Young Writers Society

Chapter 1

A beginning with discoveries, longing, explosions, and a little blood.

Dear readers, before we begin, let me tell you some important facts about my role in this story. I, the narrator, will not be a voice from the sky; I have a part to play before the end. It might seem strange to you that I can tell you what each character is doing or thinking without being there, and that is one of the strangest concepts in this story; but you’ll find how I do this in time. Who am I, you ask? Well, I am the most adventurous time traveler that ever was, or ever will be! I have lived a life in every point in history, someone different each time, (thanks to plastic surgery and some makeup) and I’ve contributed to many historic events. I won’t tell you just how old I am, or when I was born; that’s my secret. Wondering about the book, are you? Well, first of all, Simon is the “main character” of this story, simply put, although there are many other characters who are involved. Anyway, getting back to time traveling, I time traveled around a bit to get a good picture of the history of this story. Also, I admit, I had to make some logical assumptions (time traveling only gets you so far). This is how I see it.

It all started like this. In the year 2886, a newborn boy named Simon Aniks Photon joined a family called the Photons, (as you probably figured out a split second ago). The family consisted of a young mother, Dr. Photon, a young father, again Dr. Photon, (originality fades over time, it seems). Also, they had a little girl named Crystal Ruthy Photon. They were a well to do family, and lived in what was then the Science class.

In case you’re wondering, the Science Class consisted of highly educated people. This included wealthy scientists, inventors, architects, teachers, skilled electricians, and so on. Most people in the Science class had a Doctoral Degree; roughly 8 out of 10. The rest were mostly either kids in school which were born into the Science class, but had not yet gotten into college, or housewives that married a scientist. However, that was very uncommon. Even so, it was still even more unlikely for an unscientific husband to be married to a scientific wife.[2] Only about one out of a thousand kids per year in the Science class[3] don't finish college. But most of married someone who did. All the rest formed the Lower class, the ones who did the dirty work. Even so, they were paid pretty well, and were not poor; only their brains were poor, to them and to everyone else.

Mrs. Photon had a Doctorate in robotics, and worked at the Experimental Robotics and Warp-Ship lab. Her husband, Dr. Photon, had a Doctorate in physics, and was a physics teacher at a nearby High School. (In case you’re wondering, A Warp-Ship is an Air-Racer with negative-energy propulsion, which can fly up to 1.07 times the speed of light. It’s still experimental. It is also subjected Copyright to the Experimental Robotics and Warp-ShipLab). Crystal was still very little when Simon was born, and was named Crystal, because her eyes were like Crystal orbs, clear and light as a cold water spring. She was only two, and she was much loved.

They lived in an old house that Simon’s Mother had inherited from her parents after they moved into an apartment. The house was too big for them, they’d said. The house was between a large canning factory and their neighbor’s house, the Starrs.

The Starrs, were also pretty well to do. Mr. Starr worked at the canning factory[1], and his wife, Dr. Starr, was a doctor, like Simons’ Mother and dad. But unlike them she was an actual doctor; she specialized in plastic surgery.

They had a little boy about the same age as Simon, Edmund Cyber Starr. He was Simon’s friend. He was named after the richest of his eight great grandfathers; Klint Cyber Starr, his father’s grandfather.

Back to Simon's’ house; you’re probably wondering what it looks like, so I will tell you. It was cylinder shaped, to begin with (nice to know that there are no corners to dust). It was made of red brick concealed by a smooth, white marble facade, and enwrapped with an invisible Force-Field[2], to keep out any thieves, bugs or unwanted animals. It was tall, three stories, not including the basement, attic, and observatory on the top. The observatories dome was very big, and covered most of the roof (leaving a walkway large enough for one person to walk in single file. For safety reasons, there was metal railing). It housed a large telescope that could see all the way to Pluto and could pierce through some of the thick gases of Jupiter. The dome was made of reinforced steel that could withstand a small atomic bomb, and the telescope could do the same. The house sat on a large front and back yard, an acre and a half total.

There were nine bedrooms; three on the second floor, three on the third floor, a spare one in the attic, and two beds in the observatory. There were also six bathrooms, each with a bathtub and shower. There was a bathroom on the first floor, two on the second floor (one in the parent’s room, the other close to the kid’s rooms). The same for the third floor, and there was also one in the observatory.

In the basement was the washroom, the workroom, and lots of old, dusty antique-furniture. On the first floor there was a kitchen, a living room, a game room, a mudroom, an eating room, the Teleportation[3] room, and the bathroom. On the second floor there were the beds and bathrooms, a balcony, two offices, a library, and the homework room. On the third floor were the beds and bathrooms, and all the science things.

