With every step I took down the pristine halls of Ridertech, my sense of self-preservation screamed at me to turn around.
It was stupid. I was going to get caught, and everything would be ruined. Mr. Rider would be furious with me. I would be fired on the spot. My reputation would be so stained that I would never be able to get another job ever again. My whole future was on the line.
But for this once, I wasn't going to listen to the side of myself that imagined the worst.
I couldn't just let my mom keep suffering when the answer was right there.
As I made my way down the testing floor, I feigned confidence so I wouldn't arouse any suspicions. What was arguably the hardest parts were already done; I'd nabbed one of Mr. Rider's spare keycards without getting caught the last time I was at his house hanging out with Zi—his son and protégé, my best friend—and I'd snuck my way here without my mom catching me. Now, it was the same as every day I came to work. Besides the fact that I wasn't supposed to be working today, and besides the fact that I had no business going to Testing Room 47.
Finally, I made it to the hallway that the door to room 47 was situated at the very end of. Fear struck me as I noticed someone in the hall, but that quickly subsided when I realized who—or rather, what—it was. Synthia, Mr. Rider's secretary.
Someone who didn't know any better would have mistaken Synthia for a human. That was what Mr. Rider had spent the majority of his career trying to achieve, and he certainly had succeeded as far as appearances went. It was only when you took the time to pay attention to the behavior of Synthumans that it would become clear that the inside didn't match the outside. They were extremely meticulous with their work, focused on fulfilling whatever it was they were programmed to do, in a way that even the most hard-working humans could never live up to. You would never see a Synthuman get distracted and slack off. As Synthia passed me by without even sparing me a glance, I felt extremely thankful that Mr. Rider had yet to create a sentient Synthuman.
Though I knew that Synthia would not look back at me, I still double-checked to make sure she wasn't doing so as I came to a stop in front of the metal door with 47 engraved on a plaque above it. If everything I'd heard was right, then this was the room where it was.
I raised Mr. Rider's keycard to the scanner, and it flashed green as the metal door zipped up into the wall. Through the open doorway, I could see it on a desk right smack in the middle of the room—a device in a glass encasement. I took a slow step inside, in awe that it was real. The door then closed so fast behind me that strands of my long hair blew forward, and that gust kicked me out of my admiration, reminding me that I had to hurry.
After using Mr. Rider's keycard again to gain access to the lock panel on the wall and disabling the teleport-blocking transmitter for the room, I walked over to the device. Its appearance was deceptively simple: a black armband with a green backlit screen and a virtual keyboard. It didn't look too different from my own TPort, which was one of the older models. I was more than a little underwhelmed by it, but I supposed it didn't really matter if it looked like some regular teleporter. It was what it did that set it apart. No other device in the world had the same functionality.
NEVA. I wasn't sure if the letters stood for anything, or if it was even finalized as that, but that was apparently what it was being called. I doubted anyone would even bother with saying its name, though, when they could just call it what it really was—the world's first time-traveling device.
At first, I'd been hesitant to believe the rumors about it floating around Ridertech. 'Mr. Rider is working with the government to create a time-traveling device' sounded like nothing more than a conspiracy theory. It wasn't that I didn't believe that Mr. Rider was capable of making a time-traveling device, per se. He was renowned around the world for his Synthumans and TPorts, the best robots and teleportation devices on the market, and being a family friend meant that I'd gotten to witness his genius firsthand. My faith in him and his abilities was absolute—but I had little faith in the sources of the rumors. I'd thought it was just others like me, entry-level beta testers, dreaming about getting to test out something fun and fully revolutionary instead of just searching for bugs in some new minor update to the teleporters and robots everyone was already familiar with.
But when my source changed, so too did my belief. During what would otherwise have been an entirely forgettable conversation between myself and my friends, I'd made some joke about the rumor, and Zi had slipped up and all but outright confirmed it. He'd clamped his mouth shut after the words were out, a clear indicator that he knew he'd messed up, but it seemed that I was the only one who had noticed his mistake; none of our friends had reacted as they should have to the confirmation that there was a genuine time-traveling device. They'd started talking about mundane rumors they'd heard going around in their own workplaces, and Zi had visibly relaxed, and I could think of nothing but how I could use it.
Then, to my surprise, Mr. Rider himself had confirmed it as well. I had been asking around to find out as much as possible, and I'd finally caved and decided to ask him about it directly. He'd hesitated, at first, before saying he trusted me enough. He'd told me that he'd been working on it since long before I was even created—I'd scrunched up my nose at his phrasing, and he'd quickly corrected himself by saying 'born'; the man really needed more of a life outside of his inventions—and that it should finally be completed by the end of the year. Most importantly, though, he told me that it was funded by and created for the government, so it was never going to be available for public use. As soon as it was finished, it would be taken in by authorities, and one of his life's greatest achievements would be out of his hands. I knew then that I had to work fast, before I missed my chance—my chance to go back in time and stop my dad from getting into the accident that had taken his life and desolated our family.
And now, after weeks of snooping and planning, I was here. My one glimmer of hope was staring me right in the face—and so was the paper next to it with a host of warnings about how dangerous it could potentially be. It was clear that even the people who knew the most about time-travel were still unsure of its potential consequences.
As much as I'd been trying to push my negative thoughts away, the warnings made my fears come out in full force. Awful scenario after awful scenario played out in my mind. I would go back to that day, stop my dad from leaving, then come back to this time to find that I had merely created a new, unreachable branch of time, and nothing at all had changed here—or I would go back to that day, stop my dad from leaving, and then I would poof out of existence because I came from a time that could no longer exist—or, worst of all, I would go back to that day, and my mere presence there would make the universe fold in on itself and everything would cease to exist. There were so many ways everything could go wrong.
It was hard to reroute my mind from those awful scenarios, but I did. I made myself envision the scenario that had brought me here in the first place. I would go back to that day, stop my dad from leaving, and I would come back to this time, successful. My family would be whole again. Happy again.
'This is my only chance,' I reminded myself. 'I can't turn back now.'
Lifting the glass encasement, I reached in and grabbed NEVA and the paper next to it. I ignored all the warnings on the paper, looking at it only long enough to find the instructions I needed. After I found the command, I did my best to put NEVA on with shaking hands. I then toyed around with the idea of taking off the TPort on my left arm, mainly to procrastinate, and ultimately took 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 took a deep breath in, steeling myself for what I was about to say.
"NEVA, activate," I said. "Time-travel: 0800 hours, November 7th, 2117."
Crackling noises came from my wrist, prompting me to open my eyes and look down. Little sparks were coming out of NEVA, and I was still in the same room. 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.
Suddenly, the electricity stopped coursing through me. I fell to my knees, let out the breath I had been involuntarily holding in, and took NEVA off before it could have the chance to shock me again. I opened my teary eyes to inspect my burning arm.
If I hadn't already fallen to the ground, I would have just then.
Because I wasn't in Ridertech anymore.
Hope you enjoyed the first chapter! As of July 2023, it's been rewritten, and chapters from here on out have had some changes to accommodate this new version. I wanted to merge this chapter with the next since they're already a lot shorter than later chapters are, buuut I thought it was kinda late for that. Also, just gonna go ahead and say here: if you ever notice any sort of mistake, please let me know! It's super embarrassing to come back to a chapter years later and find typos, lol.
If you prefer stories in third person or you just prefer archiveofourown, this story is also 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.
Also, I have drawings of and stuff about all the characters in this on my tumblr! Alas, the username miserymire was taken over there, so you can find me at miserymore,tumblr,com (with periods instead of a commas :p)
