Cycled on and on and on....

 Loop

  Aryan Mukherjee

    Mosquitos cackled with glee as they pelted from all sides to attack Everett. He had long back acknowledged that his efforts to swat them away had been rendered useless by their sheer size, and besides, he might as well conserve his energy. It was a long hike up to the Garden, and his canteen of water was but a few drops condensing at the bottom of his bottle. Everett sighed, and half-fainted against the bark of a massive lump of tree wood. How did I even get here?  He pondered all the events that had taken place thus far, and sighed as he realized how ironic this whole equation was.

    5 hours earlier…

    Everett threw himself down at his bed like a professional diver, and lay there in perfect stillness as the circles in his mind spun out of range. It had appeared as though in his own little life, he was carrying the weight of 7 worlds in sorry excuse for shoulders. Hmm, maybe that’s why mom was saying my shoulders were always sagging. Oh well. His thoughts finally easing down a bit, were rudely interrupted by a chime. Without looking, he grasped his phone from the desk adjacent, and his limp arm proceeded its journey towards him in what was probably the most effort he had put into anything all day. As he gingerly popped open one eye, he plowed his face back into his sheets, muffling his groans. It was Richard.

    Richard was an old acquaintance and friend who Everett had known since grade school, yet has always had the reputation for being a bit looney. You see, when he was 11 years old, Richard was victim to a brutal car accident, rupturing the lobe of his brain in charge of reasoning and empathy. Yet, due to his sheer brilliance built up and eccentrified over the years, Richard grew into one of the greatest “mad” scientists to ever live. But what’s a cat without its own field of mice? That’s where Everett comes in. And it appears that Richard wants to have another friendly little “talk”, where he raves about another mad phenomena and sweet talks Everett into giving him a helping hand.

    As Everett entered Richard’s dorm, it appeared as though he had been going particularly crazy as of late. Valves of electricity buzzed in one corner with broken shards of glass forming a cocoon around some cages, as flaps of scrap paper lined the walls and floors and several past contraptions see their remains scattered all across the room. Richard was shrouded over a large machine in the corner, his banana twisted smile radiating under artificial light, and his spiky white hair glistening from his home-made gel. 

    “Everett, friend, boy do I have something to show you. You see, I’ve been thinking…”

    “That’s already not a good sign. Last time you were thinking the whole city almost had a power outage.”

    “Maybe, but this time, I am confident there are no errors in my perception. You see, I’ve widened my scope from itty-bitty revolutions that stop the smallest of problems, to something overwhelmingly big, something that could be a cure for all human predicaments, ever.”

    “Okay, let’s hear it then.”

    “You see, from the beginning of time, humans have been inundated with a rabid sense of violence, almost as if it drifts through their blood. And they had no choice, they were forced to kill rabbits, deer, and any game to simply survive. Their past misconceptions about how to operate in society transitioned throughout the years, until now, it has been abused and overused as any means to an end. Humanity, to its core, is evil.”

    “Ok, but what can we do about that? It’s not like we can flip a switch and save humanity.”

    “Ahh yes, but even that would be selfish wouldn’t it? What about the world outside of humans? Plants, animals, Earth itself has been devastated from our effects, and our mere existence has been a boon to life all over Earth.”

    “Richard, get to the point. What are you trying to say?”

    “What I’m saying is that if we can’t live in harmony, then why live at all. Wouldn’t this world truly be a better place if it was fully rid of humans all together. That’s why I present to you this. I created a time machine of sorts, where it doesn’t completely alter time, yet is able to bring you back to a specific moment of time, and freeze it there, with all future effects void until a consensus is decided. Essentially, we can alter anything that has ever happened in our history thus far, and only until when it is absolutely perfect, we can come back to modern day and watch as the effects of our actions unravel.”

    “Oh my god, that’s crazy! But how? And more importantly, what do you want me to do with this? I mean there’s so many events we can change, it's hard to know just where to begin-”

    “Oh no no no. Like aforementioned, humanity is the source of all evil. And so we must eliminate it from the ground up. Our founders, Adam and Eve, were the two who birthed humanity all together. I want you to find Adam, and kill him, in cold blood. Spill the blood of one man so others can be saved. Do it for the greater good of humanity.”

    And before Everett even had a chance to respond, Richard firmly clutched onto his shoulders and jousted him forward into the oddly shaped machinery. An inaudible protest surged from Everett’s lips, but they were sealed just as quickly as was the contraption, and in a matter of seconds, it was gone, and all that was left was a ruffle of papers floating to a steady halt on the ground.

    Everett knew this friendship was doomed from the start, but couldn’t have helped himself. He was allured to Richard and his devious schemes, a lab partner who found fortune in his ability to simply marvel in the wonder of Richard’s work. There was always a line to be drawn, a boundary simply too far to be crossed, but as the momentum would steer Everett further across the sand, he would feel his feet drifting up a storm of sand, clogging his vision and subduing him from seeing when his feet crossed that line. He was always one to follow the hype, and now it was 5500 B.C, and the Earth was as moist and humid as had ever been. Some hype.

    As Everett tried to navigate himself, two occult things immediately took place. For one, there wasn’t any noise. It was like this entire moment was being broadcasted on live T.V, but the commentator had accidentally pressed the mute button instead of the Volume Up button on his speakers. Second, as soon as he stepped back out of the time machine, it disappeared, leaving a massive imprint on the ground. Fascinated by the world around him, it wasn’t until much later that Everett realized why this was a problem, and how there was simply no other way to return back to the present.

