Voyager Of Ages

Ethan Temporal's apartment was a quiet symphony of gears, wires, and digital silence. It smelled of soldered circuits and black coffee gone cold. The only sound, aside from the occasional hum of his custom-built temporal processor, was the rhythmic tapping of keys beneath his fingers. Lines of code streamed across his multi-screen setup, glowing green like the breath of something ancient waking.

He hadn't slept in two days.

For years, Ethan had chased what others dared not dream: the precise manipulation of time. But unlike the overhyped theories and sci-fi fantasies the world dismissed as impractical, Ethan had math. Real, replicable, frightening math. The Temporal Displacement Equation—his life's work—was almost perfect.

And tonight, for the first time, it blinked.

"0.00001%," he whispered, staring at the simulated output. The margin of error had dropped below threshold.

He sat back in his chair, heart hammering against his ribs. Could it be real?

He rose from the chair like a ghost and walked to the machine. Tall, obelisk-like, encased in brushed titanium and laced with violet energy conduits, it stood in the corner like a dormant god. He had built it alone, piece by obsessive piece, in this very apartment. No one—not even Lily—knew it was finished.

Ethan opened the access panel and inserted the program drive. The lights flickered, and for a heartbeat, the apartment went silent—too silent.

He stepped back. Something inside the spiral core began to rotate, slowly at first, then faster, forming a vortex of electric light. The hum rose, filling the room with a low-frequency tremor that rattled his bones.

And then—

A flash.

Not of light, but of memory. A face. A garden. A whisper.

"Time is not a line, Ethan," said a voice, but it came from nowhere. From inside him.

He staggered, blinking. The machine had powered down. No alarms. No meltdown.

Only a date and time stamped on the screen. His throat went dry. The machine hadn't just processed the theoretical jump. It had chosen a destination.

He stared at the screen, then at the spiral core, now glowing faintly as if it remembered what had just occurred.

Ethan's breath shook. This was it. Not a dream. Not a test.

This was the spark that would not die.

He turned and paced, trying to settle the tremor in his chest. He knew he couldn't rush this. A misstep would mean disaster—worse than disaster. Time didn't forgive errors. It echoed them.

Opening his notebook, he scribbled down everything—the coordinates, the power draw, the temperature fluctuations, the core's pulse frequency. The numbers were surreal. It was as if the machine had taken on a will of its own.

He thought of Lily. She would insist on testing, on verification, on safety. Ethan didn't have that luxury anymore. The time spiral had responded. And somewhere deep down, he knew it wouldn't do so again until it was ready.

He sat in silence, fingers resting on the keyboard, eyes locked on the slowly dimming core.

Tomorrow, he would begin phase two. Tonight, he watched.

Watched as the future quietly unfurled in the humming glow of his life's obsession.