The Time Traveller

Carl was over at Sam’s house. They were normal ordinary children going to a normal school and most importantly, leading a boring life. What they didn’t know was that something extraordinary was going to change their lives forever.

“Hey, Carl! I’m gonna find you!” screamed Sam. They were playing hide and seek. But in a modern way with modern technology and gadgets. Sam, with wide, blue eyes and blonde hair stepped onto a sheet of metal. Suddenly he was teleported to the attic, which was seven floors high. He found Carl crouching behind a box in front of a pile full of crates.

Carl had green eyes and black hair.

“Aha! So you’re here! See! I told you I’ll find you” exclaimed Sam.
“Cheater! Cheater! Cheater! You used The Teleporter to find me. No fair!” defended Carl.
“Everything’s fair in modern Hide-n-Seek ‘cause it’s 2055!” teased Sam.

In a flash, Sam started running towards Carl. But Carl was fast too. He sidestepped and Sam, unable to stop the inertia, went toppling into the pile of crates. The highest box wobbled and fell down, missing Sam by an inch.

“Hey! You dumbo! I could have died!” he shouted. But Carl was too busy in reading the label of the fallen box rather than listening to Sam. Sam walked over to Carl and saw what he was staring at.

“I guess we have to fill in the lines to complete the letters”, said Carl. He tried that and his hands and knees started trembling. His legs buckled and he fell.

“What happened? What is the message?” questioned Sam.

“O-oh M-My G-GG-G-God! I-It m-means t-t-t-the t-t-time m-machine!” stammered Carl.

“What!” exclaimed Carl.

“Y-yes Look for yourself,” said Carl and he wrote something on a paper nearby, taking the pen from his shirt pocket. This is what he wrote:

Sam was so excited that he started jumping around like a crazy monkey. “Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god!” he shouted. He jumped up and down and grabbed a crowbar. Then he calmed down. He carefully prised the box open.

There was a metal sheet. He pushed that away and carefully tilted the box. “Hey, Carl! Help me pull this out!” he told Carl. Carl and same ached grabbed a part and heaved. Slowly, it came out. It glistened in the bright lights and looked like two chairs, one behind the other, joined and covered in wires. There were two helmets. One in the front seat and one in the back. The front helmet had wires and the other one looked strong enough to bear the weight of ten elephants!

Sam quickly ran and sat in the front seat while poor Carl had no option but to follow behind. Sam was intelligent so he knew what most of the buttons did. He pressed a square, green and big button. The engine started humming up.

“What’s happening?” asked Carl, looking worried.

“You – are – so – brilliantly… ’’ Said Sam, stopping.

Carl smiled at that.

“Dumb!” finished Sam.

Carl got angry and sat back with a push.

“Okay, Okay, so tell me, where d’you wanna go?” asked Sam, shouting over the humming of the engine.

“Hmmm. How ‘bout the Cretaceous period? We’ll know how the dinosaurs went extinct!” he said matter-of-factly

Sam’s mother heard that and chuckled. “What imagination they have!” she thought and smiled.

“So the Cretaceous period it is! Let’s go!” Sam pictured the period of the Cretaceous period in his mind. Suddenly, he started getting a sensation of free-falling and then he blacked out.

When he gained consciousness, the first thing he realized was that Carl was behind him, he too was regaining consciousness. Then he felt the rumbling of the ground but he waved that thought away.

“W-W-W-Where are we?” stammered Carl.
“Where you wanted to go!” replied Sam
“Really?”
“Really!”

Then he observed his surroundings. There was lush green grass and greenery growing around him. And the floor was rumbling. “Too soft for an earthquake,” he thought. Then he tried to follow the source of rumbling. He looked up and saw a Brachiosaurus looming from behind a tree.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

“RUN! RUN! RUN!” screamed Sam, startled. He helped Carl up and they started running. After what seemed like miles of running, they found two caves. They went to the nearest one and hid.

When they peeped out, they saw a fully modern man holding a black ball - an atom bomb - emerging from the second cave. He put it on the ground and took a button from his pocket. He pressed it and a similar time machine appeared in front of him.

He activated the timer for the nuclear fusion and then immediately sat inside the machine and vanished.

That’s when Sam felt his own pocket and took out a similar button. He pressed it, and the air shimmered for a moment and then, the time machine came-outta-nowhere and appeared in front of them.

They had just got themselves comfortable and started running- or, escaping-away, when they heard BEEPS! And then, a BOOM!

Everything started getting engulfed in a red cloud of fire. All life forms started dying. As it reached them, Carl and Sam were curled up like babies in their wombs. But all that lasted a moment and the cloud passed away, shoving them a little.

As they opened their eyes, they found themselves suspended in mid-air, or actually, mid-space!

“The time machine protects us!” they both told each other.

“Woah,” said Carl

“Anyways,” said Sam waving that away. “We are living, right? That too on Earth? So, that means that Earth reformed because…”They looked to their side. Nothing was left except for piles of rubble and dust hanging around.

“Okay! So let’s go a few million years in the future!” said Carl.

They put their respective helmets on and then the sensation of free falling and unconsciousness again. After they reached, they were both excited and disappointed. Excited because they just realized that they could breathe in space, but disappointed because of nothing in front of them.

“I won’t give up so easily,” said Sam. Then they traveled a few more million years into the future. This time, there was only excitement, no disappointment. A ball of fire glowing red hot had formed- the Earth’s core.

“Time to go home!” shouted Carl, excited with so many discoveries.

And so they did. Sam took the button out and almost pressed it in order to hide the time machine. But he stopped in his tracks. A bulb – an idea – glowed.
“Why don’t I hide the button instead of the machine? It has a lower probability of being found and if it is, then nobody will understand.” He thought.

Carl saw Sam’s deep state of thinking and jumped over him, scaring him.

But meanwhile, Sam had already hidden the button – safely in his pocket like he was putting a car key and not a small, powerful button.

“Hey! Scaredy-Cat! I have plans!” shouted Carl, already running towards the house. Sam followed him quietly. Carl rung up the Science Laboratory and told them everything except their precious time machine. Why dinosaurs went extinct, how this earth is the second one and everything.

BUT, ANYWAYS, NOBODY BELIEVED THEM

But this is not the end of the story. Sam had one last troubling thought,

He told Carl, “Why did that man want to destroy our home, even though he failed. And most importantly, who was he…?”

By: Vivaan Parashar, grade 5C.