It was June 2022 and 22 year old twins, Michaela and Michael were back in Locatelli, a scantily-populated area in Sweden.
They had recently concluded their Master's at MIT and were back, on to the project that had come to define their lives.
Their late dad's hedge fund money had long been the basis of their fund-demanding research and experiments.
Michaela was the more brilliant of the twins but she was the more skeptical one who wasn't keen on heavy risks unlike her brother who had coronary artery disease and had been diagnosed as terminal about 9 months back.
"I think we're done. I sincerely have a good feeling about this one, Michael." Michaela said to the sleeping Michael who had passed out from overnight stress on the couch few feet away from the lab entrance.
This was no ordinary lab, and the only comparison that came close in terms of facilities and multimillion dollar physics equipment in this place was Tony's Stark Labs.
Despite the weakness in his body, Michael dragged himself from the couch and leaned on the entrance of the laboratory door as he stared at the buzzing human-sized glass that was before him.
This was getting too real for him to take at once, and in that swarming midst of thoughts, he slumped to the ground safely with his right side and he barely groaned as his focus was fixed on what seemed like his future.
Michaela retreated and helped her brother, who loooed very sickly now, to get up from the floor.
"What do you say, we do this now, once and for all?" Michael said to her face, short of breath.
Michaela had only ever wanted for her brother to be well and full of life again. The last time she had that was 7 years ago, when they were juniors in High School.
"Yeah, let's do this" Michaela replied as the reluctance in her head vanished.
Michael leaned on his sister with his eyes on the prize which buzzed hope and faith for him as he got closer.
"You think you can hold on for a minute?" Michaela asked as she hurried to sync her AI modelled wristwatch with the Time machine through the supercomputer on the table.
Michaela read what was on the screen one more time, "Available jumps- 9" and she sighed deeply, doubting herself and realising that she couldn't afford to get it wrong. She couldn't fail her brother and their project. She synced the devices together and returned to hold her brother as she pulled the door to them and opened it.
"It's gonna be okay, Michaela" Michael reassured her as he stepped in first.
"Yeah, it will be" Michaela said slowly and quietly as she felt a shimmer of hope within her as she walked into this buzzing box of quantum energy right after her brother.
Michael was still taking in the view of the awesomeness that they'd created and Michaela smiled at him before hitting the "JUMP" button on her wristwatch.
The buzz intensified and the waves that surrounded within this box were softly hitting them. This feeling was hard to describe. It was science without proof, and it felt like the Sun and the moon having a romantic intercourse. Michael smlled with what looked like a "freak face" as this happened.
3 seconds of human time into this buzzing which caused little seismic activities within the room outside the box, they vanished. The box was empty and the buzzing had reduced significantly.
Michael gasped, Michaela gulped at what happened here and when- the future.
She had made the perfect jump. They'd just made the fictitious time travel possible and she should have been happy, but she wasn't.
They'd time- landed in a German Hospital where Michael was being wheeled into the theatre and Michaela was wearing worry on every inch of her face as she held on to the wheeled bed in motion.
"Was he going to be okay? What did this mean?" Michaela thought to herself as her brother entered the operating room and the doors were shut.
Was the time travel wristwatch jump synced with her thoughts and desires? How else could she explain landing in a German Hospital with her brother being wheeled for surgery.
She was running mad within her own head and her face turned towards the ground and she saw 2036 on her wristwatch. They'd jumped 14 years into the future and Michaela couldn't wrap her head around the shock; the time jump or the fact that they hadn't aged a bit.
These questions that couldn't be answered posed a threat to Michaela's emotional stability with readings here and there off the charts.
In the midst of this quagmire, Michaela just couldn't find the calmness within the storm of her thoughts as she hyperventilated.
As she opened up her eyes, her surrounding had changed. She was in an entirely different outfit in an entirely different place. She couldn't grasp this reality and she looked at her wristwatch only to discover she had time-jumped again as a result of her anxiety.
She was in 2039 and she couldn't understand any of it. Paris was breathtaking, more than she last remembered it. It was right before her eyes as she stood on what looked like a skyscraper that gave her a view of the whole city at dusk.
Where was Michael? If she'd jumped, did she kill him? Why wasn't he here?
She could only think the worst about it all right now. She pressed the wristwatch's screen in a bid to alter her most recent time-jump but got no response besides a weak vibration.
"Error Alert. Quantum coordinates entanglement. Error" The wristwatch buzzed repeatedly as it popped up different colours of light.
Michaela couldn't breathe and she was sweating at a rate of thought per second. She'd lost control of their key to the Future and was certain she'd lost her brother. Her face was weeping sweats from every angle and curve.
A hand tapped her right shoulder from behind. She was terrified, who was this?
"It's okay, Michaela, it is." The familiar voice said to her from behind.