Seventy-Two Hours

Seventy-two hours left.

I slowly opened my eyes and got out of bed. I felt dizzy and lightheaded. I motioned toward a wall which had a monitor built into it. The screen flickered on and displayed a single message: Reality is merely an illusion.

I had read that quote somewhere before. Recently, I think, but I couldn’t remember where.

I got back into bed and closed my eyes.

Forty-eight hours left.

I slowly opened my eyes and got out of bed. The message on the monitor was gone. This time, it read “March 16". Okay, forty-eight hours left, so something was going to happen on March 18. But for the life of me, I did not know what it was.

Something nasty rose in my throat and I spat it into a glass. It was a sort of beige liquid. Not quite bile, but something else.

Immediately I felt more alert. I took in my surroundings. I was in basically a windowless hotel room. There was only a chair, a nightstand, and the bed. No clock, no TV, no phone. Why was I here? I don't remember anything that happened beyond the past twenty-four hours.

As quickly as I had become alert, I became tired again. I got back into bed and closed my eyes.

Twenty-four hours left.

I slowly opened my eyes and got out of bed. Again, the strange liquid rose in my throat and I spat it into a glass. This time, the monitor said "March 15". Okay, twenty-four hours left, so something was going to happen on March 16.

Wait, that doesn't seem right...Also, why the countdown? The voice inside my head apparently knew something that I didn’t.

I sat on the edge of my bed for who knows how long. I didn’t have a clock or a window or a TV to help me gauge how much time was passing. I was clueless about almost everything. How did I get here? What is the countdown for? What is this liquid I keep spitting up? Is all of this just some crazy dream? “Reality is merely an illusion…”

I settled back under the covers and closed my eyes.

Two hours left.

Okay, that voice was definitely not my own. Whose was it?

I spat beige liquid into the glass again. My head began to throb. Suddenly a woman appeared at my side. She spoke to me in a language I didn’t recognize, then automatically I said something in return in what may have been the same language. The words were out of my mouth before I even thought them. I handed the woman the glass, and then she did the most bizarre thing: she walked in reverse. Things were starting to click, but I still had absolutely no context.

Without warning I stood up and also walked backwards. I wanted to stop, or at least look down so I wouldn’t trip, but my body was refusing to obey my thoughts. Somehow I finally realized I had no control, as if I were a puppet. I sat in the chair and stretched out my leg, and my shoe jumped from the floor onto my foot. Same with the other leg and shoe. Several moments passed, and when I laid my arms on the arm rests, chains appeared and wrapped around them. Many more moments passed before I began thrashing around, trying to break free.

There was a loud clang, and the walls fell backwards while the ceiling levitated upward. Everything moved to reveal that this wasn't a hotel; this was a lab. People in white lab coats were standing around and chatting. Two burly men strode backwards toward me and released me from the chains. They then forced me out of the fake hotel room and onto an operating chair.

The next several minutes were incredibly surreal, and I had great difficulty trying to grasp what was happening. There was a lot of speaking backwards, a video playing on a TV, a small black book, some applause, and finally a sharp pain in my head.

“Edward?” a woman’s voice said. Oh yeah, that’s right, my name was Edward. "Edward, can you hear me? My name is Dr. Koch. We're in the Hermann Laboratory. Do you know what day it is?"

I was only half-focused on what she was saying, but at the same time I had this feeling of tremendous relief that I was able to understand something even so simple as a coherent sentence. I felt queasy, and what was unmistakably bile rose up to my mouth. Dr. Koch handed me a bowl. "It's, um...it's March 14," I said wearily.

"Yes, very good," she responded. "Now, do you know why you're here?"

"No...No, no, no, NO!" With each 'no' I shook my head more vigorously. My muttering turned into shouting. "I don't know! Why am I here?! Who are you people?!"

Dr. Koch laid a hand on my shoulder. “Hey, shh, it’s all right, I will explain here in a moment. Now then, I really want you to concentrate...Do you remember seeing a monitor on a wall?”

“Yes,” I answered unnaturally calmly.

“What dates did you see on it?”

“March 15 and 16.”

“Great. This is the most important question: You saw a message on the monitor. What did it say?”

“It said, ‘Reality is merely an illusion’. But I still don’t get—”

She cut me off. “Well? Is that the message you were intending to give?” She spoke loudly to a group of people dressed in business suits on the observation deck.

