"I know how kids these days are, Vanna. You think that just because we don't have information streamed into our brains and completely sentient robots yet that technology isn't that great, but it is. If it weren't for technology, you wouldn't even be hearing what I'm saying right now!"

"I guess I'm not a kid from these days then, because I couldn't care less about if robots have real feelings or not, and I think the technology we have now is great. Don't act like hearing aids are anywhere near comparable to this. Even just the idea is outrageous."

"And hundreds of years ago, the idea of the deaf being able to hear using tiny devices in their ears was outrageous."

I let out a resigned sigh, and I continued to follow Mr. Rider down one of the pristine halls of Ridertech in silence. I loved Mr. Rider, and I thought he was an absolute genius. He was renowned around the world for his Synthumans and TPorts, the best robots and teleportation devices on the market, but too often he let that get to his head. It made him think he was capable of making anything. That 'anything' included NEVA, a TPort with the added ability to travel through time. Today, my job was to test it, and I was not exactly pleased.

Mr. Rider came to a stop in front of a metal door with 'TESTING – 47' engraved on a plaque above it, several seconds before my much shorter legs were able to catch up. He pressed his finger on the scanner next to the door, and the scanner flashed green before the door zipped up into the wall. Mr. Rider strode into the room ahead of me, going straight to a desk with a black device on it. I took one step inside. The door closed so fast behind me that red strands of my long hair blew forward. Everything suddenly felt all too real—I was in the testing room, NEVA was in Mr. Rider's hand, and the moment I had been dreading was staring me right in the face.

I slowly walked to Mr. Rider. He turned toward me, proudly displaying NEVA. "Here it is!" he said, in the cheery voice he had reserved for when he would show off his new gadgets and creations.

I grimaced as I stared at NEVA where it sat on Mr. Rider's hand. The black armband had a green backlit screen over the wrist and a virtual keyboard across the midsection. It didn't look too different from my own TPort, which was one of the older models.

"...I was expecting something a bit more complex-looking," I said after a few moments. "It looks so simplistic."

"It's a feature," he said, making me roll my eyes. "Besides, you know the complex stuff is what's inside of them, not outside. All teleporters look simplistic now."

"The first commercial teleporter came out, what, in the eighties? It's 2119, of course they'd be simplistic by now. NEVA should look at least a little more clunky and awkward like the first makes of teleporters were."

"NEVA is a teleporter," Mr. Rider said. I opened my mouth, but before I could get anything out, he went on speaking. "It's a heavily upgraded one, but one nonetheless, and I've been working on it since before you were created!" My nose scrunched up at the way he decided to word that. "Er, born. Sorry. So, I always tried to keep NEVA looking just as sleek as any other TPort while making it. Zi actually helped me with that. I thought it'd be best to have a young person help, since they know all about what people think looks good. And speaking of Zi, I turned down his request to be the first person to try NEVA. I didn't even ask your mother if she wanted to try it yet. You should feel honored that I'm giving you the chance to be the first person who ever time travels."

I narrowed my eyes at him. Zi was his son and protégé, and my mother had been working as a beta tester for Mr. Rider for over twenty years. If I were him, those were the two that I would have trusted the most to be testing out NEVA. I knew very well that Mr. Rider loved me like I was the daughter he never had—if only because my late father had been his closest friend since they were kids—but there was a part of me that felt like he wanted me to be the one to test out NEVA because I was more replaceable than Zi or my mom.

"You know there's a chance that thing could be deadly," I said in a flat tone.

"If I thought there was a chance that NEVA could kill, I wouldn't be letting anybody try it out, especially not a child—"

"I'm seventeen."

"—and especially not you," he said, ignoring my interruption. "You're my son's best friend—and to be honest with you, a lot of the time, I like you more than him."

Mr. Rider laughed briefly at himself, and I couldn't help but crack the tiniest grin. I always enjoyed making jokes with him at the expense of his lovable but mischievous son, and the flattery did admittedly help calm my fear that he saw me as replaceable. Still, my fear of using NEVA lingered.

"Listen, Vanna, if you don't want to try it out, that's fine. It was just an offer. There are a lot of other up-and-coming projects you can beta test for me. I just thought you'd be interested in getting to test out something where you can finally have the freedom your mom doesn't let you have."

