MidReal Story
Temporal Paradox: A Time Traveler's Dilemma
Scenario: Ένας αστροφυσικός ανακαλύπτει πως να φτιάξει μια χρονομηχανή και αρχίζει να βασανίζεται απο τα ηθικα διλήμματα αλλά και απο τα χρονικά παράδοξα που μπορεί να συμβούν και δεν γνωρίζει αν θέλει να προχωρήσει στην υλοποίηση της χρονομηχανής. Και σαν να μην έφταναν αυτά κάποιος μαθαίνει για την ανακάλυψη του και περίεργοι τύποι αρχίζουν να το παρακολουθούν.
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Michael Carter
astrophysicist, friends with Sarah and mentored by Dr. Lee, tall with sharp features, analytical and morally conflicted.
Sarah Jennings
fellow scientist and confidante to Michael, colleagues with Michael, short with curly red hair, empathetic and curious.
Dr. Henry Lee
Michael's mentor and a renowned physicist, mentor to Michael and colleague to Sarah, elderly with a wise demeanor, cautious and secretive.
I was the first person to travel through time.
I was also the last.
The machine was destroyed, and I was stranded in the past.
It’s a paradox, I know.
But that’s what happened.
And I have to live with it.
I have to live with a lot of things, actually.
I have to live with the fact that I killed my best friend.
And that I killed my mentor, Dr.
Henry Lee, who was like a father to me.
And that I killed Sarah Jennings, who was…
Well, she was something else entirely.
But most of all, I have to live with the fact that I killed myself.
I have to live with all of these things because there’s no one else left to do it.
And if you’re reading this, then you’re probably dead too.
So let me tell you how it all began…
It began in a lab just like this one.
The lab had been my home for the past five years, a place where I spent more time than I did in my own apartment.
I didn’t mind, though.
I was young and ambitious, and I was determined to make my mark on the world.
But what I didn’t know was that my mark would be far greater than I ever could have imagined.
And it would be a mark that would haunt me for the rest of my days.
I had just completed the final tests on my time machine, and I have to admit, I was feeling pretty good about myself.
I mean, how many people can say they built a time machine?
Not many, that’s for sure.
I was about to turn off the machine when I heard the door to the lab open behind me.
I turned around and saw Sarah Jennings standing in the doorway, a big smile on her face.
Sarah was my colleague and confidante, and she was one of the most brilliant scientists I had ever met.
She was also one of the shortest, but she made up for it by being one of the loudest.
She had curly red hair that she always wore in a ponytail, and her eyes were a bright shade of blue that made you feel like she could see right through you.
“Are you going to turn it on?”
she asked, bouncing up and down on her toes.
Dr. Lee’s not here.” Dr.
Henry Lee was our mentor and colleague, and he was also one of the most renowned physicists in the world.
He had taken me under his wing when I was just a graduate student, and he had been like a father to me ever since.
He had also been like a father to Sarah, which is why we were so close.
“No, he’s not,” I said, turning back to the machine.
“You know what that means.”
“That means we can do whatever we want.”
I couldn’t help but smile at her enthusiasm.
I knew exactly what she meant.
It meant we could do whatever we wanted, without fear of getting caught by Dr.
It meant we could turn on the time machine and see what happened.
And that’s exactly what we did.
I flipped the switch and the machine came to life.
The lights flickered and the floor shook beneath our feet as the machine began to whir to life, faster and faster until…
I was standing in some kind of room, looking around in confusion as I tried to figure out where I was and how I got there.
It took me a moment to realize what had happened, and when I did, my heart began to race with excitement and fear.
I was standing in the past.
I had traveled through time!
I looked around the room in wonder as my eyes adjusted to the dim light.
It was small and sparsely furnished, with a few chairs scattered around and a table in the center of the room.
There was a fireplace on one wall, but it was unlit and the room felt cold and damp.
The air was thick with the scent of mildew and decay, and I could hear the faint sound of water dripping somewhere in the distance.
I had always heard that time travel could make you feel sick and disoriented, but I never really believed it until now.
My head was spinning and my stomach was churning, and I suddenly felt like I was going to pass out or throw up or do both at the same time.
I stumbled over to a chair and sat down heavily, closing my eyes and trying to catch my breath as I waited for the feeling to pass.
