By: Jy Hung Ong

It was another day for Professor Timen. He woke up at 5AM, ready to work on the Panten Project. Most people knew about it only as a project Scientists were working on, but the professor knew better. It was an organization meant to make time travel possible. As he stepped outside, he looked at the refreshing beauty outside of his window. The skyscrapers wishing not to be seen. The array of trees looked natural as ever. The flying cars zoomed around. He could not imagine a better time to be alive.

He stepped out of his home, walking at a brisk pace towards Panten University. Once inside, he typed a command into the university’s central supercomputer.

“Give Professor Timen access.”

The computer replied, “Prove you are Professor Timen. Please scan your wristband.”

The professor scanned his wristband on the machine’s scanner. The wristband was given only to those in the Panten project.

“Thank you for your authorization,” the computer said.

He went into the chute which had just appeared in front of the computer. After climbing down the ladder, he looked at the familiar view of the area.

Beneath the chute was a whole new world. It was massive. Timen figured he could probably fit the Instint Tower along its height and width and still have room to spare. The Instint Tower was the shortest skyscraper, only about 2000 ft high.

In the center of the warehouse was the grand object the Panten project was based on: a time machine. Several of the Scientists, all dressed in white, were nervously walking around the machine, inspecting every inch of it.

Surrounding the machine were rows of supercomputers, the type in the university above, and electrical pipes. Timen could hear the pipes’ extremely loud buzz even from the ladder. Each of the supercomputers had a Scientist in front of it. The supercomputers oversaw the software and engineering of the machine. The engineering part was complete; however, the software constantly bugged out. The last few months had been devoted solely to debugging it.

Timen was looking at the computers when he saw Rik. Rik was the boss of the project. Like all Scientists, he was dressed in white. However, his hair was frazzled like a “mad scientist” from earlier centuries, maybe the 2000s or 2100s, Timen couldn’t remember which.

“Hello!”

“Welcome back!” they replied.

“When is the machine going to be finished?” Timen asked the Scientists.

“Give us about an hour. A new issue has popped up inside the machine’s time travel function. It keeps sending us to the Big Bang instead of 2008,” one of the Scientists, Rik, said.

“That’s an easy fix, we just need to fix the main supercomputer. Here, let me do it,” Timen said, walking toward Rik as he spoke.

Timen quickly fixed a couple of loose pieces of code. He turned around and presented to Rik the machine.

“Finally, after all the years put into this project, we are done!” Rik proclaimed.

Timen knew that was an understatement. They had spent years, with some Scientists even pulling multiple all-weekers. Timen was one of them.

“Who wants to go?” Rik asked. Several Scientists raised their hand, but in the end, Rik picked Timen.

“Safe travels. May the skyscrapers be with you,” Rik said.

“Thank you. Now, please let me enter the correct coordinates and time.” Timen knew exactly where he was going. New York. Specifically, Wall Street. The Panten project was built on the idea of eliminating market crashes. Timen wanted to stop the Great Depression, but Rik wanted to stop the 2008 Market Crash. Timen typed in the coordinates, 40.706005, -74.008827. Year: 20— Something pushed against his shoulder.

“What was that?” he asked. No one answered him. Year: 2019. Month: December. Day: 29Wait, that wasn’t right. It was 2008.

“Thank you. Going to 2019, 40.706005, -74.008827,” the machine said.

“Wait, that’s not right! Wait, stop! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” Timen said as the machine whisked him into the year of the Covid-19 outbreak.