That was the exact fraction of a second his sister had vanished from a locked room.
When he opened them, the smell of ozone was gone. Instead, the air smelled of stale coffee and old books. 1676971801.002
He had spent three years building the rig sitting in his garage. It was a chaotic mess of copper coils, liquid cooling tubes, and overclocked processors that hummed with a low, bone-shaking frequency. Arthur wasn't trying to build a time machine to visit the dinosaurs or see the future. He just wanted that one fraction of a second back. He pulled the lever. That was the exact fraction of a second
He was standing in his old apartment. It was dark, save for the blue glow of a laptop screen in the corner. There she was. Elena was sitting on the floor, typing away at her thesis, completely unaware of the temporal anomaly forming behind her. He had spent three years building the rig
The hum rose to a glass-shattering shriek. The air turned the metallic color of a bruised sky. Arthur squeezed his eyes shut as a blinding flash of white light swallowed his vision.
He reached out a hand, his fingers tingling with static. He was a ghost in his own past. Elena paused, shivering slightly as if a cold draft had just swept through the sealed room. She looked up from her screen, looking directly toward him. "Arthur?" she whispered into the empty air. Then, the clock flipped.
Arthur watched in horror as the air around Elena began to fracture like broken glass. The timestamp was executing itself.