It was 7:57 pm and I am 7 miles away from the house, the car had only had ? of a tank left and I promised my parents I’d be home by 8:00. Did I mention I was being chased by the police on the highway? It all started just 3 months ago when I still had my friends, still had my girlfriend, and most of all when I didn’t make that damn TIME MACHINE.

4 Months Ago

BEEP BEEP BEEP I hit my alarm clock and started getting dressed for school. It took me a while to find a clean shirt after last week, I haven't found one since. I guess today is my lucky day because I found one in my closet. It is an old shirt with an art design of a man burning in a fire, it is kinda gruesome but it is also the only one I had. I put it on and headed down to the kitchen. When I got down to the kitchen, no one was there which is weird because everyone is always inside. They are either eating or sitting by the fireplace trying to get warm. I made myself some cereal then sat and ate it. While I ate, I thought to myself ‘where could everyone be.’ I didn’t have much time to think, because as soon as I finished the cereal I heard the bus.

It was a cold and painful -23 degrees when I stepped out of the warm, toasty, comfortable trailer. I forgot my jacket inside of the house, more than likely on my bed. I didn’t really care because it was a short 2 minute walk to the bus stop. As I was walking to my stop I pulled out my phone and got on chatsnap and started to text my friends. Then I heard the bus.

Today is a happy friday only because yesterday a high schooler and I got into a little fight on the bus and we had to change seats, which meant that I get to sit next to a girl I have had a crush on since elementary school. Her name is jess she has beautiful brown eyes, and gorgeous blonde hair that is always in a ponytail. Jess and I have always been best friends, but we never really dated. I’ve been waiting for the right moment to ask her out, and today is the day. (“Or so I thought”)

I got on the bus took my seat and waited til jess got on. It only took a few minutes until we reached Jess's house. The bus came to a halt and out came the flashing stop sign on the side. Jess stepped on the bus and I instantly smelt her perfume, she smelled like cotton candy. It was the most amazing smell in the world. Then, she sat down next to me and suddenly all I could smell was cotton candy. I said hi to her first and she looked at me like she didn't know who I was. She then asked,’who are you?’ “What do you mean, it’s greg your lifelong friend”, I answered. “I know who you are greg, I was just messing with you”, she replied back. We talked the entire bus ride about what we were doing for christmas.

We got to school, sat at a table and continued to talk about the holidays. We had 5 minutes just before we had to go to our first class. The good thing is we had the same classes almost throughout the whole day. While we were waiting I asked her if there was someone special like a boyfriend?  She looked at me and smiled while she answered no. I was so happy, but now I had to have the balls to ask her out. As soon as I was about to ask her out on a date the bell rang.

We got into our first class, physics. We were learning about a time machine; how one works, what happens to your body once you go through. I could tell Jess didn’t like this class because she was just sitting there twirling her hair. Me on the other hand, loved the thought of time travel. I would always wonder what the first thing I would do if I could time travel; save world hunger, kill hitler before the holocaust, go back and win the lottery. However, what I really did, the me in this world would never have seen it coming. All I would say to him now is ‘watch that girl of yours she is not who you think she is.’

We went to our next class and the next one and so on and so on until we got to our last class. History, my favorite class, we were learning about how people tried to build time machines. I was fascinated with the whole time machine deal, I’ve always wanted to have one. That’s when I got the idea, i’m gonna build a time machine.

1 Month Later

A month has passed and jess and I have finally started dating. I asked her just 2 days ago and the smile on her face after I asked her was so amazing. Our relationship has been going so well. We have been hanging out everywhere we go; the mall, school, I have also been going to her house every weekend and on wednesdays. We just chill and watch some netflix most of the time i’m there. But if we are unlucky and her parents are home then we just go to the movies. We never watch the movie though if you know what i’m saying.

I also started on the time machine, I looked up some schematics from the internet. Most of them were crap then when I was about to quit Jess gave me a blueprint, she said she found it inside of her attic. It’s a little weird a time machine schematic in her attic, I mean who has a schematic just laying around. I was still happy to see the blueprint when she handed it to me anyways.

So three friends of mine started going over the blueprint and copying it down trying to memorize it. We got the basics of what we need to start the machine. After we got the base of the machine built we thought, “how is this gonna fit all of us?” It was just a small 3 foot wide machine. Then we also realized a bigger problem, “how are we even gonna power this thing?” The first thing we tried was some batteries, then when that didn’t work we tried a car battery. That didn’t work either so we had just one more idea. We brought all of the papers and scrap of metal that we thought we needed to build it to the one place with enough power to charge this thing up. The power grid!

Jess had the idea to bring jumper cables with us, it’s almost like she knows what’s gonna happen. We put vortex together (“that’s what we’re calling the machine”) and hooked the cables up to the machine and watched as the machine started to light up. There was like a magnetic field that was picking up all the scraps and tools, they were just floating in the air like there was no gravity. As we were mesmerized by the sight of zero gravity Jess said something quite off “you all might want to duck down.” Then as I was asking what she meant she tackled us all down as one of the power lines exploded and nearly cut our heads off.

While we were trying to keep calm, out of nowhere not even knowing I was talking I asked Jess, “How did you know that the line was gonna explode?” Then everybody looked at me realizing what just happened switching their focus from near death and looked at Jess. She answered me with the most stupidest answer I have ever heard, “I just had a feeling.” I told her that a person can’t just have a feeling that something is gonna explode, and save four people from death with just a feeling. She kept on answering the same thing every time we asked her the question.

