The Green Infertility

I entered his lab, it was bright, spacious, and extremely clean. I had been in there before but only when he let me come to do some work for him. He wasn't a very sociable person.

"So what happened?" I asked him.

"Well… The Green Infertility bacterium was meant to be for good, turning wastes into fertilizer faster than anything could, sounds like a good idea and it worked for the first few weeks... Shame we never tested it on normal unsterile soil, like the ones you'll find everywhere else on Earth. The bacterium interacted with the soil's pre-existing microorganisms in such a way that it caused the plant's roots to turn into alcohol. It also turned the water around them into methanol."

"But not your plants," I said, "and they didn't die either."

He shook his head. "No, but their roots became so brittle that they couldn't absorb nutrients from the ground anymore. Their leaves began to wither away. All this happened because of one tiny little bug. And then..." He stopped talking, looked at me, and smiled again. "It's really interesting to think that you'll develop something that helps decompose all of the world's landfills, only to destroy all terrestrial plant life on Earth and alcoholize the ocean."

"And there were no other side effects? No strange mutations or anything?"

He shrugged. "Billions of people have died from famine since 1992, most of which could've been prevented if we hadn't destroyed our own food supply. We're still trying to get over that fact."

"What about animals?" I asked him.

"They're dying, if the ultimate source of energy for all life on Earth is the sun, then we removed the only way we can get that energy. Although we're lacking in food, it's amazing that we can still breathe... for now."

"You know... you seem awfully calm about everything."

"We have plenty of time left," he told me. "Enough time to figure things out. Enough time to go back and fix everything."

I chuckle at him. "Are you talking about time travel? Or maybe teleportation? Time travel can't possibly work. If you try and change history, you'll end up destroying it instead."

"Not necessarily," he replied. "That's where quantum mechanics comes into play. You see, Einstein once said that 'God doesn't play dice.' Quantum physics proves otherwise."

I nodded. "Okay, but how does that help us here?"

"Imagine an atom-like any other. Now imagine that it has two possible states: spin up and spin down. Imagine further that both these states exist simultaneously inside the same atom. Then imagine that each state has its own probability of existing, based on some kind of random number generator. So now we need to ask what happens when two atoms come together?"

"Well, they fuse," I answered.

"Exactly! But sometimes they don't fuse. Sometimes they just pass right through each other without touching. That means they did exactly the same thing, but in different ways. And yet, somehow, they changed the probabilities of the outcomes!"

I thought about this for a while. "How in the bloody hell will this allow us to time travel!? Do you mean that you'll be able to make a wormhole between Earth and the past by fusing atoms with different spins?"

He nodded his head slowly. "Although I need more than just atoms to do that. The problem lies in finding the right atoms, and then getting them to interact at the precise moment they should. It would take a lot of luck, and even then..." He trailed off.

"... and then?" I prompted.

"Then nothing. A big bang could happen. We'll probably kill ourselves along with the dinosaurs and everyone else who ever lived. And that wouldn't solve our problems anyway."

"Anything is a hella lot better than starving to death, isn't it?" I asked.

He then noticed my heart-shaped locket hanging around my neck. "Is that a picture of your wife and child?" he asked me.

I nodded. "Yes, they're dead, but they'll live again someday. They'll grow old and die, but they'll live again. Someday, they'll even meet me again. And then they'll start over from scratch."

His eyes lit up. "And that makes you happy, knowing they'll live again?"

"It gives me hope, yes."

"So why aren't you smiling?" he asked me.

I didn't answer him.

"Because you're worried that you'll never see them again?" He looked at me expectantly.

"Let's just get this time machine working first, okay?"

"All right. How long before you're ready to test this thing?"

"We can start right now if you want."

He looked at me curiously. "What are we waiting for? Let's go."

"Where's your time machine?"

He pointed to the corner of the room.

"It's in there?"

He nodded his head and walked towards the door. He opened it and showed me the time machine. It looked like an ordinary metal box, only much larger, and it was about ten feet tall.

"What is that?" I asked him.

"A time machine," he said simply. "You'll see. Just get in."

I climbed into the device and sat down.

"Okay, so best-case scenario, you end up in June 1992 and stop them. Worst-case scenario, we blow up the universe."

I nodded. "Right. But either way, it's worth it."

"3... 2... 1... go!"