The Ancient Heart of Our Future

I held on to the disintegrating once-white fabric with my left hand, the right clutching the rusted heart-shaped locket. If my right hand was still made of skin I suppose the locket would slip out from sweat. It’s my 30th birthday, and even though I’m scared, I promised you I would do this. I can still remember you, covered in grime and grease, tinkering with this damn machine. If only you had lived a little longer. They laughed when you said it was a time machine. I wish you could see the world now Dad. You lived to 60. Now everyone will live for hundreds of years, thanks to artificial limbs, hearts, neural stem cells, and deceleration of DNA telomere degradation. But the world still sucks. Especially without you.

I rip the cover off of the old chunky piece of metal and cough at the dust and swat the spider webs off of my hair. The thing looked like shit then, and it looks like shit now. Except for the golden compass handle. The locket is engraved all around the sides in tiny, intricate detail. When I open it, there is a picture of us smiling, and a clock hand over our faces that stopped ticking so long ago I can’t remember when. I push down on the hidden latch at the bottom of the heart and the glass frame pops open. I twist the key from the hidden compartment outwards and unlock the compass handle.

Turning the handle clockwise three times, the door creeks open. The blue light inside flickers twice and then glows dimly. I step inside and shut the door behind me. I think I can still smell you in here. I know this won’t work, but why the hell couldn’t you have made a time machine for the past? I would go back and visit you every day, we could have our breakfast in the morning, just like when I was little. And then I could come back and deal with life without you. ‘There’s no use looking to the past,’ you would say. ‘We need to see the future to change the present.’

I shut the locket and put it in the waterproof compartment in my titanium arm, which seals completely shut. I really don’t want to do this. The present is scary enough, with wars, robotic enemies, viral infestations, pollution and global warming destroying what’s left of the planet. What am I going to see when I open that door? Never mind, I’m crazy. It’s not going to work. I repeat out loud the instructions and coordinates that you drilled into my brain for years and punch them into the illuminated screen. I press the glowing golden button. Suddenly I feel the wind knocked out of me and I try to catch my breath. The machine shudders, starts to spin slowly, and then stops, a wheezing sound fizzling out. And then I feel it. A shivering that starts in the bottom of my toes and pulses through my body, like my whole body was asleep and is just being awakened. The lights flash and I cover my ears as the speakers boom- ‘1500 years!’ Everything is spinning and I’m going to puke, and then it is black.

When I awaken, I’m hot. It takes a second to remember and then I realize I’m trapped inside. I must have passed out from lack of oxygen. ‘Help!’ I scream, and yank on the handle once more. It opens. I’m blinded by the sun and I smell the sea and olives. I step outside and beads of sweat collect immediately in my hair and my face. I’m looking down at Rome. Or, what I’m assuming is a hologram of Rome, the colosseum. Actually, there’s a play going on. There are people gathered in waves in the seats and I can smell their sweat and dirt from here. Two lions are circling men in armor and wielding knives. Wow. So in the future they’re pretty desperate to reenact the past, huh? Where are the flying cars? I swear every generation gets promised that and it never is going to happen. And then I realize. It worked! It actually worked Dad! I laugh and cry and kiss my metal locket and hug the machine as if it were you. You weren’t lying. I’m sorry I thought you were crazy, just like everyone else.

I want to watch the show. The lion lunges forward and slashes so close to the man in old garb that the crowd gasps. Please. He’s just going to teleport out of here. I wonder how they made the lions, must have saved some genetic material from one and cloned them eventually. The man slashes back at the lion and the lion roars, swatting away the sword like it’s a plastic straw. The crowd cheers with glee. And then I realize. This is real. I didn’t go to the future. This is the past! I scramble to the machine and slam it shut, shaking, not believing there was actually a time when people wanted to watch others get mauled for fun.

As I fully comprehend the situation I start to cry happy tears. I can see you again! Why did you make me wait? I press the time and coordinates to get to the date of my my 7th birthday, the last before you died. When I wake up this time, I’m trembling with excitement. I shove the door open and jump out. What the hell? The stench of human waste blasts me in the face when I open the door. People are sloped over in cobblestone streets, wearing dirty scraps as clothing, trying to run but most are injured. A fire blazes and buildings collapse in the distance, a castle burns, backlit by a cloudy moon. I hear piercing screams in the distance. I scramble back into the machine and desperately punch in the codes that I remember you repeated to me most often. This has to be a mistake.

