I stare at the note in my hands. It's creased down the middle, and stained with water, maybe tears. I look up at my friends, Andrea and Jessie look as shocked as I probably do. Tess, who had already read the note, looks completely ecstatic. She jumps up and down, grinning.
"See! I told you there was a time machine!" she yells happily. Andrea puts her hand up to silence Tess.
"Okay, so maybe there is a time machine. But how would we even use it?" she says. I hold up the white, plastic bag.
"She said there were instructions in here." I say.
"She said she thought the instructions were in there." Andrea corrects.
"Well," Jessie says, taking the bag from my hands, "there's only one way to find out." She rips the bag open. Or, tries to rip the bag open. She sighs loudly.
"Anyone happen to have a pair of scissors on them?" she asks sarcastically. Obviously no one does.
"Well then, we'll look in the kitchen." she says, turning around and sprinting up the stairs. The rest of us follow. We emerge from the basement to find Jessie rummaging through the kitchen drawers. She turns around when she hears us approaching.
"I can't find scissors anywhere." she complains.
"Have you looked up?" I say. Jessie looked up, and finds a pair of scissors on a shelf above her head.
"Oh, at least they didn't fall on me." Jessie says. Tess bounds across the room and tries to grab the scissors. She misses by about three inches.
"I'm to short!" Tess says.
"No, really?" I say in mock surprise. I cross the room and easily grab the scissors.
"Okay, scissors achieved. Now, what next." I say, flipping the scissors in the air.
"Two things," Andrea says, "one, stop flipping the scissors, you're going to kill someone. Two, we try to cut the bag open."
"Duh." Tess adds. I pass the scissors to Tess, and pick up the bag from the kitchen table. I hold it out to Tess.
"You found it, you open it " I say. Tess grins, grabbing the bag excitedly and moving to the living room. She sits down in one of the sofas and proceeds to cut the top of the bag open. The scissors slice easily through the plastic, and the bag is soon open. Tess dumps the content of the bag out onto the table in front of her. The machine lying on the table is a cylinder, about a foot and maybe three inches long. And maybe five inches across. Wires and metal disks and tube things are visible. In between all of that, in the middle of the machine, one of those weird green chip things that's in all electronics is barely visible. On the top are two shiny, metal disks that completely cover the ends. I reach out to touch the wires, and my hands encounter a crystal clear glass wall. The glass encases the whole machine.
Tess picks up the machine to get a closer look. She starts turning it around in her hands, holding it two inches from her face.
"How do you turn it on?" she asks no one in particular. Just as she says this, a blue light shoots out from the machine. It moves up and down Tess's face a couple times before turning off. A cool female voice sounds from the machine.
"Tess Rachel Livingston. Access granted." the machine starts to glow.
YOU ARE READING
Missing in time // {UNDER EDITING BEFORE CONTINUATION}//
Science Fiction"We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us." Two years ago, Cassandra Low disappeared. Presumed dead, it's a shock to her friends to find her again, 30 years in the past. The old video camera in the attic of Cassie's lake house had...