Out of all of the things he had said to try to convince me that trying out NEVA was an incredible opportunity, that was by far the one that resonated with me the most. My mom had always been extremely overprotective, especially so after my dad died unexpectedly in a spacebus crash while on a business trip to Mars three years back. The only time I was allowed out of her sight was when I was at school, with one of the Rider's, or with my two older half-sisters, Kalina and Jaylene.

This was my chance to get away. And if I came back unscathed, then I would have all the proof I needed to show her that I was capable of surviving without supervision.

"I can see that made you rethink this, huh?" Mr. Rider said with a smile.

I smiled back. "That sounds nice. But..."

"But you're still scared," he finished for me. I nodded. "Well, I don't think you've got any reason to be. You've got your own gun for this, and you've learned how to use it, but you know that if anything happens to you while you're gone, we'll fix you right up when you get back."

'We,' of course, meant his wife, Mrs. Rider, or as she modestly refused to be called, Dr. Rider. Mr. Rider was technically a doctor as well, in that he had received a doctorate in engineering, but his wife was a pediatrician. I agreed with Mr. Rider that she could help me no matter what, but what he said only proved to worry me further. I was so worried that my time traveling would potentially affect the entire universe that I hadn't even thought about what physical damage could be done to me if I didn't rip the universe to shreds.

Mr. Rider sat NEVA back down on the desk next to its instruction manual. "Like I said: if you don't want to try it out, that's fine. It's all up to you."

I pursed my lips as I looked down at it. Mr. Rider said he didn't believe it could kill me, and I trusted him, so that wasn't an issue to me any longer, but there were so many other things I knew could go wrong with it. What if I got stuck in the future and couldn't come back? What if I got stuck in the past, or did something there that completely changed the course of history? What if I messed something up so majorly that I created a paradox and made the universe cease to exist?

But what if it did work? What if I was the first person to ever time travel? What if I could finally, finally have the freedom I'd been yearning for?

I was drawn out of my thoughts by the view of Mr. Rider looking down at the screen on his TPort from my peripheral. He typed in something, then dropped his arm and looked back to me.

"I'm needed in another part of the factory," he said. "You can have some alone time to try to make up your mind. If you do decide to try out NEVA, read the instructions I left on the desk first, all right? If you decide not to try it, then feel free to leave. Zi said he wanted to see you today, so you can teleport to our house if you want to. I'll be back in a few minutes."

I barely got the chance to say "Okay" before he was out of the room. As the door shut behind him, I looked at the desk. My eyes scanned the piece of paper with NEVA's instructions on it. It didn't seem too complicated to use; the only way it differed from other TPorts was the time travel command. Written below the instructions was a warning, urging the user to avoid messing with events in the past for fear of paradoxes. That had been obvious to me, but seeing it written on paper made me even more scared of the possibility of it happening.

I decided to just go to the future instead. Though I told myself there couldn't be any paradoxes then because of the future not even happening yet, my hand was still shaking as I picked up NEVA and put it on my right arm. I toyed around with the idea of taking off the TPort on my left arm, admittedly just to procrastinate using NEVA, and I ultimately decided to take it off in case NEVA would mess with it in some way. I closed my eyes—like you were supposed to before teleporting, as the sudden change in scenery was known to be migraine-inducing—and tried to mentally prepare myself for what I was about to say.

"NEVA, activate," I said. "Time travel: September 1st, 2319."

I heard crackling noises coming from NEVA, prompting me to open my eyes and look down. I was still in the same room, and NEVA was starting to spark. I hurried to take it off, but before I could, the sparks started to fly wildly and a shock coursed through my body, rendering me unable to move. I couldn't even yell for help or open my eyes that had squeezed shut from the pain.

I was going to kill Mr. Rider if NEVA didn't kill me first.

Hope you enjoyed the first chapter! You can head over to deviantart,com/miserymire (with a period instead of a comma :p) if you want to see what the characters look like. Vanna, Mr. Rider, and Zi are the main OCs in this, but I always like to have visual references of characters no matter how small their roles are. I'll be adding more drawings there whenever new OCs are introduced.

Also, if you prefer stories in third person or you just prefer archiveofourown, this story is now on archiveofourown in third person! It's the same title and I have the same username there so it should be pretty easy to find if you wanna.