One summer, I was walking down the street when I saw a sign outside of a small building, nudged in between two other, larger buildings. It was an advert, offering cash in exchange for being part of a scientific experiment. The advertisement promised that there would be no risk involved, and that it would only take a single three-hour session once a week. It sounded too good to be true, but I figured that I could always ask what it was about and then leave if I didn't like the sound of it. The sign said to inquire inside, with an arrow pointing to the door of the small building. I shrugged and rang the doorbell. A few seconds passed with no response, but just as I turned around to walk away, I heard a voice from the speaker system.
"Uh, yes. Who is it? Hello?"
I introduced myself and explained that I was here because of the sign. The person on the other end sounded incredibly excited as he introduced herself as Dr. Jerrick and told me to come inside. The door unlocked and I walked in. The house looked even less impressive on the inside than it did on the outside, and just as mashed together. Almost a minute passed before the doctor appeared in the hallway. She was not wearing the white labcoat I was expecting, but she seemed like I'd imagine a mad doctor to otherwise – oversized glasses, untidy hair and a slightly deranged look in her eyes. She excitedly told me about her project – a sort of virtual reality machine, but not quite. Rather than showing you an entirely constructed reality, it would instead show you something that was real, but from sometime that had already passed.
"That's called a movie, ma'am."
"No, you don't get it. The things you will be able to view through this machine were not recorded beforehand. And it's capable of showing things far in the past, long before any sort of recording equipment would have been available."
"So… It's a time travel machine."
"Well, yes and no. More like a… A time travel cinema, if you prefer. It's hard to explain, really."
I followed her upstairs, where a room which seemed quite large when compared to the rest of the building was located. In the room was a person-sized pod of sorts, along with massive amounts of wires and equipment. She gestured towards the pod, as if expecting me to enter. I asked if I shouldn't be signing some sort of agreement or job contract or something first. She sighed loudly and pulled out some papers from a drawer. A pile of papers, all hand-written and copied. Non-disclosure agreement, a job contract and something about being reimbursed if the machine should hurt me. It seemed fairly normal, apart from the fact that they were hand-written. After reading them over, I signed all three and handed them back to Dr. Jerrick. Without even taking a second look, she quickly signed them and threw them back in the drawer.
"Well," she said. "Now that the boring stuff's over with, let me get to the nitty-gritty. So, as I already explained, this is a device that allows you to view events in the past."
She pointed at the pod.
"That is where you will be located. Do not worry, it is completely safe, but I will need you to make sure that you have thoroughly evacuated your bowels before going in. It's a safety measure. The toilet is downstairs."
I was about to question the last part of that as she walked over to a large console and gestured.
"Here's the controls for the machine. It can actually be operated by a single person, at least in theory. That's how I was able to test it. However, for this experiment, you will be traveling pretty far back in time, and I will need to ensure that nothing goes wrong while you do so. Nothing you see is real, but the input from the machine will make it look and feel as if it were. This is vital for my research – however, if you actually try to walk into anything solid while within the simulation, you will find yourself stepping right through it. Any questions? No, good. Go to the bathroom, make whatever preparations you need, yadda yadda."
I found myself in a desolate, ruined landscape. Buildings were scattered around, but it seemed as if they had been partially melted by whatever force destroyed them. Bodies were nowhere to be found. But weirder yet was what the buildings looked like – the remains of the architecture was like nothing that I had ever seen before. I tried to figure out what it meant, what I was supposed to learn here, as I made my way atop a hill. Something was happening in the valley below – gale-force winds hit me with immense force as I peered over the cliff, despite there being no wind on my side of it. Indeed, if anything, it was eerily quiet. I tried to make out what was going on, what I was seeing. The wind made it difficult, but the crater seemed almost like it had been blasted into the surface by some sort of impact. And then, I saw it. There, at the eye of the storm, writhing within the hurricane were all the things that I could never comprehend. A writhing mass of flesh stretched into the clouds and darkened the horizon. Or perhaps it wasn't flesh at all. As I watched, the surface pulsed and writhed in ways which defied any explanation. I watched a gigantic, horrible mouth form, a rasping bone-tongue covered in teeth rolling inside the middle of it, before it disappeared once more. Eyes would burst through the surface, blinking rapidly as if panicking until they were once again absorbed by the horrible mass. And I realised what he was seeing, what he was about to bear witness to. Here, in the eye of storm, was the end of all things. I felt a wave of horror wash over me, but it was not my own – it was the collective mental scream of an entire race being obliterated in the blink of an eye. And yet, I was still alive. I realised that I was not dead, that this thing was not from now. Instead, I was watching something that had long since passed, a tear in time that allowed me to witness something in the past.
