"Jane," Max called to his assistant with the pride of a man who had just invented a time travel machine. "Today, we solve the problem of time travel"
His assistant stood there with him in his laboratory, grinning from ear to ear. Proud to be a protege of such an intelligent and revered man in New York.
She watched as Max set the time switch to 1920 before flipping the switch and then waited for the breakthrough they had worked day and night. But instead of time travelling that was the beginning of the timeline chaos.
They stood staring at the emergence of the 1920 pyramid of the ancient Egyptian empire, sitting next to the famous New York skyscrapers in the year 1920.
As if that was not enough, Max tried flipping the switch back to its normal state, but the Napoleon army from ancient times marched to battle against a group of ancient knights of Britain.
"Oh no! What have I done?" Max muttered In fear.
"What in the name of higgledy-piggledy is this?" Jane added, mouth wide agape.
Max was just an ambitious man who wanted to change the game of time travelling. But now, he had time colliding with itself.
"I have to fix this", he said, turning to face his assistant. "I just got the world in disorder"
"What do we do?" Jane asked, confused and with fear written all over her.
"I don't know because we're stuck in between the time of the Napoleon wars and ancient Britain and the British. The time is all mixed up" he fidgeted, pacing up and down his laboratory.
The time machine screen flickers and beeps loudly in the background, with dates jumping back and forth.
"Maybe we travel back to where it started" Jane suggested, looking up to Max.
"The present-day?" Max asked, he could use any opinion at that moment.
"Yes. Maybe there was a hitch with the machine. We can fix it and try it again?"
"But I made sure everything was in perfect condition. Did someone touch it afterwards? I .. I made sure nobody entered the laboratory afterwards. I locked it out from people so that we could test it today before displaying it to the world. I... made sure".
"Oh shit!" Jane exclaimed, tapping hard onto the computer she had been working on, seeking for solutions.
"What is it?"
"My data here shows there's a gap in the timeline, and it's from the present day" She looked up from her computer, breathing hard. The beeping gets louder
"So, you're right. We need to travel to the present?" Max said, almost yelling at the top of his voice because of the loud beeping from the machine.
"Yes," Jane replied.
Rubbing his hands together, he still paces up and down the room while his assistant watches in fear, waiting for his next command.
"Reset the time machine and send us back to the present. Exactly where the gap in time is. We need to seal it up" he commanded.
And just as she was asked, Jane flipped switches and punched in codes, and in no little time, they were back in the present. But it was a collision of the year 1903. Exactly the year The Wright Brothers invented aeroplanes colliding with the present.
"Oh no! This is wrong?" Max exclaimed, holding his head with both hands in shame.
"But the time machine says it's the right time, and my data is pointing me to the direction of the gap In time", Jane replied, eyes fixed on the data and scrolling through her computer. "It's just a few miles west from here"
"Fine, get the sealant device and let's find that gap", Max replied, feeling a bit motivated now.
With that, they raced west, seeking the gap in time. Max was so eager to fix his mistakes and save the world. A few miles from his laboratory, they found a glowing crack in the air.
"There, that's where my data tells of being the gap," Jane said.
"Okay, so now I seal the tear and restore sanity from this chaos I caused", Max said, raising the sealant device in his hands.
Then he walked closer to the gap. The energy from the gap kept pushing him away, but he kept his ground and pushed forward. Just a few steps to the gap, he threw the sealant into the hole and waited for the result.
But a few minutes later nothing happened.
The timeline was still messed up.
Max fell to the ground and cried like a baby.
"What have I done?"
"Look, sir. It's working!" Jane screamed joyously, pulling Max out of his misery.
Max quickly stood up and looked around as everything froze and the gap in time began to close. He turned and looked around, people from the mediaeval times disappeared one after the other. And only the present remained.
"We did it, Jane!" Max screamed in joy. "We did it".
The next day, Jane was back at the laboratory, trying to clean up the rest of their mess. When Max walked into the room
"Good morning, sir", she greeted, piles of paper in her hands.
Max nodded in reply.
"So, I was wondering, what do we do with the time machine?" Jane asked, looking from Max to the machine, which was in a bad state.
Max walked to the machine and rubbed his hands around it, he took a deep breath and replied
"We burn it. Although, the adventure felt nice. I don't think time is something to be messed with" he concluded.