The Loving Scientist
Jack was a brilliant scientist. He was always bitten by the science bug, and it was partly because of that passion that Helen fell in love with him.
They met when he was 19, got married on 24, had 2 kids by the time he was 29. They lived the love story you see in the movies. Sure they had their problems, but overall they had what you could consider the perfect marriage, based on an overdose of love and respect. They were a team that tackled all problems together.
His passion for science also helped him with his career and he worked for a firm doing some very advanced stuff. He was at the cutting edge of science. Of discoveries & inventions and he loved every moment of it.
Life. Was. Perfect.
The next part of the story is far from perfect, so I understand if you don't want to hear the rest…
Helen got cancer. Something that affects a lot of peoples lives, but you never think it will affect yours. As did Jack. His love. His life.
They went to the best doctors, the top specialists. Nothing could be done. They tried. It was to late. She had 4 months, they could stretch it to 6, but she would be in pain.
He cried, she cried. Their kids took a sabbath year from college to be with their mom & dad. They lived day by day. Tried to enjoy their time together. A month passed.
Jack got wind from a discovery a team at work made. It looked promising for time travel. He needed to be part of this. Asked to be transferred. If they could control this, he could go back. Back to when the cancer was still treatable. Warn himself, her.
He told his love, his kids. They understood that he needed to work day & night to get this to work. It killed their time together. He needed figure this out. It had to work. To save her.
Progress was slow. Sending things forward seemed ‘easy’, backwards not so much. They were going to concentrate on sending to the future first. So far the best they did was sending a mouse a couple of days forward. ‘Great progress!’ according to the higher-ups. Not good enough for him. Helen was running out of time.
There was no reason to think that further into the future would fail. Harder to test though, since you have to wait the amount of time you had set. He could not wait. He came up with a different plan: send himself far into the future, where a cure would be available for the stage her cancer was in, and where his team would have figured out the ‘send to the past’ part. Nobody would know he was gone, since he could return at the exact point he left. Sounds like a solid plan.
He didn’t tell his children, nor his Helen, they would consider it to dangerous, would not agree. But he knows it would work.
He snuck out at night, went to the company. How far did he needed to go? 10 years? 20? He can’t go to far, since he would need to find at least 1 team member that would still be working for the company, and that he could trust since he would need access to the time machine to go back. He has to go far enough so that a cure would be available for his wife. 30 years. Yes, 30 years into the future seems reasonable. A couple of the new members on the team should still be there, 30 years will be enough time for a cure.
Hope it doesn’t hurt… He set the machine and pushed. The. Button…
No pain. He wasn’t dead. A calendar, he needed to find a calendar.
It worked. 30 years forward. The plan, he needed to find someone from his team. First finding the company, should be easy. Hope it still exists.
It did. Jack waited at the company, looking at the people exiting the building. He couldn't recognize anyone. 30 years was a long time. He went in, asked the receptionist about one of the team members he thought would still work there. He did, but was not in the building right now. He might be at the pub further down the street. Got a description, seems he aged well.
Jack found him at the pub, told him who he was. The guy remembered him, had a lot of questions. Didn’t listen, he could only think about saving Helen, his family. Told him about the plan.
Jack was wrong, so very wrong. They never had a time machine. It brings the subject into a frozen state, out of sync with reality. That is why it seemed to ‘send’ things to the future, but it never did. He was frozen for 30 years, out of sync with reality, hidden from view.
He slept for 30 years and life went on. As. did. death.