Kim Smith had always been lucky. She had spent her life watching in surprise as opportunities opened up for her, previously shut doors swung aside at her approach and impassable obstacles immaterialised in her path. It was like a spell had been cast, like some genie stepped ahead, whispering and smoothing and organising so that things would go her way. When Kim Smith needed something, her mysterious guardian delivered.
So it was, that on a sunny day in June, Kim found herself in a bright, shiny lab with a brand new name badge hanging proudly from her neatly starched white coat. The name badge read: Kim Smith, Medical Technician.
Ever since she was a small child Kim had wanted to be a doctor. Her mother had died from something mysterious during the later hyperbolic years when everyone was dying from something mysterious and all the mysterious somethings were as sudden and inexplicable as each other. Green Pox, that was unpleasant; Pooping Cough, also nasty; Chollorrhoea, less said the better. Kim had grown up with a kind but mostly absent father in a world obsessed with infection control and sterilisation; her first kiss at age fourteen had been conducted through latex and at twenty-eight she had only ever had unprotected physical contact twice and once was by accident. It was therefore to be expected that she would be drawn to medicine but through a series of happy accidents she had been steered away from clinical work, which still had a gut-clenchingly high mortality rate, and into research
The question now, was what he was supposed to be researching.
Kim took a long, calming breath and licked her lips. Her computer sat in front of her, glowing expectantly, awaiting her instructions. The desk lamp shone over her, its keen gaze suggesting just a touch of impatience, and the whole of the bright, shiny lab radiated possibilities it was up to her to fulfil.
Dr. Heffleton Pfleeg had not been very specific. He had talked a lot, yes, but most of it had unwoven itself faster than Kim could knit it together and the remnants of the conversation/briefing/induction now lay in a confused tangle under her desk, giving the nervous new Assistant the unnerving sense that she was in a couple of thousand leagues over her head. Kim was no intellectual floozy; at sixteen she had graduated in the top of her class, at eighteen she had secured a much sought after scholarship to a highly acclaimed research institute, at twenty she had been taken under the wing of one of the country’s most renowned medical scientists and at twenty-one, two weeks before her graduation, she had been offered the job with Pfleeg at one of the best-funded research facilities in the western hemisphere. Pfleeg was seen as an unconventional but undisputed genius and there were many people that would have, and some that supposedly had, killed for such an opportunity. Kim had better not screw this up.
Pfleeg had since marched off exclaiming something about hydrogen and might not be back for hours. Kim therefore had time to acquaint herself with whatever it was Pfleeg, and now she, were working on.
It was a simple question of focus, Kim reminded himself sternly: Start at the bottom and work up. This proved to be no easy task. Pfleeg’s filling system seemed to be based on a complicated algorithm which may or may not have been linked to the gravitational pull of large planetary bodies and made safari-ing through the galaxies of incredibly dense data extremely complex. After three hours Kim had ascertained that the filing system was not in fact based on the gravitational pull of large planetary bodies, but may, in fact, be linked to the respiratory system of a large sea mammal, possible a walrus. It was at this troubling moment that Pfleeg charged back into the lab clutching a hydrogen tank and wearing what appeared to be a cat mask.
“Hold the phone, Tim!” He declared, brandishing the tank above him. “Sit down, strap in and sellofame up, this is gonna be big.”
“It’s actually K-…”
“They’ve been calling me a genius for years, Tom, years. Genius? Pah! I’ll show um genius…”
“My name’s actually K-…”
“But now I’ve done it, now I’ve really done it. I may have just discovered the secret to time travel.”
Kim wondered wearily if there was a number you were supposed to call if your genius scientist boss went suddenly mad.
Pfleeg glanced around surreptitiously and withdrew a key from his trouser pocket. He waggled it at Kim and then inserted the key into a small cupboard under the desk, throwing another furtive glance over his shoulder he waved impatiently for her to come and see.
Pfleeg claimed to have been working on the ‘time machine’ for years. It didn’t look much like a time machine. It looked like an over-wired blender with an old microwave timer and an excess of lightbulbs.
“Aren’t we supposed to be investigating the cure to something contagious and deadly?” Kim asked him nervously as they dragged it out of the cupboard and plugged it in. “This doesn’t seem very… medical.”
“That just shows your lack of vision young man.”
“I’m actually not a…”
“What’s the point of fussing about for a couple of lifetime’s curing illnesses when you can just go back and stop them from infecting people in the first place?”
“…”
“Exactly. Now, programme it to some date before the hyperbolic years and let’s fix this mess before it starts. Pass me that vial.”
“But… How? How does it work?”
“Simple, any moron could have done it had they had my explosive creativity and thirty years of expertise in biological sciences and quantum physics. I’ve basically just contabulated the wavomitry drive to light speed and set it in reverse. The triptometer will release the compound into hyperstitional relativity at about 8blillion megaclicks a millosplice and the resultant power surge will tip the relopathology into statial verbometry, causing a chain reaction which will fundamentally alter the elemental make up of our planet hundreds of years ago, wiping out the malignant bacteria before they have a chance to mutate and start infecting people.”
“But that’s…”
“Genius I know. Have you set the date?”
Kim looked at the flashing red numbers on the microwave timer and fidgeted uncertainly. Obviously it was nonsense, it would never work. But still, an idea tickled at her…
Flashback to when Kim was four.
Four year old Kim. A bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked, handsome child, blinking confusedly up at her usually cheerful father, whose hands are shaking as he bites back tears. Her mother was dead. A beautiful, laughing woman, her daughter would only vaguely member, had collapsed in the street and been rushed to hospital where she had been diagnosed with a new strain of something awful and promptly incinerated. You couldn’t be too careful.
The time machine sits in front of her, waiting expectantly, and Kim feels the full weight of this moment. Of course it won’t work… of course not… but… if it does?
If it does then they are about the change history.
Kim’s heart rate rises. To change the course of history is to be God, to grant life, to upset fate, to rewrite the future. What if things turn out worse? Or what if… What if her mother never has to die…?
A do over, a second chance, a miracle. Her mother picking her up from school, reading to her, helping her with her homework, attending her graduation. Her mother. Known.
Kim took a deep breath, and punched in the date, time and place she wished to reach. She stepped back and nodded to Pfleeg. This could change everything, she thought, reset my whole life. Or, as Pfleeg extended his finger, or it could change nothing at all...
Pfleeg’s finger hit the button, there was a click, a spark and then a heavy electrical whirring sound which grew steadily in intensity.
“Err…” Kim glanced at Pfleeg whose face was lit by the excess of lightbulbs and whose eyes were flashing dangerously. “Maybe we should move a little further back…?”
The blender was rocking from side to side and whirring alarmingly, the lights flashing on and off and sparks jetting from the contraption which seemed to be ready to explode.
“Err…” Kim said again.
And then the room was bathed in an intense white light which blinded them, before slowly receding into a pinhole dot and plunging everything into darkness.
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