The Strangest Time Machine

"That's it," Katie put down the virtual goggles and adjusted something on the $500,000 revolutionary quantum electron microscope the University had bought specifically for our research. "The graviton traces look stable. The field extrapolator can give us a visual dynamic snapshot within 300 meters of the target sample at Time 0 minus 200,000."

What she meant was that our computer could recreate a live video feed from something that happened to a tiny chunk of rock 200,000 years ago, extrapolated from the rock's gravitational interaction with surrounding objects, which was recorded for eternity in the quantum signature of the sample atoms. In other words, every grain of sand on Earth was now 200,000 years worth of high-definition TV to us and to our gigantic, liquid nitrogen-cooled super computer. From the look of it we had even got the color contrast right.

"Holy crap! Katie, do you see that?" I cried as the image on the screen dissolved into a wonderfully bright night sky. We could see stars and constellations scattered around that no person on Earth would ever lay eyes upon or dream about visiting. Our vantage point was well outside the solar system, mounted on a speeding meteor, which was about to crash into the earth, lie buried in a desert for many millennia and get unearthed by humans and sold on eBay before it was delivered to Katie who kept the charred rock in her dorm room. As Katie pressed the fast forward button the stars seemed to move and the constellations rearranged and fleeted faster and faster in front of our eyes. We gasped as the murky outline of Jupiter passed by on the left, and then the growing blue dot that was Earth suddenly exploded into a red firestorm, and then there was darkness.

"This must be when the meteorite was buried in the desert," Katie said impatiently and jammed her finger on the fast forward again, watching the time dial in the corner of the empty screen count out about thirty thousand years, the time it took the human civilization to invent packaging Styrofoam. Suddenly there was a blur of activity again, and flashes of light that looked like sunsets and sunrises but were actually the changing seasons as the meteorite lay exposed under the cloudless Arizona sky. We did not see clearly what happened next but when Katie pressed the pause button the meteorite was resting peacefully on the bookshelf in her room and I could see her on her bed reading our graduate level physics textbook in the dim light. The time was November 12, 2005 11:05 PM, about two months ago.

"You'll ruin your eyes if you read like that," I noted, though I was secretly mesmerized by the infraction on my lab partner's privacy that the space rock allowed.

"Oh, please. Get lost," Katie murmured distractedly as she bent down to adjust some gauges on the apparatus. The recording was still running a little bit fast, at about 4x speed, so I was watching Katie flip the pages feverishly and cross and uncross her legs as she wriggled about trying to get into a more comfortable reading position. There was no sound.

"The nitrogen seems to be running low," said Katie in this time and space, while her past self got up from the bed and walked out of the frame, obviously in order to open the door for somebody. I had an urge to push the toggle and switch the recording perspective so I could see what was going on by the door but I resisted. A vague apprehension was forming in my mind.

"Fuck," Katie swore, "I think one of the valves is busted. It's letting air in."

She crawled underneath the bulky cooling system and tried to get hold of the numerous plastic tubes that fed into the giant nitrogen tank. I turned my attention back to the now momentarily, wondering whether the processor was going to overheat, in which case we would have to discontinue our late night experiment. We had already stayed up for many weeks, trying to get the microscope to work but this was only the second attempt when we had succeeded to get a live picture onscreen. The first time we experimented with a paper clip, and that made us realize how boring life in a laboratory desk drawer could be. Tonight Katie had brought in the meteorite to spice things up, and we had set up our own Universe show, minus the narration by Carl Sagan.

"Can you hand me a flashlight?" she asked from the innards of the machine. As I looked about for the mentioned item and handed it to her, I couldn't help but notice how creamy and soft the skin on her lower back appeared in the stark neon lights where her lab coat had slid off and the fringe of her panties jutted out between her sweater and her jeans. We had been good friends and lab partners for some time now and I sometimes wondered if asking Katie out would be a good move, considering it had been almost two months since she broke up with her last boyfriend. He had been some tough guy on the football team, so I was afraid she was one of those girls who were always nice to dorks like me but their hearts secretly belonged to the jocks.

"There you go," I said and looked up because I had sensed that something was happening on the computer screen. In fact, there was only indistinct movement and shadows because something large was obscuring the bookshelf where the meteorite lay. The object shifted and I found to my surprise that it was the back of Katie's blue sweater. Someone was pressing her against the bookshelf. I could see arms moving up and down and fingers traversing the soft fabric. The interwoven limbs parted for a second and I caught a glimpse of the faces of Katie and her jock ex-boyfriend. They were French-kissing passionately in swift motion; so intently I could see saliva dripping down their chins. They moved farther away from the meteorite and I gasped softly. The guy had one hand down Katie's purple pajama pants.

"I think I found it," Katie said from the floor, absolutely unaware of what I was witnessing on the screen. In the not so distant past, she and her boyfriend had collapsed on the bed and continued their intense make out session, which would surely turn into sex any second now. I was watching transfixed with no control over my feelings, no power to turn my eyes away, and no sense to push the stop button. I was getting extremely turned on, but in the same time very angry with the guy who had fucked and left my lab partner, and with myself for never having asked her out. I watched his big hands lift the sweater over her shoulders, and I saw Katie's round breasts jiggle up and down as he cupped them in his hands and went down on her nipples.

"Katie..." I almost choked on the words, but something deep inside me was compelling me to confess what I was seeing. Her head rose among the gadgetry and her expression froze instantly when she saw the screen. I felt absolutely terrible.

But then something else happened, which made me feel much, much worse. I noticed that the Katie on the screen wasn't writhing in pleasure at all but in pain. She was struggling against the strong man who had pushed his boxers down and was forcing himself into her. I imagined I could hear her pleas turn into screams. He was raping her.

