The Point of No Return
It was silent in the underground science lab save for the ticking of the clock on the sterile white wall opposite us, though neither Clare nor I paid it any notice. All our attention was focused on the middle-aged man kneeling in front of us, or more specifically, the metal elevator-like contraption that he was experimenting with.
"Well?" I demanded, shattering the silence.
Nathaniel looked up with that infuriatingly smug smirk of his. "Well what?"
As I made an impatient noise in my throat, Clare, ever the peacemaker, spoke up.
"Is it…"she trailed off, clearly as afraid of jinxing it as I was.
I held my breath as I watched the smirk on Nathaniel's face transform slowly into a triumphant grin. I refused to give in to the kindle of hope in the back of my mind, however, until he stood up with a flourish and announced what had to be the best piece of news any of us had heard in a long time.
"My dear ladies, allow me to present to you the world's first and only time travelling machine!"
The way he was standing there, bursting with pride, put into my mind the image of an expectant father, and at that thought I could not help but burst out laughing while Clare let loose a whoop of joy. For what seemed like an eternity, we just stood there, silly grins on our faces, three scientists admiring their newest invention.
"It really works then," Clare finally muttered wonderingly as she ran her hands reverently over the machine. "We're going to be the first people with the ability to travel back in time."
Nathaniel snorted. "You mean we're the first people with the necessity to actually travel back in time."
At that reminder, the bubble surrounding us at a successful experiment burst, and we once again remembered with sobering clarity the reason for our invention in the first place.
"Actually, I-" I began, hesitant. "We don't have to, you know. It's not too late to back out now."
"No," Nathaniel disagreed calmly. "It is too late. We don't have a choice. You know as well as I do that our fates have long been decided by our ancestors. Four hundred and twenty seven years ago, to be exact."
I started. Four hundred and twenty seven years? Had it really been that long ago? It seemed like such a short time, something that had happened in another world, another lifetime, and yet at the same time it seemed like just yesterday. Four hundred and twenty seven years since that breakthrough in cloning technology. Four hundred and twenty seven years since mankind unwittingly signed the warrant for our own destruction.
Rome was not built in a day. Likewise, it was not destroyed in a day either. The human civilization had been heading down the path of its own destruction decades, even centuries, before anyone realized it. Like all things, it had started out innocently enough. Indeed, there had been much rejoicing when Hermione Granger-Weasley, brilliant witch and scientist, found a way to combine science and magic in a way that would allow human beings to clone virtually everything under the sun, ranging from organs for transplant to endangered species, as long as a DNA sample was available. It really wasn't that difficult, to be honest. It was just that no one before her had the chance to try something like that. The war with Voldemort had exposed the Wizarding World to the non-Magical one, and Wizards and Muggles alike had worked together to defeat him and his army. After the war ended, witches and wizards who were interested were given the chance to study science, which had eventually led to Granger-Weasley's discovery.
It was ten years later when Harry Potter, mad with grief from the loss of his young son, created the first fully sentient human clone. Perhaps people should have realized that something was wrong by then, but they didn't. After all, he was Harry Potter, The-Boy-Who-Lived, Defeater of Voldemort, Hero and Savior of the Light. To the eyes of others, he could do no wrong. Furthermore, advancements in Science had made them complacent. Instead arguing over the ethics of selfishly creating a human life as a replacement, the people thought it unfair to replace the son with a clone. It was thought to be a personal preference, however, and once a precedent was set without serious repercussions people soon began to follow suit. Originally it was only couples who wanted to create clones to take the place of their children who had died tragically young. Then, someone came up with the idea of genetically modified human clones, clones similar to human beings in every aspect aside from their eye and hair color, both of which a bright pink that does not occur anywhere in nature. Clone created solely for the purpose of performing the tasks too complicated to be performed by machineries and too tedious to be performed by normal, so-called superior humans. Clones created such that their offspring, too, would have pink hair and eyes, and any offspring they have were also expected to work for humans without pay like their parents. Mankind had essentially enslaved another race.
As technology advanced by leaps and bounds, human beings grew more reliant on it. We could do almost everything- or so we thought- and so naturally we refused to do anything. We created more and more clones to carry out menial tasks, to cook, to clean, and to do all the things that we deemed beneath us. We believed ourselves to be invincible. We grew complacent to the point of arrogance. Science and technology was everything then, and so much time was spent with them we forgot how to deal with breathing, living beings. We forgot respect; we forgot fear. Everything was taken for granted, so much that we began to treat every living creature on earth as though their sole purpose for existence was to serve us. To us, they were nothing more than slaves and possessions, even the clones that were almost exactly the same as us. It was much like the mistakes many purebloods had made with Muggles and Muggle-borns, and while we derided the Wizarding world for their mistakes, we forgot to learn from them.
Looking back on our ancestors' actions, I could see that a line was crossed when human beings tried to play God and create life. However blurred and intangible, the line was still there. And that line, once crossed, had only led us down to the point of no return. For human beings tend to take for granted what we have. With the advancement of medicine, we took health for granted; with the advancement of communication, we took our loved ones for granted; and with the advancement of cloning technology, we took life for granted. We mercilessly hunted down animals and cut down trees, safe in the knowledge that they would never be extinct. We treated the life that we created as inferior, forgetting that the clones, too, were human. We used to laugh at the wizards for being narrow minded, barbaric, and backwards. We thought them fools for underestimating us. We were angry with them for believing us to be inferior to them. But in the end, we were not that much better, were we? Science taught us to prolong and create life, but in the process, we forgot to respect life. It was a mistake that our ancestors made. And it was a mistake that we had to pay for, four hundred and twenty seven years into the future. For human beings cannot enslave another group of sentient beings, of people, without consequences.