"Why are you showing me this? Make it stop! I beg you, please, make it stop!"
And then, just as I said it, the vision disappeared. I was sitting inside the doctor's office once more. My face was streaked with tears, and my fists were clenched so tightly that small, bloody nail marks were visible at the bottom of my palms.
"What did you see?" the doctor asked.
I tried to say something, but was completely unable to. All I could think about was that thing, that monster, that… That. She poured me a glass of water and handed it to me along with a tissue. I gratefully accepted, wiping my face before taking a drink of water.
"I'm not sure, doc," I said, my voice croaking. "But I think… I think I saw some alien race getting killed by some giant monster."
"Not aliens. Not a monster." She took the tissue and threw it in a small paper bin. "I told you, this machine travels through time. Not space. What you saw happened here, millions of years in the past. The geology has changed, but it was here."
I blinked in disbelief. "Here? What were those weird bodies, then? What was that thing? Why haven't we seen any remnants of this?"
She gave out a short, harsh laugh that sounded more like a bark than amusement.
"I asked myself the same thing. I've been exploring this thing for much longer than you, you know. I've been exploring the past. I've been to many times. I found these "aliens", as you call them, when trying to see for myself what killed the dinosaurs, what caused the Cretaceous extinction event. I found dinosaurs, but I also found these creatures. Intelligent. Civilised. It didn't make sense. What were they, and why did no one in our time know that they had ever existed? What happened to them? Eventually, after browsing periods of time where they existed and periods where they did not, I found the exact moment where they, and by extension many other species, were wiped out. Suffice to say, it was no meteor."
"What the hell was it, then?!" I yelled.
The doctor adjusted her glasses.
"The massive being you saw, as you can probably guess, caused the extinction of these creatures, as well as many others, and wiped their civilisation from existence. How? I do not know. Where it came from, I cannot say either. My initial theory was that it somehow came from another dimension and somehow gets sent into ours at random intervals. But the intervals are not random."
She looked at the window. It was getting dark outside. I was surprised – it had been around noon when I walked in here.
"Every time a major extinction event has occurred in the planet's past, this thing has been part of it. Not all of them, mind you. Just the big five, as far as I can tell. Those creatures were not the first civilisation to be wiped out. And every time, all proof of their existence is completely removed from existence. Why is this?"
Several seconds passed as I tried to process the info I was given. I had sat down in a chair somehow, even though I didn't remember doing so. This is insane, I thought. It can't be true. I'm not proud to say that I left, then and there. I bid my farewells, gave my account number for payment, and left. I wanted no further part in this experiment. That was a year ago. Until now, I have been under a non-disclosure agreement, which lasted until the death of one or more of the parties involved. But that no longer applies. Yesterday, Professor Jerrick disappeared from her study, her instruments and machine utterly destroyed in a fire. They didn't find any body in the aftermath. I think I know why she worded the contract like she did. I think I understand now. Professor Jerrick was not crazy. I just didn't want to accept the truth. It's my hope that this account will serve as a reminder, and a warning. Someone is trying to remove those who know the truth. I'm sure they know about me. They are coming. Please, if you read this: I do not know when. But soon. Very soon.