We eventually stopped caring after we looked over at steve who was jumping with joy repeating the same question over and over “do you know what just happened?” Before I could answer he blurted out “we just made a time machine!” I pondered about what he said and he was right. The only thing we need is a more secure source than a grid. Then Jess said “No what we need is to get out of here before the police come and capture us.” I told her “I’m going to take answers from you.”

2 Months later

Two months had passed and I still haven't got an answer from Jess yet. Actually, a month ago she asked for some space, I mean I was asking her over and over how she knew about the power line. When she told me she didn’t know I didn’t listen. So I understand why she is upset but I still believe she has something she is hiding. The dudes and I have made some modifications to Vortex, now it is small enough to be carried around with us, but not like three feet small more like one inch. All of what Vortex was is now nothing but a simple watch. We haven’t figured out a way to carry all of us though, it only can carry the person with Vortex on. For that person with the watch they can only jump 1 hour in the past and  30 minutes in the future. So we still have problems but we can fix them, it would be a lot easier if we had Jess though.

We all have taken turns jumping in the future and in the past. I jumped in the past and fixed when I yelled at Jess yesterday. Yes I know I shouldn’t have yelled at her but in my defense she has been ignoring us for two weeks. Then she thought she had the nerve to ask us if she could us vortex to do something. “Like are you serious? Here I thought that you liked me for me but it was actually because of vortex.” Then after I said that I walked off, I looked back at her and she was gone. I felt bad because I yelled at her only because I thought our love was based on some stupid time machine, but thankfully I was wrong. So I fixed that whole situation and now she has been talking to us again. I don’t know what Jess used vortex for but she seemed happy once she came back.

The other dudes used it on stupid things like on a test they failed they took it again, or like how Barry, my best friend, used it like I did and got it to get a girl. I know I said that it was stupid but that’s not the stupid part, his girl used it to go on a shopping spree and took almost all of the makeup in the store. Like if your gonna take from a store make it a game halt (game store). On the other hand we’ve been making even more modifications to Vortex, like now we can jump about an hour in the past and future more than we normally could. It shouldn’t take long before we have this thing finished.

Last month

WE DID IT, WE ACTUALLY FINALLY DID IT!!!!!!!!!! We figured out a way to increase vortex’s….well his vortex. Now all of us can fit into the vortex and jump, and while they were working on that I figured out a way to allow us to jump farther than we possibly could. Jess was a major help in all of this, she is the one who figured out what part of calculation was wrong. Funny it was the simplest thing ever, I didn’t carry the one.

We all decided to jump to see how far we could get. We jumped a full week ahead of time, it was so weird we went to all of our houses to see what we were doing a week ahead of time. Jess was up first but she wasn’t home, then harry he was getting in his car for what looked like a date. He was in all black but I couldn’t see his face, it was like he was trying to hide his face. Then we went to everyone else’s house but no one was home. Jess insisted that we just go back to the present. Then my gut told me to go to my house and not listen to her, almost like last time when she knew something we didn’t. So we all went to my house but right as we were about to go inside Jess bursted out in tears. As she was saying something about her getting paid for something and that we shouldn’t look I saw someone in my room with me. I wasn’t in my bed though I was in a coffin, I looked back at Jess so fast I gave myself a blood rush. I asked her what happened to me, she told us everything.

“It was supposed to be an easy in and out job, right after yall started to build the machine the government called me and told me I needed to stop you. I don’t know what company it’s called but they were willing to pay me 4 million dollars if I got y'all to stop.” Then I had a moment of clarity, she was the one who blew up the power line and that’s why she told us to get down. I was so furious at her I yelled at her to tell me everything else, and that was when she told me she couldn’t do it. She said it was supposed to be easy but she got attached to me and my other friends she said that she fell in love, but instead of reassuring her I just yelled at her and called out her bullcrap. She said she didn’t take me out like the government wanted. “They agreed on a memory swipe though, she said”

I just sat there dismaled not knowing what to do. I thought about it then I thought “if she didn’t kill me why am I in a coffin.” I asked her that question and you know what she said? She said “I don’t know” She said that’s why she came back with us because she found out about my death and wanted to know what happened to me. She told us that the way our plan was supposed to end: we go back in time a little bit, even go to the future for a while, then the machine magically breaks on its own and no one knows what happened to it, then finally we all live happily ever after. She told us she was so sorry for what she had done to us, then she fell to her knees and started crying because of how bad she felt. We started to understand it all, and we all were still curious about how I died. And that is when Kieran saw the man in black walk up behind Jess. It was one of the government men who Jess had been working for. Then we saw what looked like vortex, and the man in black gave Jess her four million dollars.

I started to distrust Jess again, and when I turned around to tell her that I understand what was happening and I was ok with it. I saw the man in black with a gun up to jess’s head and threatened us to turn over vortex or she will die. That is when I decided we needed something more than a time machine.

We all knew that this was only one of the missions we were gonna have to do if we wanted to take down the men in black. So we decided that it would help if we made more than one time machine so we could jump even if we are not together. Before we knew it we had more than one Vortex, they grew better each time we made a new one. The only problem we had was how we were gonna get this many cores for ALL the Vortex’s. Barry eventually found out how we could get them but i’m not allowed to tell you that.

We even thought about making some supersuits for us so we could have powers; like a suit that shoots ice projectiles, and one with fire, and my favorite one that allows you to run at a max of mach 4. (He doesn’t even know it yet but he soon becomes something more than that). We had many projects we wanted to try but saving Jess was our main objective at the moment. We decided to call this mission “Operation Dire wolf.”