They whispered among each other, then one of them announced, “Yes. Congratulations, Dr. Koch.” The scientists and business people applauded while Dr. Koch took a bow. Some of the scientists shook hands.

“Edward, thank you,” Dr. Koch said to me. She was gently holding a small black book as if it were a treasured possession. “As agreed upon, $20,000 will be deposited into your bank account by the end of the week as a reward for your participation in this experiment.”

“$20,000? Experiment? I still don’t know what’s going on.”

“Yes, right. Here, I think this might help you recall some of your memories.” She wheeled over a TV and began playing a video. The timestamp indicated it had been recorded earlier today, from the viewpoint of the observation deck. In the video, I was standing next to Dr. Koch as she was giving a speech to the audience. I looked partially uncomfortable there, but apparently the promise of $20,000 held me to that spot.

“My fellow scientists and esteemed guests,” Dr. Koch announced in the video, “We have always understood that time is relative. For one person, time may seem to be moving fast. For another person, time may seem to be moving slow. For a third person, time may seem like it has come to a complete stop. However, is it possible for someone to experience time backwards?

“Many have scoffed at the idea. There was a time when even I thought that it was simply asinine. Several years ago, though, with the discovery of this little black book, containing notes by the great Albert Einstein himself, I realized that it was in fact possible. Limited by the technology of his time, Einstein was unable to prove it. But today, we have that very opportunity." She faced me. "Please state your name."

"Edward Hanson,” I declared.

Dr. Koch faced the audience again. “Mr. Hanson has volunteered to participate in our experiment.” She stretched out her hand, and the camera zoomed in on it to show a tiny curved object, barely the size of a fingernail. “We will implant this device into Mr. Hanson’s brain now, and in seventy-two hours he will be shown a message. This message has been secretly chosen by our investors, who are also present with us today. The device will activate afterward and will access the part of his consciousness that interprets the movement of time. He will live these next seventy-two hours in reverse. Then, we will ask him what message he saw. Should this experiment prove successful”—my present self flinched when I heard that—“he will correctly tell us what the message is.

“To make things easier and safer for him, for the duration of that time he will remain in this room behind me to reduce as much stimuli as possible.” The camera panned to show the bed, chair, and nightstand. Four large panels lying down on the floor surrounded them. “He will also be given this concoction to help him sleep for long periods at a time.” The camera panned again to show a liter of the beige liquid I had been spitting up, set on a tall stand. The woman who had taken it from me (or rather, will give it to me) stood next to it.

“In honor of Albert Einstein, born 200 years ago this day, we will finally put this experiment to the test.”

The video stopped. I rubbed my temple then felt around my head for where the device may have been implanted. I should have been grateful that I could control my own limbs again, but deep down I realized I had made a terrible mistake. How could these people not see? Indeed, they were mad scientists...

"Do you understand now?" Dr. Koch asked.

"Yes," I answered. "Wait...no, stop, I don't want to do this. Get this thing out of my head!"

I made a move to escape, but Dr. Koch held me down. "No! You have to stay! If you're not here in seventy-two hours, then you won't see the message and this experiment will fail!"

"But I saw the message already! I told you what it was! Let me go!"

"We still don't know what the consequences will be if you change your path! Give us time to figure that out...Can I get some help here?" she called out.

The two burly men came and grabbed me. They forced me onto the chair by the bed, then chained me to it. I struggled to break free.

I knew what was coming. I was going to relive the same seventy-two hours, but this time forward. Then, my mind would do a 180 and I would live the same seventy-two hours in reverse. Part of my consciousness would be bouncing back and forth between 8:00 PM on March 14 and 8:00 PM on March 17.

Little did I know that I have traversed this time frame over ten times already.

******

April 18, 2079.

"How is he doing?" Dr. Koch asked her assistant.

"Still in a comatose state," he replied. "Apparently removing the device from his brain didn't help."

"I was worried about that. The device was still in his brain on March 17, so his consciousness may be trapped there." She pored over the little black book again and again, wondering if there was something she had missed. Maybe there was a reason Einstein kept this book hidden…

She glanced at my unconscious body. She knew what I would have probably been thinking at that moment: No amount of money was worth this.