And what dire consequences it had indeed. We forgot that the clones were also human, but they did not. As with all humans before them, the clones refused to stay enslaved for long. Instead, clones worldwide started a revolution to chase normal humans out of their countries and regain what they viewed as their rightful place in society. By then, there were nearly as many clones as there were humans. In some countries, they succeeded, while in others they failed. The Wizarding world was among the first to go down. Magic, for all its might, is nothing next to the potential for mass destruction that technology has. After that, countries belonging to the clones banded together, while the humans did likewise. And so began World War III.
Albert Einstein once said, "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." He was certainly a wise man, and not just for the theory that would become the basis of our newest invention. For in the heat of the battle, out of a desire to win and defeat the 'inferior' clones at all costs, humans resorted to the one thing they had once sworn never to use- nuclear weapons; weapons so powerful that with a push of the button, cities were leveled and left barren for centuries to come. As expected, the clones retaliated, for they too were familiar with the science that we used, having helped us so often in the past. Heavy casualties built up all over the globe, but neither side wanted to be the first to concede.
By the time both sides finally realized their mistake, it was far too late. Most of the land on earth had been affected, devoid of even the hardiest life forms. It is ironic; for all the advancements in Science over the centuries, we had yet to find a way to counteract the effects of radiation. The Science that we had for so long worshipped cannot solve the problems that it itself had created. Only a few places were still habitable, and the remaining clones and humans dwelled in them. But while both sides unanimously agreed to stop the use of nuclear weapons, the battle between them waged on, this time for the only resource that science had not yet been able to create - water. A few thousand people from each side, fighting guerilla warfare, a mockery of what had used to be a race that had rule the world.
The whole situation would have been amusing if it weren't so tragic, really. Human beings never learn, do they? Wizards, witches, men, women, clones – we are all humans, nothing more, nothing less. We share the same passions, and we feel the same fears.
The same kind of blood flows in all our veins, no matter what we might have believed. Thinking ourselves to be superior is nothing but pure ignorance, and would only lead to bloodshed. All the wars and battles over the course of mankind's bloody history should have taught us that. History is an excellent teacher. And yet, not even the best teachers can teach students who refuse to learn. To err is human. To err over and over again, more so. And in the end, we are all only human.
In any case, by now it was no longer a fight for freedom or superiority; lofty ideals were no longer why our generation, human or clone, continued to fight. Ideals were long lost in the blood, in the tears, in the meaningless and senseless slaughter of one's own kind, and in the destruction of everything we once held dear. Now, it was a fight for our survival. There were times, though, when I cannot help but wonder if we had not been fighting for so long that we simply did not know how to stop. In a world where everything was uprooted and the human race cast adrift, this war was the only constant left to hold on to.
However, judging from the way the population- both clones and humans alike- was dwindling, the war would not be able to continue for long either, I reminded myself, and pulled my thoughts back to the present. After all, tonight, Nathaniel, Clare and I were going to travel back in time to stop Hermione Granger-Weasley from ever discovering her breakthrough, and this would most likely be the last night of our existence, given that all three pairs of our parents only met due to the war. It was a good thing that time is not linear, or we could very well create a paradox that would overturn the whole universe. Still, there was no need to spend the last moments of my life thinking such morbid thoughts.
At that, I cleared my throat. "Well, are we all ready then?"
"As ready as can be," said Nathaniel with a quirk of his lips. Suddenly, though, his smile faded, and I could see the insecurity and doubt lurking behind his eyes for the first time tonight. "You don't think that this would make things worse, do you? I mean, we only have the best of intentions, but-"
"But the road to hell has always been paved with good intentions," I finished softly, saying out loud what I knew all three of us had been thinking.
Nathaniel nodded. "Exactly. And if there's a lesson to be learnt from history, it's that Science creates more problems than it solves. And what's to say that human beings won't find some way to destroy themselves again. They did it once, after all, and that's something I cannot forgive them for."
"'They held in their hands a slice of heaven, and they threw it away,'" Clare quoted with a distant look in her eyes.
I sighed. That was a question that had been haunting me the past few weeks, and I can no more give them an answer than I can myself. "We can only hope, Nathan. It's all we have left. Besides," my tone turned wry, "What have we got to lose?"
For a moment, neither of them said anything. We simply stood there, contemplating for the last time if it would be worth it, if we could really find in ourselves the strength of character to forgive all that our ancestors did and to abandon all that was dear to us in this last ditch, desperate attempt to save humanity. Despite what Nathaniel said about it being too late, we all knew that this was the last chance to back out. The silence seemed to stretch into infinity.
"Touché," Nathaniel finally acknowledged, and I knew a silent agreement had been reached. Come what may, we would go back in time tonight, to change the past and rewrite the future.
As for whether it would be for the better or the worse, only time would tell.