It went on forever and we watched, neither one of us being able to move or speak a word. In this time and space, dressed in our lab coats, we were cold spectators of the event, just like the alien meteorite, which had recorded it.

Jim, her ex-boyfriend and rapist thrust inhumanly fast and forcefully, restraining her arms by her sides and looking serenely at the wall without noticing that her face was screwed up in agony. It took him less than a minute at x4 speed to climax inside of her, at which point he wiped himself with one of her pillows, put on his clothes in a blink and sprinted out with a dumbfounded, angry and fearful expression. Katie's naked chest was heaving with in a rapid succession of mute sobs. She reached down to pull up her pajama pants just when the screen went dark. I had finally found the strength to shut off the blasted thing. We were silent.

"Katie..." I started, feeling tears of rage in my eyes and a foul taste in my mouth.

"He raped me," she answered hollowly, "We had argued about having sex and he just came to my room one night and fucking raped me. I guess his football buddies had been talking him into it. That's why we broke up. I didn't know... I didn't think the meteorite could have recorded this."

"Katie... I am so sorry!" I started again, and I knew I was, just like I new I would look for Jim in the morning and try to smash his face if I could. In that endeavor, the odds were absolutely stacked against me.

"Please, don't be," she said sternly. "You know you and I are going to get Nobel for our discovery while this schmuck struggles as an insurance broker with his C+ business degree."

She walked over, removed the meteorite from the microscope stand and looked at it meditatively before tossing it into the pocket of her lab coat.

"I was a virgin before that," she said, which simultaneously amazed me and intensified my anger still. "I was saving myself for the right person. Or for science," she smiled sadly.

"Katie, you are amazing. I would have died to stop something like this from ever happening to you, I swear. Would you please, please go out with me?" I babbled before I could realize what I was saying. I knew what would happen the moment I finished. I knew she was going to think I was taking pity on her.

Katie looked me up and down, and then said, "Isn't it so weird you should ask me now?"

"I have been meaning to. Oh Gosh, I have been meaning to so many times!"

"Then prove it. I like you very much, Michael, but I would rather not enter into a relationship with someone who has seen me being raped and suddenly feels entitled to somehow compensate me for it."

"No, I don't! I'm not that..." I started when suddenly a crazy idea hit me. "Wait! I'll prove it."

She looked startled. Her eyes followed my hands as I unbuttoned my lab coat and then unbuckled my belt.

"Oh God, please..."

"No! Just wait," I said and I flung my belt under the microscope, letting the syringe-like tip of the staggeringly expensive apparatus descend until it had grasped the miniscule bit of leather it needed to analyze and recover the past. I turned the computer on and started to calibrate it, watching the graviton field readings come online one by one until every past and present interaction between the molecules in my belt and the rest of the universe could be reliably extracted and rendered visually by our fabulously powerful quantum extrapolator.

"There!" I said when the image appeared, and a quick prod at the speed control recast the whole journey of my belt backward in time through the past day, mostly concealed by my outer garments, but sometimes emerging in daylight as I unbuttoned my pants to pee at home or in one of the school buildings.

"There!" I said again when the view stabilized at the foot of my own bed in my dorm room. The belt was slung from a chair and I was lying in bed covered in blankets even though it was already morning and the sun peaked through the blinds. Some time passed before the shape of my body started to move. My hand reached out and grabbed my eyeglasses and combed through some books and papers on my nightstand. It picked a small rectangular slip of paper and held it over the bed, as I studied it intently from below.

"It's a photo," Katie said.

"It's a photo of you - the one where we are installing the microscope stand in September. Remember? When you wore that hot red tank top of yours?"

"What are you talking about?" Katie asked uncertain, but the recognition was noticeable in her voice. She looked more intently at the computer screen and noticed that my lips were moving as if I was speaking to myself.

"I am practicing pickup lines, so I can ask you out," I said simply and truthfully. "I did that when I woke up this morning. Here! See? I am writing it down on a piece of paper and putting it in the pocket of my jeans. I was going to ask you out tonight, Katie."

"Jesus," Katie's face was a mixture of intrigue, shock and disbelief, "Were you really?"

"Yes."

I unfurled a crumpled piece of paper and handed it to her. She read it aloud:

"Um, Katie... I was thinking... what we've been working on during these past few months... it will change the world for sure, maybe totally obliterate it, you know. Nobody yet has any idea about what will happen or why. So do you... would you like to... um... perhaps enjoy the world we have a little longer... together? Maybe go for coffee or something?"

I looked up expectantly.

"Gosh, Michael, you are the biggest dork I've ever known!" she said after a meditative silence. "I had my life screwed up pretty badly last semester but I think that going out with you will be the sweetest thing ever, sort of like a kinky comic relief therapy."

On the screen I put her photograph carefully back on the desk. I unfurled the blankets and stretched my arms with my huge morning erection displayed prominently in my briefs to my total embarrassment. Katie, however, pointed it out and almost bent in two giggling.

"Jeez, Mike, you carry a cutlass in there? Or were you just happy to see me in my hot red tank top?"

I blushed a deep red tint but Katie's lips were on mine before I could say anything in self-defense.

"I still have it in a closet somewhere. Perhaps we should go find it and take our meteorite friend with us. I think it's time for its ancient gravitons to witness something much more enjoyable and far more impressive than Jim's puny little rapist dick."

"Wow, Katie, are you sure?"

"Mr. Einstein, when was the last time you got off a sexy, horny future Nobel-prize winner? And by that I mean someone other than yourself?"