The Time Machine

"Ladies and gentlemen, I know there's been some confusion, but let me explain. To travel through time into the past or future is impossible, and ultimately pointless. However, what we all need in our lives is more time. My time machine is capable of generating time. Time between time. For instance, I can split a second down the middle and place another second inside it.

"To an observer, as I will demonstrate, your perception of time remains unchanged. Whereas for me - FUCK YOU - I have an extra second.

"Now, my invention is not limited to a flimsy second here and there, by adjusting the dosage I receive I have inserted amounts of time up to..."

I stepped out from behind the podium, walked towards the audience, their faces drowsy with slowtime. I scan them all, one by one, taking in their expressions which, the last they knew, were looking at me delivering my lecture in front of them. Playfully I swap notebooks around on their desks, pull pens from hands and nestle them behind ears, I finish someone's coffee, take a bite from a cookie, wander the entire lecture hall and return to my podium.

"...ten minutes."

It takes a moment or two for them to realise things have changed, and the commotion is quite jolly and good-natured as they swap their belongings back, or discover other suggestions of my mischief.

"You see, time is relative and our ability to move within it is a construct of our perception of reality. My machine - implanted into the hypothalamus - and my formula directly effect the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which controls our circadian rhythms, and warps my perception of time. Depending on the dosage the more time stretches. I am able to move - at what you would experience as - faster-than-light within this continnum that I have created."

After the lecture I signed some copies of my findings, a quite vague essay that belied my reticence to reveal my invention and give the gift of time to everyone. The more people who would travel at slowtime, then the more slowtime becomes like normal time, and I treasure slowtime because it means I can escape.

When I was younger I'd say that I was born in the wrong time, I used to pine for the past, I had such hopes for the future. But I can never go back, and tomorrow keeps letting me down. If I could exist forever inbetween the moments then I think I'd be happy. If I could find a way to slow down time for me indefinitely then I'd be happy to grow old there, to live and die in the blink of an eye.

As the last of them shakes my hand, congratulating me on my work, I brush the hair from my eyes and move a pin to hold it in place. I could never afford to make enough formula to spend the next fifty or sixty years in slowtime, the only way I could would be to sell the patent, to give it to the people. Perhaps if the world became hooked on slowtime then I'd enjoy the days as they are? Rather than feel myself burdened, weighed down by each and every second.

Ten minutes, that's all I can make for myself each day. Ten minutes of time to myself. It would take me 144 days to save up enough for a day off. 52,560 days for a year away. There's never enough time.
My mind flutters with daydreams about how I could generate the formula itself within slowtime, meaning it would perpetuate more quickly. If there was some way of creating a pocket of slowtime that I could interact with in normal time, an ever-expanding bubble that I could use to harvest the formula. If there were a way to create a wormhole between moments, from the present via the expanded time between a second and then the present again so that as soon as the process begins the results are achieved.

I've always been impatient, most projects go unfinished because once I can visualise the goal in my mind I lose interest in the efforts required to attain it. This formula, this machine, it was an accident. A George's Marvellous Medicine concocted as I played mixologist with my prescriptions. I began to experience affected perceptions of time, but then noticed that it wasn't just perceived time that moved slowly, it was time itself and if my head was clear then my speed would remain at a constant whilst everything slowed down around me.

If anything it gave me hope, the meds had taken that from me. I'd been dulled down, too calm to care, and controlled by the wagging fingers that warned me of coming off of my medication. I wanted to die, that's why I mixed them, I wanted to go to the place where time doesn't exist, where my consciousness doesn't exist, I wanted to feel the nothingness. At first I thought it was a cruel joke, that I was a ghost stuck in a moment, and I had to haunt that frozen point in time for the rest of eternity.

Between time I'm free, I'm happy. Nobody really looks at me - they can't - and nobody is aware that I'm gone. It's like I become someone else, and each time I return to the same time as everyone else I have to remember who I am, what everyone thinks of me, their superficial perceptions and judgments, and I have to wait, wait for the next moment to escape.