Time Machine 3

'This can't be true, I must be dreaming. All I need to remember what I was doing before this man came. I was watching movie. Before that, I cooked my food, I talked with Mom. I went to play badminton.', Rohan was trying desperately to find the loop hole. 'I can actually remember everything for the last 12 hours. God please help me.' 'Just put your finger here', Prof Ford instructed him. He started the countdown. '1 2...' 'Wait, I need to call mom and tell her that I am going somewhere otherwise when Abhi will come, he will inform her and both of them will worry' '3' A strong current flew from his finger and he could sense some movement in his brains. It was more than just a pain. It was agony. There was no escape. He suddenly fell on the floor unconscious. When he woke up he saw Prof Ford sitting beside him. "Are you Ok?", he asked nervously. "I am fi.." and suddenly he vomited in front of him. "Its Ok, drink this water." 'Something must have happened wrong. This time machine does not work.', thought Rohan. Because they were sitting still in his house. Then he was about to ask Prof Ford but when he saw him nothing came out of his mouth. Prof Ford looked very much exhausted and much older. All the wrinkles on his face were prominent. Still in so much discomfort he managed to give a friendly and reassuring smile. "Why it didn't work professor?" "Why do you think it didn't work, Rohan?", Professor counter-questioned him. "What do you mean? We are still at my house" "Thats why I am asking why do you think it didn't work? I told you to get ready for the Time Travel not the space travel." Then it struck to Rohan. "We are at different time at my home, aren't we?", he asked. "Yes" "What time is it then? Is it past or future?" "No one can travel back to the past." "Why, all time machine movies show that?" "This is not movie my son." "How ridiculous is this? You want me to believe time travel is possible but not to the past." "Yeah. And I can't explain you why." "Why?" "Because there is no time for this." "Ok, so tell me why did you practically kidnapped me and forcefully made me to travel time?", temper was rising in Rohan's voice. "We must be on some kind of mission and I must save someone kind of.." "Yeah you can say so." "Now listen carefully, I will tell you from the start from where it all started.", Prof Ford started speaking. "It was the year of 2000 when I joined Virginia University as a post-doctoral fellow. I was the kind of geeky person in your words. I had done my PhD in Quantam physics and nanobiological applications. The only friend I had at the Virginia University was George Thompson. He was the professor at university and shared the same interest with me. Within my two years there, we were best friends. He was very loud mouthed person, so many people disliked him. But we always agreed on our technical or philosophical viewpoints. Five years ago, we were consulted by US military officials to talk about some new project. We were briefed by the lieutenant General Wattson. First they told us about their ambitious plan of building the time traveler. At first, we took them very lightly. But when they told us the details about the fundings they were providing to the project, it seemed the military was very serious about it. We started our work within two days after meeting. We worked day and night for the five years. During the mid time, we were constantly pressuralized by military officials to meet the deadlines. Their sudden and continuous visits to our homes and offices deeply disturbed our social lifes. I was not a family man but George was very much angry over this particular spying. Then one year ago his marriage broke down and he blamed the whole incident on military. He started drinking heavily and became paranoid. Once in a meeting he came drunk and blamed in front of all high ranked military officers that Wattson wanted to kill him. I somehow managed to calm him down. As we were getting closer and closer to the deadline, we started having disagreements. I still remember the day when we last talked as friends. It was a sunny morning. I was sitting in my lab when George came to me and asked, "What do you think, military will do with the time traveler?" "I don't know..why?" "Is it not possible that they will go into future and change the things" "I don't think so. General Wattson is a clever person. He will use this power cleverly and carefully than anybody." "Even more cleverly than us?" "May be." "Are you mad? We are the creators of this time machine and if anybody knows how to handle it then it is us." "What is your point?" "I want to travel through time first before Wattson knows that we had achieved the goal." "I won't allow you to do that. Lately you have been out of your mind. If you make any changes in the space time continuum, it will create butterfly effect." "No, it won't. Because I have the other idea.", he smiled. "Parallel Reality." "You are drunk. Go to home, we will talk later.", I tried to soothe him but instead he roared on me. "So now you are also on that Wattson's side. Don't you? I will never let him take my life even if I had to fight him." and he left the room." Suddenly blood started coming out of Prof Ford's mouth. Rohan got up quickly and brought the napkin. There were so many things his mind was occupied with that he forgot that prof Ford was injured. When he examined his injury, he was surprised. It had been more severe than when he saw him first, some 1 and half hour ago. "Prof are you ok? Who attacked you by the way? We must go to the hospital." "Stop. Listen to what I am telling you. We have less time." "Last night I completed the last module and I was sure that something terrible will happen. I told you that we can not go to the past, but it is not entirely true." "That means we can go and stop the attacker from stabbing you.", Rohan asked eagerly. "We can go back to the moment from when the time machine was build. I was very nervous, because once the machine is built, I was sure that someone from future will definately try to communicate with me." "Prof wait, we must go to hopsital, your bleeding has increased a lot.", Rohan stopped him but he continued. "I thought may be my future or George's future will come to talk to me. Then suddenly George came from outside the Lab. He had the knife in his hand." "What?", Rohan asked suprisingly. "Do you mean ..?" "Yeah, the person who tried to kill me was George Thompson." and Prof Ford fell on the floor.