    But why the disappearance? Well, it all follows natural convention. Whenever science has any sort of way of making an appearance into people’s lives in any positive way shape or form, authoritarian intercession is but a natural course that follows. Not only that, but it seems as though the government has a radar for dangerous fun, and it just set off a massive signal.

    So back in the present, as Richard is in cloud nine dancing on thoughts of a pure world and free conscience, his bubble is burst by the most serrated of needles; Eduardo.

    You see, Eduardo has been on to Richard since the start of this whole operation. Brains over brawns from the get-go, Eduardo was recruited into the military under the highest honors, and the government had even appointed him as the head of spyware. Yet as word of Richard’s growing fame and fantastic experiments flooded the world, Eduardo had a suspicion that this trail of breadcrumbs would lead right to Richard absorbing a notion of world domination, and he was correct, to some degree.

    So Eduardo, one night, had snuck into Richard’s dorm and installed state of the art military cameras, spying on Richard’s every move made. Although this was a massively punishable offense as well as one of the oldest tricks in the book that Richard’s colossal brain could have easily snuffed out, neither of the two outcomes came to light, and Eduardo’s year-long stake-out was in constant operation. So when Richard was finally caught with something as dastardly as endeavoring to annihilate humanity altogether, Eduardo was born to strike. 

    Neglecting to knock, Richard’s thin wooden frame of a door burst down, and Eduardo lugged his 240 pound military body into Richard's scrawny frame, a gleaming black machine gun in his trembling grasps.

    “H-hi w-would you like a cup of t-tea?” Richard inquired, to which he was launched into submission at the other side of the room, where he lay there, motionless but alive, a trickle of blood oozing out of his ovular head.

    Eduardo's attention instantaneously deviated to the matter at hand- the time machine. With but a minor knack for science in the 4th grade fueling his knowledge, he entangled his hands within a jumble of wires and circuits present atop the clunky apparatus.

    “How the hell does this thing work?” Eduardo scratched his head vigorously, effectively removing some dandruff from his head and quenching his frustration in the process. Suddenly, a thin strap of folded sheets of paper encroached into his vision. “Instruction Manual”, it read, and he wasted no time getting to work.

    Meanwhile, back thousands of years ago, Everett was having quite the trouble scouring for Everett. The moist climate caused so much perspiration that Everett thought his body would soon dry up into a mass of salty liquid, and the brush and shrubbery entailing this dense mainland was constantly badgering his feet. Although he had a clear direction in mind for where the Garden of Eden was, his paltry knowledge from legends was hardly enough to enable him mastery of the land.

    And who would have thought mosquitos would be an issue? They cackled with glee as they pelted from all sides to attack Everett. He had long back acknowledged that his efforts to swat them away had been rendered useless by their sheer size, and besides, he might as well conserve his energy. It was a long hike up to the Garden, and his canteen of water was but a few drops condensing at the bottom of his bottle.

    Suddenly, a whir as thunderous as the cry of a falling boulder shook Everett to the ground. He tilted his head up precariously, and his face turned to a pale, cotton white. A boar, towering five hundred feet high, pounded the dirt in front of Everett, conjuring a smoke cloud that rose for miles. The boar snuffed, and peered down at Everett, thick, acidic slobs of drool pounding the ground below him like congregated raindrops.

    “REEEEEEE!” the boar shrieked like a woman seeing a spider, and lifted its trotters up to squarely above Everett’s head. Petrified, Everett lay there aghast, his upper lip still quivering from the cataclysm. Then, as the boar pushed its foot down to seal his fate, another whir, this time slightly less cacophonous filled the presence.

    Eduardo sauntered out of the time machine, a smirk as sly as math textbooks adorned onto his face as he patted the dust from his shirt. He had done it! He figured out how the machine worked, and now, was face to face with the world of the ages. Then, as soon as he walked from the machine, it creaked an agonizing holler, and upon swiveling back, Eduardo saw it crushed under the weight of the gargantuan boar. Now, we had two petrified men, both agape in horror as the boar recoiled for the second blow. This time, there was no lucky maneuver they would use to escape, and their only exit was but robotic remains, blown into smithereens.

    Miles in the distance, Adam sat upon his throne, gazing enticingly at Eve plucking flowers in the distance. Suddenly, a murder of crows scattered from the trees next to him, and he peered into the distance as cloud of smoke appeared.

    Hmm, Adam thought. It appears there has been another attempt at redemption. This modern generation must have truly been atrocious for all these attempts at my life to populate. Thank God Ivan is there to take care of them. Today, I will pay him extra for his services. And the cycle continues.

    So all of this, and for what? Humanity has been restored back to its usual presence, and nothing changes. The time machine, a creation so powerful it could effectively alter reality altogether, chose a deviation from righteousness, and was crushed in the process.

    Simply put, people always ponder over their mistakes, and put over the subtle imperfections that have corrupted their lives thus far, rather than formulating plans to prevent such malignancies from ever taking place in the future. So to my readers- Don’t waste your time crying over spilt milk. Take out a towel, clean it up. And next time, just take things slowly, one sip at a time, until it's all over, and the floor stays dry.