There was the weather room, where the temperature, wind speed, air pressure, CO2 levels, humidity, expected storms, and the ozone layers’ thickness was recorded. There was also the math room, where numbers were crunched, prices were computed, dimensions sketched, shapes drawn, trigonometry tackled, calculators sorted, and computers programmed. There were many more rooms, like the astronomy room, or the geology room, but we won’t get into those. The attic was hardly ever used, and filled with junk and dust. The observatory had the beds, which folded out from the wall, some computers, the telescope, and the bathroom. The house was pretty big![7] Simon’s room was on the second floor, next to the library. The library held a massive assortment of books, from History and Biographies to Fantasy and Science Fiction. That was where he studied, read, or got some alone time, but that’s when he got older.

Simon was an energetic, skinny boy with thick brown hair which didn’t like to stick down flat, and long bangs that were always getting in the way. He was always slightly on the tall side, and more than slightly on the bright side, if I might say so. However, he did like to dive right into everything without ever testing the water.

When Simon was born, he was a little rascal, but eventually he grew out of it. Eventually. He would spill his high protein milk, throw frozen peas across the floor, and chewed on all the furniture, even though they were mostly holograms. They were just for decoration (he would get a mouthful of air when he tried to chew the holograms). Everyone sat on levitated seats, called Relaxers[8], which they also moved around on (after about the age of 40, as an unenforced rule). That is, when they were not walking or driving in their Air-Racers[9], so that there was not much need for chairs or couches.

Getting back to Simon. He did get better, but sometimes he would pull a prank on bullies who teased littler kids than them. They stayed away from him after the first few bullies were found doing Simons homework in a closet, while he told them facts about what happened to your lungs when you smoke cigars and get lung cancer. Conveniently, he had happened to bring bigger than life colored posters to demonstrate that. He hung them on the inside of the closet, so if they tried to escape, they would have to go right up against the posters. Even though Simon got in quite a lot of trouble, he would still do things like that from time to time. Some saw him as a saver, some as a bully, but he didn’t really care. His all-time favorite was when he lured six or so bullies onto his front yard (with an Air-Racer hologram); then proceeded to drop a massive balloon full of coke and Mentos out of the attic window onto them.

He had thought of this one day during the summer, while drinking coke, and was longing to try it out. This was how his plan had worked:

He filled the weather balloon with as many container of coke that he could afford, and then twisted the top, leaving some space. Next, he proceeded to fill that space with about eight packs of Mentos, then tied the top, still holding the twisted part closed. If he didn’t, the Mentos would get in the coke and explode before he wanted it to. He then forced the balloon out the window, and let the twisted part untwist, letting the Mentos fall into the coke on the way down. The coke completely turned into foam, only about half way down, and was already more than twice as big when it hit the leader square on the head. He crumpled, and the foam engulfed him and his yelling companions.

The explosion of foam knocked the boys flat on the ground, and nearly drowned them; but luckily they could swim. Simon laughed and laughed and laughed. After that, Simon was called “Da’ Coke King” by his classmates; he was actually the one to think of that name, and it stuck.

Simon was fascinated by Air-Racers, and would bounce up and down in his mother's lap whenever they went anywhere in one. When he turned seven, he got his own working one person Air-Racer. His parents secretly kept the parent remote control, so that he would never actually go very far or very fast. Simon grew up in a very modern household. They always had the most modern and stylish things. So of course, when the mass-produced government-regulated Time Machine[10] came out when Simon was twelve, he just had to get one. This is where we will descend into Simon's’ life.

We’ll start right here: Simon was walking home from school with Edmund one spring day. They passed a normal looking store that held something that would change their lives. Simon was the first to notice. “Wow, look at this!” he said. Edmund had just been replaying a scene he had heard from his dad this morning. His dad had accidentally made it so that all the canning robots[11] in the factory were going crazy. They would more-or-less juggle the cans, still open, then throw them at the vicinity of his boss’s office. This was all while his dad was rushing around trying to do something about it, and his boss was yelling at him. He stopped to stare mid guffaw. They stood clustered together, staring at it.

It was a smooth and black contraption, about six feet tall. It looked like a thin frame door, with red lasers that crisscrossed to make lots of quarter inch squares. On the left side there was a slanted control panel about three feet off the ground, two feet long, by one foot thick (the same as the door). It had a screen and lots of small buttons and knobs. Simon figured that all the mechanics were under the control panel, because the side of the door smoothly wrapped around into the control panel. It vibrated with the force of immense energy that Simon could tell was there. Even though Simon had never seen anything like it before, and didn’t even know what it did, he knew he wanted it, just from the look of it. It was so strange, and out of place, in that small store. Edmund asked the obvious question that they both were wondering. “What is it?” Simon slowly looked up at Edmund, and answered that he had no clue at all. After a few minutes of argument, they decided to go home and ask. It hadn’t occurred to them that they could actually enter the store; they were in too much of an argument to think of anything practical or even logical. Upon arriving home, Simon ran up to his sisters room on the third floor, and went to ask her. He was only twelve, and she fourteen, so she was not much older than him.

