A low steady hum. A bright green nothingness. Suddenly I feel myself ripping, as if every molecule in my body is moving outwards from the center. Everything is spinning. My body can’t take this for much longer. My lungs are gasping for air, my body is numb, I am going to die.
Then everything stops. There’s no more hum, no more green, and I’m breathing again. I see nothing but darkness. I can hear voices, but I can’t understand what they’re saying. The language is foregin. I’ve become aware that my eyes are closed. I need to get them open. My body feels like it’s coming out of an intense numbness. The voices come and go. Hopefully it’s not them, I know they’re looking for me.
After what feels like several minutes the feeling in my eyelids returns. I opened my eyes to see that my experiment worked. I’m laying in the corner of what appears to be an electronics store. Strange devices line the shelves. In my pocket I can feel the disc is still there. This is perfect.
The store is crowded with shoppers. Luckily, nobody has noticed the strange man in the corner. I get up and start down the aisles, looking for that fabled box. Finally, things start to look right. Boxes with other discs inside. I just need to find the right player. Nothing seems quite right. Every box is the wrong color, the wrong size, or is lacking the right disc slot. Then I see something that looks right. Is this an Xbox? It is slimmer, and the words read “Xbox 360”.
It must be a newer model, but I have no choice. I must hope that my Codename: Kids Next Door – Operation: V.I.D.E.O.G.A.M.E. will work on this machine. For years I have yearned to unlock the secrets of this ancient relic. I spent my life researching temporal quarks to make this happen. When my colleagues were getting published for their research on curing the poor or uneducating the wealthy, I was holed away bashing particles together in my homemade particle accelerator. All those years of choosing the disc over everything else has led me to this moment.
I hit the power button and a screen lights up. Just like the simulations. My hand trembling, I insert the disc and close the tray. The machine makes a noise, the disc is spinning inside. This is it, this is the moment I’ve been waiting for. Suddenly, a hand grabs my shoulder.
Oh no! It’s a time cop. The tall, helmeted figure locks onto my eyes with his laser goggles. “That game isn’t compatible with the 360”. I turn back to the screen hoping for at least a glimpse of some tangible reward, but nothing has happened. “And you’re not compatible with this timeline”. Boom! There’s a huge flash of flight and the wind is knocked out of me.
I’m back in my lab. Everything is still how I left it, the grandfather clock shows 7:14pm and the model train is about to enter the station. I check my pocket. The disc is gone, left in another world. My life’s work is a waste. Without obtaining a new optical disc I’ll never be able to time travel again. I guess that’s just life as a particle physicist.