblebee roar began, as more pieces of the machine clicked and whirred. The whole room vibrated and suddenly seemed to dissolve from view. All I could see was the spinning, swooshing pieces of the machine, all I could hear was the muffled siren-wail. It was like I was trapped inside a mechanical tornado, and though any piece of the swirling mass of metallic parts could easily break off and impale me, I didn't care. My head was spinning with excitement, my body pulsing with adrenaline.

          I felt a hand on my shoulder.

          I turned to see Frank staring at me.

         There was a confused look in his eyes.

         "What is it?" I shouted.

          I could barely hear his voice through the cacophony of the machine.

          "Hey! I thought you didn't like that goatee anymore!"

          I raised my eyebrow.

          "What? I don't! I haven't had it for at least a month! I..."

          Then I froze.

          My hand felt the gruff hair on my chin.

          "I don't understand! What..."

          I froze again, staring at Frank.

          Not a half-hour ago, he was completely bald.

          Now... he had a full head of thick, brown hair.

          His eyes were wide as he ran his fingers through his sudden mop of hair.

          "What's going on!" I shouted.

          My body was still pulsing... but it wasn't adrenaline.

          This was something else.

          A sudden pain shot down my spine and I collapsed to my knees.

          Frank suddenly fell as well.

         Then, all at once... it felt as if every single bone in my body were... shrinking. But... more than that...

          My elbow cracked.

          I howled in pain.

          Then my arm. Leg.

          Each bone, regressing back to...

          ...to when I was a child.

          Oh, God... the machine... it's... changing our bodies! It's sending our bodies back... back...

          "Shut it off! Frank! Shut the damn thing off!"

          Frank didn't say a word.

          He was lying, convulsing, on the ground.

          He was half the size he had just been seconds prior.

          Another crack.

          My ribs, twisting.

          What takes a human body years to do was happening to me... to us... in seconds... but in reverse...

         "Frank! Come on! Get up! Shut it off!"

         But he wasn't moving anymore.

         Old Frankie, or rather, the person who had just seconds prior been Old Frankie, was just lying there, half again the size he was.

         He looked... like he was five.

         My body convulsed again, my lungs feeling like they were imploding in on themselves. I gasped for breath, but each one came painfully.

         This isn't what it's supposed to be like!

         Why didn't Frank know this was going to happen?! He had used it before!

         Then, all at once, his words rushed through my head:

         "Nothing further than a few days in either direction..."

         He hadn't gone far enough to notice any changes in his body.

         And I realized that whichever direction we had chosen would have meant our bodies wouldn't have jumped through time whole, in their present state...

         But become whatever they were in the past... or whatever they'd be in the future...

         I howled in pain again. A tremendous pressure pulsed behind my eyes, as if two huge hands were crushing my skull.

         "Stop... no..." I gasped, every bone in my body literally breaking and resetting, breaking... healing... breaking...

         The last thing I ever saw was the pile of clothes where Frank once lay.

         And all at once, like someone switching off a light, all life that was once in the machine ceased to exist.

         And the machine spun, clicked, and whirred, continuing off to its destination.

Keyword: The Machine sci fi science fiction

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Comments (2)

Posted by tarhead 2008-03-07 11:54:46 cool... nice work... little long on the screen and it almost scared me off - glad it didn't. good concept! write on! + Report this comment
Posted by paulwhowrites 2008-03-07 15:16:41 Too much! This story keeps the suspense wonderfully, and it's a good length. However, you try to cram so many images in to every sentence that it feels too much when you read it. Punctuation seems to be all over the place as well because of the way you have chosen to write, it can be quite distracting. As well as this, who are these people? Where are they? When? The story feels as if it happens in a kind of void, which I think is the only major problem, it needs to be 'placed' more. The last two lines seem to contradict each other, the machine stops working, but then continues to move. Your use of language is very lively and it's paced well. The characters are clear, they have personality. I think you need to state who is speaking more often however, the dialogue can get a little bit lost. Good work. + Report this comment

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