For this weeks Flash! Friday we had to incorporate a blunder into a story about the following prompt:
Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado, USA. GNU Free Documentation License photo by Daniel Schwen.
Time Travel
A single rounding error. That was all it took. Sometimes it’s the smallest mistakes that have the biggest impacts.
It was a simple experiment. The hourglass would teleport across the room and into my hand. The grains of sand would demonstrate my inventions molecular level accuracy. This was to be my finest hour.
My heart races as I push the button to initiate the transfer. There’s a flash, and then a feeling of nausea. Why is the room spinning? As my eyes adjust I focus on my palm, but the hourglass is nowhere to be seen. I look around and the enormity of the situation hits me. The hourglass didn’t teleport to me, I teleported to the hourglass. The safety protocol worked as expected, it detected the overlap in matter and compensated accordingly. Fantastic proof of my design, but now is not the time for celebrations.
I stare up at the impossible. The sand is a mountain, an insurmountable foe. I always wanted to have all the time in the world. Even if I can make it to the top, the chances of someone seeing me are as tiny as I am. Still, what else am I to do? I guess I will just have to take my time.