When I arrive, warm water starts to seep in. I push the door open fully and a salty wave smashes through the machine and shoves me backwards. I cough and sputter as I rush out and realize that I’m on the edge of an… island? I step out and sink into a foot of water. Walking around the machine I climb up onto the hill. It’s tall. Very tall. There’s nothing around. Nothing. It’s dirt and rocks and no trees all the way up the mountain. That’s it, it’s a mountain. In the ocean? I feel the dirt begin to shift and climb my way up the hill, grasping at rocks and pulling myself as the mountain begins to slide. I hear another smash of a wave and I scramble faster, until I’m gasping for breath but on a slab of rock that’s steady. I look around again. Nothing. Where is the time machine? And then I see it- a bit of metal that bobs once and then submerges with bubbles and then another crash of ocean against the mountain. It’s gone. Oh my god, it’s gone! Frantically I whip my head around but all I see is rock and sea for miles and miles. There’s movement over there- it looks like a salamander or something. At least there’s life, maybe I can survive for a while. What am I going to do?

Dad, why would you do this to me? I howl as I think of how close I came to seeing your face again. And then, a buzz. I smack my arm, afraid some monstrous demon from the pits of hells past is attacking me. No, it’s inside my arm. I pull the locket out. It’s vibrating and glowing. The inscriptions on the side illuminate and it flips open, the clock hand viciously spinning until it stops, pointing to the left. It buzzes harder and I feel it drawing me towards something. A giant shark leaps out of the sea and rips the salamander off of the rock, smashing back down to the great expanse. I start to run now, careful not to slip and fall. And then I see it. A box, a glowing box! The locket pulls me to it as if it’s magnetized, and it’s all I can do to keep up. When I get close enough the locket snaps shut, flies from my hand and locks right into place in a perfectly sized heart-shaped hole. And then I hear his voice.

‘I knew you would find it!’

‘Dad?’ I shout, running faster, falling to my knees in front of the box. It’s illuminated from the inside now, and I can see him inside. ‘Dad!’ I pull on the handle but it won’t budge.

‘I’m so proud of you. You made it.’

‘Dad, dad, why can’t I come in?’

‘I’m sorry, I’m sure you just got your hopes up. You’re probably asking me why you can’t come in right now. It’s because I’m not really here, but this was the only way.’

I press my face hard against the tempered glass and see a wispy hologram of my father. He looks just like I remember, right before the last time. I sob and hug the frame, willing myself inside.

‘I know that you’re probably upset now, and yes I know that’s an understatement, but I had to show you this. You wouldn’t have believed me if you didn’t see for yourself. Before I say anything else, I just want you to know that I’m proud of you. I believe in you. And I believe that we can change.’

I look into his eyes, the twinkle of hope and light still there, even as a ghost.

‘Now I want you to think about what you have seen. I told you I made a machine for the future. Hold your hand on the heart. It will show you. I love you.’

The wispy figure of my father faded as I sobbed. Not again, I can’t lose you again. I shook as I placed my left hand directly on the heart locket. It pulsed and began to turn. Clockwise. And the inscriptions on the right side of the heart, starting at the apex, continued to light up in tandem with images flashing on the tempered glass. One came after the other, heat and explosions and then a flicker of life, dinosaurs, cavemen, Greek ages, Renaissance, Civil war, all the way to the vision of the industrial, technological, and polluted world that I have been living in. And then suddenly explosions, tsunamis, hurricanes, everything I know being destroyed. The locket stopped glowing at the bottom of the heart. And then traveling up the left side to the top, it glowed again, along with the flashing images. Famine, destruction, books burning, all the way back down to the cavemen, dinosaurs, sharks, rock and ocean, amoeba, and then nothing.

My father. A genius. He didn’t lie. This was, and would be, our future. Our de-evolution. The door to the box opened and I climbed in. I knew what I had to do now, and that this box would take me back to the past. We were all warned for hundreds of years. Just like a heart, reaching an apex and then circling back around, connected and never ending. Maybe I can end the cycle this time, before we destroy ourselves once again.