She was listening to music on her EMuzic[12], and he had to shake her to get her attention, which she didn’t like, since he startled her. She was in the middle of one of her favorite songs, “Plasma mayhem.” which went something like, “Plasma fires wreck my day, the burning smell of metal towers, those towns may burn and—” so on. She looked embarrassed and mad at the same time, when she realized that she had been singing out loud. That, by the way, is one of the worst songs ever recorded, and makes me squirm when I hear it. After she yelled at him about knocking, for a couple minutes (which was totally unreasonable, since even if the roof had collapsed on her, she wouldn’t have heard anything until the debris had hit her, and even then she would only would have heard the song that was playing), then sat down on her bed and grumpily said with her arms crossed, “what do ya’ want?!?” Simon took a deep breath, (he was a bit shaken from the yelling) and asked his sister, “You know that store, on the way home from school, with the big front window?” A grunt. “What do they sell?” “All kinds of government stuff, not very interesting for someone who can’t knock.” Here we go again, thought Simon, ’why won’t she just let it go? It’s such a teenage girl-ish kind of thing to do. “Why, are you trying to trademark the “and” symbol?” she continued. “No, of course not!” “Then what?”

There was a long, awkward silence, and then Simon quickly explained, trying to not sound foolish. This is what he said:

“There was a big black contraption in the window, and I thought that it would be a really cool contraption.” Simon didn’t like where this was going, and was suddenly fascinated by the pattern on the rug. Crystal, still annoyed by him disturbing her, and said in a very grown up and sarcastic voice, “what is it?” Simon wrenched his eyes from the ground and fixed them just over Crystal’s right shoulder. He took a deep breath, and said, “That’s what I had come to ask.” There was another awkward silence, during which Simon realized it would have helped to describe it. Then Crystal muttered under her breath, “So this is what I’ve got for a brother.”

While Simon protested, she shooed him out of her room, slammed and locked her door, and then went back to her music, in as much peace as you can be while listening to cheesy futuristic rock.

Outside the door, Simon stood indecisively for a moment. He had expected more out of her than that. Suddenly brightening, he slapped himself in the forehead, (for multiple reasons) and walked into his room. He sat down on his bed, took out his IPad ZEZ V9[13], and did a brief search on the store that he had seen the “door frames” in. It turned out that his sister was right; it was a store that sold government related supplies, from printers and binders to patents and prototypes (hardly any of those). But nowhere could he find a black, portal-like devise. Simon clicked on a back link, and found a small website, which was mostly occupied by a video, called “lost your hat in the future?” This caught Simon’s attention, even though he had seen hundreds of titles like that, in hundreds of cheap ads on hundreds of little digital newspapers. It was different, somehow. Maybe it was because it was a government regulated sight, with no cheap, cheesy ads, called “thedigitaltimemachineandprodotypenewspaper.gov”. Even though he couldn’t completely tell what it said from a first glance, .gov was pretty strong grounds for a truthful, or at least partly truthful article. He thought about all those other websites and ads; all of them about one thing... what was it? He read the URL again, but could only make out “machine” and “newspaper”. Then he looked again near the end of the URL. He felt adrenaline pumping through his body, like it always did when he got excited. Enthusiastically, and with shaking hands, he actually looked at the website title[14] itself. The title was written in large, bold type in a dark grey fount, maybe Cambria, and could have been read from a mile away. It said, under the website title and above the video title; “would you like to have a Time Machine?” The image of the smooth, black paint, and the red lasers flashed through his mind. It was a Time Machine!

A Time Machine in real life! thought Simon, excitedly tapping on the video. An image of a tall, thin man in a white lab suit, standing next to the Time Machine that Simon and Edmund had seen in the window, popped up. The man started to move his lips, and made gestures at the Time Machine, but no sound came from his mouth. Simon clumsily turned the sound on, and the man’s strong, firm voice could be heard saying, “-efficient, and yet to be government approved, but it has great potential. It’s the first Time Machine ever to be in stores, but-” click. Simon had heard enough to know that whatever he did, he had to have a Time Machine. The things you could do with one where endless. But what Simon didn't know was the Time Machine was a prototype; it was only in stores for show, and that it was not efficient. Simon, unaware of this, started counting his money. It only added up to $264.94[4], but Simon was not fazed. He was too excited.