Eventually, it did, and when I opened my eyes again, I felt much better.
Much better than I had in a long time, actually.
I stood up slowly and looked around the room once more.
It was exactly the same as the one I had just left, a mirror image that was almost surreal in its perfection.
But then again, it shouldn’t have been surprising at all.
After all, I had designed the time machine myself, and I knew it worked perfectly…aside from that one little glitch that had caused it to explode in a shower of sparks and flames immediately after sending me here.
I took a deep breath and tried to calm my nerves as I walked over to the door and opened it slowly, peering outside to make sure the coast was clear before stepping out into the hallway.
The hallway was long and narrow, with stone walls and a low ceiling that made me feel like I was underground or in some kind of crypt.
There were several doors lining either side of the hallway, all of them closed, and I could hear muffled voices coming from somewhere in the distance.
I took a deep breath and began to walk down the hallway, my footsteps echoing loudly in the empty corridor as I followed the sound of the voices until I reached…
I’m not sure what I expected to find when I opened that door, but whatever it was, it wasn’t this.
I turned around and around in a slow circle, trying to take everything in as my mind raced with questions and possibilities.
I couldn’t believe I was actually here, in the past, in another time.
It was everything I had ever dreamed of and so much more, but at that moment, all I could think about was how much I wanted to go home.
I know what you’re thinking: How could anyone want to go home after traveling through time?
But the truth is, time travel is not all it’s cracked up to be.
It’s not some magical solution to all of life’s problems, and it’s certainly not something to be taken lightly.
Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of people who would give anything to be able to travel through time, and I can’t really blame them for that.
After all, who wouldn’t want to be able to go back and fix their mistakes?
Who wouldn’t want to be able to see how history really happened?
Who wouldn’t want to be able to change their fate?
But for me, time travel was something else entirely: It was a curse.
One that I was suddenly feeling more acutely than ever before.
I’ll admit, I’d always been a little bit of a skeptic when it came to time travel.
I mean, sure, I believed that it was theoretically possible, and I’d spent more than my fair share of nights debating the intricacies of paradoxes and ethical dilemmas with my fellow astrophysicists.
But there’s a big difference between believing in something and actually experiencing it firsthand.
And as I stood there in that dimly lit room, all alone, I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe I’d been wrong this whole time.
Maybe time travel really was impossible.
Or maybe I was the only person in the world who was truly capable of doing it.
I’d always considered myself to be something of a loner, someone who was perfectly content to spend hours on end poring over data and conducting experiments in the lab.
But as I stood there, grappling with the enormity of what I’d done, I realized that I’d never truly been alone until that moment.
Not like this.
Because no matter how many people I’d met or worked with over the years, no matter how many friends I’d made or colleagues I’d collaborated with, there was no one who could truly understand what I was feeling right then.
No one who could comprehend the weight of being the first person to travel through time.
The truest form of loneliness is not being by yourself, but rather, being unable to share your deepest fears and desires with anyone else.
And as I stood there, struggling to catch my breath, I realized that I was more alone than I’d ever thought possible.
Suddenly, the knot in my stomach was back, stronger than ever, and I felt like I might be sick.
I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself down, but it didn’t help.
So I walked over to the table where the glass of water was sitting, picked it up with a shaking hand, and took a long sip.
The water was warm and tasted faintly of metal, but it did little to settle my nerves.
I put the glass back down on the table and stared out into the darkness, my mind racing with thoughts and ideas that all seemed to be going nowhere.
It was strange, I thought, how time could suddenly seem so fluid and malleable when you were standing in the middle of it, rather than on the outside looking in.
How it could be both your greatest ally and your deadliest enemy at the same time.
How it could make you feel like you were standing still when everything else in the world was moving at breakneck speed.
I looked over at the clock on the wall and saw that only a few minutes had passed since I’d arrived.
But those few minutes felt like an eternity, and I knew that I couldn’t stay in that moment forever.
No matter how much I wanted to.
My mission was too important for that.
So I took a deep breath and tried to steel myself for whatever lay ahead as I pushed open the door and stepped back out into the hallway.
The ticking of the clock seemed to grow louder as I walked down the hallway, almost as if it were mocking me for thinking that I could change my fate.
