The Last Blink🔊

In a place where time travel was as common as breathing air, people, or Time Jumpers as they were called, moved back and forth in time to rewrite histories. Our protagonist, John Grady, was one of these Time Jumpers. He was skilled, smart, and had an innate ability for this complex science.

John lived in a future where technology had outgrown human lives, where robots and A.I had made manual jobs obsolete, and yet, he had a job that only he could approach. The year was 2100, and he was employed by the Time Council, a governing body that regulated time travels.

John's life took a different turn when one day, the Time Council summoned him for a crucial mission. The council had detected a mysterious time-wave threatening to destabilize their universe. John had the responsibility to trace back this time-wave to its original epoch and neutralize it. The clock was ticking, for this wave could potentially erase their history and reality.

With moral and professional responsibility weighing heavy on his shoulders, John gripped his time-traveling device, fondly referred to as 'Blinker,' and started for the most dangerous trip of his life. The device was set to navigate John to the date where the wave had originated.

Upon arrival, John found himself in the year 1500, the era of inventions and exploration, an era where the very concept of time travel seemed ludicrous. People lived without any technology, their lives far removed from John's reality. Yet, this was where the deadly time-wave had originated, waiting to erase John's world altogether.

John had to tread carefully, as interacting with people from this period threatened to cause a paradox, potentially changing the face of history too. The idea was to solve the problem without alerting this world about their future and the looming disaster.

John began his investigation by tracing the time-wave's energy. His Blinker led him to a small, modest workshop. As he surveyed the room, his eyes fell on a familiar device. It was an early model of a time machine, raw and rudimentary, but a time machine nonetheless. The man who owned the workshop was none other than the famous scientist, Leonardo Da Vinci.

In the heart of Florentine society, Leonardo had unknowingly invented a time machine, causing the destructive time-wave. John was astonished. The thought of Leonardo being an aspiring time traveller was mind-boggling yet evidence lay in front of his eyes.

Knowing Leonardo's historical significance, John couldn't hamper his life or work. However, he couldn't ignore the deadly wave resulting from Leonardo's invention. So, he decided to tweak the machine. John planned to subtly make changes to the theoretical basis of Leonardo's time travelling concept, making sure it never achieved the functionality of a real time machine.

Late into the night, when everyone was asleep, John silently sneaked into the workshop. He studied the drawings, equations, and the time machine itself. With a few calculated changes, he started tweaking the time machine’s framework. Hours later, a thin layer of sweat on his brow, he had accomplished what he had intentionally set out to do: render the machine useless as a time-travelling device.

It was now all about waiting. All he needed was for the new future to catch up with him. Confident of his success, he aimed his Blinker at himself, and with one last look at the ancient era, he pressed the 'return' button.

Back in 2100, things were different. His world wasn't erased, indicating his success in eliminating the time-wave. A heaviness lifted from his heart. He had saved his world, a world that continued to grow, invent, evolve, and yes, time travel.

Reflecting on his mission, John was humbled. He realized that there was always order in chaos, a delicate balance maintained even amidst the paradoxes of time travel. He stowed away his Blinker, deciding that he had jumped through time enough for one lifetime.

In a universe playing with possibilities, John was just a man—a Time Jumper—who had thwarted a universe-altering wave. A man who understood that even the smallest twitch in the past could ripple the future in unimaginable ways. It was a lesson John Grady would carry with him, a profound truth he had learned while standing at the precipice of time.