He decided to do some more research, so he quickly opened the Voice app. The dry sound of some tired lady with a very flat and dull voice, which they used for the app, said, “Hello, how may I help you? Please state your question and/or description of an unidentifiable object and or make a huge donation to Apple after the beep.” Again, as always, Simon thought, what's with the donation thing? Like anyone is going to donate anything and rolled his eyes. The BEEEEEEEEP! Startled him out of his thoughts, and after a few seconds he hesitantly stated, “I would like some sources where I could research about Time Machines”. After a few seconds of processing, a message popped up; it said this action cannot be done on this app. Exasperated, Simon and went on to describe the Time Machine, but since you already know what it looks like, we can move on.

After a few second of processing, the IPad showed him all the results it could find. After a few more seconds of searching, Simon found what he was looking for; picture of a shiny black, portal like devise. It said it was the Time Machine (the same he had seen); a prototype, and was not for sale for a year at least. This was because it was still in the lab. Simon felt warmth and despair rushing through his body, like he had been filled with hot air, then popped, and all the hot air was rushing out of him.

He slumped back in his bed, his disappointment completely visible in his expression. He thought of how foolish he had been, to think that he could buy a Time Machine. He let the IPad fall free, and slumped on the bed, filled with a sensation like what rabbit feels caught in the mouth of a dog, right as they see the path to freedom. Like Simon at that moment, their probably thinking back on all the mistakes that they made, like eating Farmer Joes carrots. But Simon’s mistake was different; it was the mistake of caring in the first place. His mistake was seeing the Time Machine.

But for Simon it was more of a weird and twisted longing than a fear, the longing that that animal would be feeling, for its freedom. But his jaws were deep within him.

He realized then how tired he was, and lay on his back, telling himself that he would just rest a little. But if anyone had come in ten or so minutes later (which they luckily didn’t, as Simon was a light sleeper, and would have woken up), they would have found him slumped on the bed, with the IPad hanging off its edge. He had fallen into an exhausted sleep full of billowing nightmares, then a black void had stretched out to engulf him with unmentionably strange loneliness. After that, he dreamed not at all.

He awoke to a strange sound that he couldn’t identify; it was dark in his room. He lay in peaceful ignorance of the last day for a brief moment, trying to figure out what the sound was. Then he remembered everything, in a flood of overwhelming emotion and color. He groaned, dragged himself out of bed, pick up his IPad, (which had fallen to the floor) and checked the clock. It read 6:03. Simon groaned again. He had missed dinner, and he hadn’t done any of his homework! And most importantly, he was starving! His family ate at about 5:15 on weekdays, probably early by your standards, but completely normal at that time. Since 2703, a law had been passed that all families, groups of people, bachelors, or anybody born in America under the age of 60 must go to bed as early as 6:30 pm[16]. Since Simon was 11, he would be going to bed at 7:15, and since his sister was 14, she would too. Their parents were in their late forties, so they went to bed 3 hours later. But since Simon and Crystal went to bed early, and they had homework to do (Crystal was in middle school, and Simon next year), dinner was early, and ended about thirty to forty five minutes later. Based on that, he figured he was about 20 minutes too late to get dinner. He was always promptly at the dinner table a good quarter of an hour before the meal was even put on the table. He did this partly to avoid homework, and partly to get the best seat. This highly annoyed his sister, since she was always listening to music, as you saw a page or so ago, and never knew what Simon was up to—her Mother had to always shake her when dinner was ready.

Let’s get back to Simon. He rushed out of his room, faced the stairs, and yelled, “I’m awake! Where are you guys?!” From his sisters room, to his right, there came muffled groans. From his parent’s room, down the hall, he heard the sleepy voice of his dad mumbling, “It’s six in the morning! Go back to bed!” Then he heard his dad say in a lower tone, more to himself, “Now he wakes up.” It was said in the kind of voice grownups use when they either roll their eyes or throw their hands in the air. Simon was confused. Now he wakes up? Then he began to realize. He ran back into his room, and looked closer at his clock.6:05 am, it now read. 6:05 am! He had slept through dinner, into the night, and he would be getting up for school in half an hour! That explained why he was so hungry! He rushed downstairs, ready to get a head start on breakfast (he was always one to think about the next meal). Simon had just started to pour Shredded-Os into a large bowl, when he heard the front door being thrown open, and there was a fast clatter of feet in the hall. Startled, Simon knocked the bowl and open milk carton onto the ground, nearly slipping when he whirled around. But what happened next completely drove this out of his mind, and everyone else’s too.

This is what happened. Edmund, covered in soot and ash, and streaked with blood from a long, deep gash on his right arm, came staggering into the kitchen, promptly collapsing into a chair. His hair was ruffled, and he was still wearing his green PJs. Cutting off Simons exclamations of surprise, Edmund gaspt “F-f-fire! The house is on fire! The Heater n' Hotter[17] exploded, I think, and dads badly hurt! He’s on the ground in our front yard, and he’s got a really bad burn on his side! I woke up when the Heater n' Hotter exploded, and dad was in the basement at the time. Come, quick!