Prologue
"Good morning, Bill," Claire greeted as she walked through the door of the lab, a little building nestled in a street of flats. Her face was lit with a smile, and she was especially eager for today's testing.
"Ah, yes," Bill mumbled, glancing up from the data he was studying. "Good morning, I suppose."
Claire hung her bag and jacket on the hooks near the entrance and went to join him, peeking over his shoulder to observe the numbers that held his attention. "What's that?" she asked, shattering Bill's concentration and making him jump.
His brows, which had been drawn together in confusion only a moment before, flew up, and he quickly threw a hand over the paper. "It's nothing," he insisted. "I'm sure it's nothing. I was just double-checking the numbers.
Claire tilted her head, suspicious. "Why, do you think something's wrong? We can always delay the test..." She said this, but in truth she had been very excited, and would be disappointed should the experiment truly be postponed.
"No, no," Bill assured her, "Dimitri thought our design was flawed, but looking at the numbers it doesn't appear to be. We'll test today, as planned."
Claire sighed and nodded her head. Although she usually would have trusted Dimitri, anticipation was getting the better of her.
She was, after all, about to be the world's first time traveller.
"Where is Dimitri?" Claire realized that, although he usually arrived earlier than her, his jacket had been absent from the rack and she had yet to see him at all that day, working or otherwise. Had Bill forgotten to tell him they were testing today? It was unlikely, given the importance of it, but what other reason did he have not to be here? Had something happened to him?
"Oh, um... Nerves must've gotten to him. He... wasn't feeling well." Bill faltered through the explanation, hoping it was enough to convince Claire. "He stayed home, and told me to carry out the experiment without him."
Claire looked away. He really said that? But she would feel absolutely terrible if they did the experiment without him... "I think we should wait, at least until he feels better. That way we can look over the data again and fix any problems."
Bill sighed. "Claire, I wish we could do that, but if we don't do the test today, the government is going to cut our funding." This wasn't precisely true, but if they didn't complete the experiment in a few weeks it may well happen, and then they would be unable to continue. He would never get the credit he had earned after working on this blasted machine for so long.
The experiment had to be done soon. It had to be done today.
Bill clapped his hands together. "Well, there's no point in putting it off any longer, then. Let's begin the test, shall we?"
"Oh... I suppose so..." Claire said, still unsure. She tried to get her spirits up, though, and be excited for their coming achievement, the profit of their sweat, tears, and years of hard work.
Bill adjusted the machine's setting and set the coordinates while Claire prepared herself. She would have felt a lot less anxious if Dimitri was there.
"It's ready. Go ahead and step inside."
Bill pressed a button that opened the side of the machine, and she stepped inside, her legs shaking slightly. She turned around to meet Bill's eyes. He and Dimitri, her colleagues, had been so good to her. They had treated her as an equal, although she was, in truth, only an assistant.
And now, they had given her the opportunity, the privilege, to make history.
The machine closed in around her and, upon activation, exploded.