Journey into the Future.
Harry Plattner had only journeyed a few months into both the past and into the future, collecting information, but he decided the time had come in order to journey into the far future and explore time. First he started preparations. He bought comfortable and warm clothes, packing them inside a bag, a medical kit with bandages, drugs, etc, paracetamol and a torch with batteries. He packed a camera, a digital camera with several cards. If he was journeying into the future then he wanted to be prepared. What did bother him was that any money he took wouldn't work in the future, but he was assured that if he took his bank details, assuming of course the bank he used existed in the future; he had no way of knowing if the bank would become bankrupt, or if money would no longer be used. He knew that if the bank still existed, then his money would've doubled in interest many times over.
As he prepared to journey into the future, he also packed in a spare iPhone with platternite stored inside. He'd made over thirty cells for extra power if the platternite gave out. Harry had no intention of being stranded in the future because of an oversight. His earlier observations told him that even though platternite could last forever, there were occasions when the power would run down with continual use. Harry had once journeyed into the future, and he'd almost ended up being stranded before finding out that the platternite had the power to reproduce itself, like a nuclear fuel. But he still took no risks. With two iPhones, and an iPad he'd modified, Harry had not one, but three separate time machines, and the Pad would collect knowledge on the future Harry could use.
Before he left, he programmed the Pad to journey into the future over 200 years, and return. That way Harry could tell what he needed and what he didn't. When he was ready, he took out the iPhone, and set the time machine to take him into the future in the middle of London so then he could see the changing world. A kid with an iPhone was nothing new, and Harry wasn't bothered about being noticed.
Time travel was gradual, and in that time Harry felt a momentary dizziness as he was displaced in time. Harry had his own theories about why that was, George believed that the time machine took you ' a step outside time's river, and you got swept along the current, ' but Harry was not so sure about that. In his studies, Harry had learnt about M-theory, how the universe had 12 dimensions. Harry wondered from time to time if those same dimensions had a link to the platternite, but Harry had no way of knowing unless he found an era where the higher dimensions had been discovered and studied, when and if that happened would Harry know for sure. Deep down Harry had no intention of forever using an iPhone to time travel, he had bigger plans to build a more powerful machine. There were so many questions he wanted to ask and answer, like who he was, what these mysterious powers he had were, what he was, and where he was going. Those sort of questions, the questions everyone asked at some point in their lives. As he travelled and his mind and equilibrium stabilised, Harry saw the changing world. He saw the people milling around, actions that would take a couple of minutes happening in a matter of seconds. Day and night flashing around him, the sun coming up and shining down on the street at different times of the day, rainfalls occuring without Harry getting wet, snow not even touching him as the years rolled past. Harry checked the Phone, and saw he was now 7 years ahead. Harry accelerated the machine so then he would go the decades flashed around him, he saw the world change. Buildings were either knocked down, or were simply added on with new, more greener materials to make them more futuristic. Harry watched in amazement as cars changed shape, becoming more and more sleeker, and he almost laughed at the ironic sight of a car with DeLorean style doors. He looked up in the sky, and he gaped at the beautiful sight of the airships above him. Airships! Larger, sleeker, more art deco than the ones in the early 20th century, Harry imagined they were made of more durable materials than aluminium. BANG! A flash of light took Harry by surprise, and he saw with some shock on the date meter on the Phone that the year was 2063, the year of the Third World war. Harry didn't stop, he could tell the bombs dropping were in fact nuclear, though whether they were fusion or fission, he had no idea. Instead of stopping to investigate, Harry accelerated the time machine. Ten years after the war ended, Harry saw the changes all around him. The destroyed buildings were being repaired, and Harry saw that there were aliens helping the humans. Harry watched them in astonishment for a moment, then he remembered the iPad future report, that in 2083 Humans had cracked the issue of faster than light, and made contact with an alien race called the Kal. The Kal would help humans rebuild, but also wipe away the issues and prejudices and pettiness of humanity.
The Dawn of the Golden age, the report said.
Accelerating into the future, Harry moved further into time, and he was stunned when he saw another war, only this one was nothing to do with aliens. The fighters were wearing strange old clothes, that reminded Harry of bathrobes, or the wizarding clothes you saw in films. Harry decided to stop, and he saw he was in the year 2378.
Why would humans be fighting each other in the 24th century when war had been abolished? Who the hell were these people in weird costumes, and why were they fighting with sticks? Harry was pulled from his musings when he felt someone drag him out of sight. As the building above exploded, showering them with chunks of rubble, Harry saw the person who'd pulled him. It was a woman wearing a drab uniform and in her hands was a futuristic rifle.
" What the hell are you doing? The wizards are everywhere, and how did you escape the evacuation?" She yelled to him, but her attention was focused on the wizards. Wizards? Harry thought, bewildered. He decided to put on an act, the more dense and stupid he appeared, the more this woman should treat him like a loony.
" Sorry," he yelled over the din. " I've been hit over the head so many times I'm dazed and confused, but what's happening?"
The woman ducked out of sight and into the walkway they were in. She showed herself to Harry for the first time. She was quite attractive, in a stern, warrior kind of way. She didn't seem the least concerned by the fact she might be talking to a loony. " You know, the wizards? When they appeared by accident, every government declared war on them because of the hell they've put us through for the last few hundred years. And we're winning!" She grinned. Sickened by the fighting and the bloodthirsty attitude of the woman he was speaking to, Harry was desperate to leave, besides he knew that the time machine's data recorder would've recorded the whole of this conflict. When the woman turned back to ask him something else, the mysterious kid had vanished. Startled, she was shaken by an explosion and turned back to the battle, her mind on more important things than a mystery kid who disappeared.
As the time machine took him deeper into the future, Harry's mind was no longer on the future, and of seeing how things were changing. His mind was on what he'd just witnessed. Wizards? The woman had not been making up the name, nor had she exaggerated by the fact they were winning; in spite of their obvious abilities, the wizards were clearly outmatched by the soldiers, and they looked like they were stunned by the sheer brutality of the weapons used on them. He didn't notice the global war as the centuries passed, his mind was on other matters. As Harry's iPhone took him into the future, going millenia instead of decades, Harry didn't bother to notice the surroundings. When he arrived in the future, then he would study the iPad in detail.
The year was 809,901, 800,000 years into the future, and Harry decided it was time to stop. The strange thing was that thousands of centuries had passed, and yet Earth had remained green. There seemed to be no winter, no wars, just a perpetual summer. In the distance, Harry saw mountains rise, and in the valleys beneath them silvery cities were built, and as the centuries passed, the buildings fell into decay and vanished until they were silver spots on the landscape.
Harry stopped the iPhone and looked around him curiously. He was standing beside the remains of a building that looked like a futuristic sphinx, which looked like it had burnt to the ground. Harry pocketed the time machine, and straightened out his backpack and headed off to explore the building.
It looked like a colossal disaster had befallen the building, but Harry wondered why a futuristic building would be destroyed, or be vulnerable to such a simple means of destruction. Could it be that in the future there was more risk from other disasters that builders had decreed that fire was a lesser menace? No matter what in the past, and what people learnt, fire was still a hazard, and could reduce buildings to burnt out ruins with little left to show what had once been a three storey block of concrete, brick and glass.
Harry entered the sphinx, and saw the skeletal remains of a creature. It looked human, but it wasn't, the three fingered, clawed, hands and the ape like jaw was proof of that, but Harry could tell that the creature had been close to humans. His resolve settled, Harry reached into his pack, and brought out his torch, and walked off into the gloom of the tunnels he could see.