The Loop of Time🔊

In the quiet but advanced city of Sern, lived a prodigy named David. Son to a pioneering physicist, he was always fascinated by the concept of time travel. His father, Professor Timothy, had dedicated his life to unravelling the mysteries of time, often engrossing himself in his colossal basement lab. David admired his father’s determination and followed in his footsteps.

One day, a mishap occurred in the lab as Professor Timothy experiment with a prototype device. The experiment resulted in a fatal accident, leaving a grieved David alone with the remnants of what could have been a history-altering device. Heartbroken, David decided to finish his father's endeavor - he set forth building a time machine to prevent his father's mishap.

Years passed by, and after numerous trials and errors, David created a beautiful paradox, a time-travelling device he fondly named 'The Chronicle'. Armed with his father’s notes and The Chronicle, David journeyed into the past. He emerged a week earlier before the accident in his father's lab. However, time-travel has a simple yet incredibly convoluted premise, ‘Don’t interact with anything that possibly can disrupt the timeline.’

Unfortunately, the tale turned tragic as David's prevention measures led to the same accident but this time, taking both of them. Realizing his mistake of disregarding the guideline, David used the last bit of his strength to reset The Chronicle, rewinding a week further back, just before his intervention.

This time he decided to take the advice given by countless time-travelling narratives. He acted like a shadow, engaging in minimal interactions. Day by day, he carefully manipulated the surroundings leading up to the accident, subtly undermining the deadly outcome. However, he faced another knot in time as his father became suspicious of these odd happenings. When D-day arrived, Professor Timothy deduced that someone was meddling with his experiments, leading to a full lab lock-down and eventually the same mishap.

It became a loop as David reset the timeline again and again, he interacted less with the surroundings yet mysteriously, the outcome never changed. Until exhaustion caught up, and he found himself sitting in a café staring at the lab across the street, feeling hopeless. There, he met a kind old woman who reminded him of his mother. Listening to his queries, she suggested, 'Sometimes the more we try to fix something, the more we end up breaking it.’

Hit by realization, David finally decided to step back, allowing fate to take its course. But he left a detailed letter to his father about safety measures and precautions, hoping that his father would figure it out. Returning to his timeline, he experienced the paradox first hand as his father was still there.

Professor Timothy, upon seeing his son, hugged him tightly, thanking him for the letter that saved his life. With tears in his eyes, he confessed, he was so caught up in his work, he forgot to take the necessary precautions. David's letter was a wake-up call, saving him from an ill-fated end.

This event triggered a change, making David let go of his obsession with time. Focusing back on the present, he realized the value of moments he was losing while chasing the past. He became a renowned physicist like his father but with a different perspective, aiming to make life better in the present, a lesson he learned after several iterations in the loop of time.