Echoes of Tomorrow
Chapter One: The Warning
Dr. Miriam Steele stared at the clock in her lab—tick. The seconds seemed to crawl as if
they were aware of the weight they carried. Just one more second, and she'd be able to
confirm the impossible. A soft hum filled the air as the machine at the center of the room
whirred to life. It looked like a tangle of wires and coils, standing tall like an ancient sentinel,
its polished silver surface gleaming under the fluorescent lights.
"Ten seconds," Miriam whispered to herself, watching the countdown on the screen in front
of her. It was a simple test—a calibration, really—but it was the first time she'd run the
temporal analyzer at full capacity.
She tapped a few keys, adjusting parameters that only she understood. Her fingers
trembled, though she told herself it was just the usual anxiety before a big breakthrough.
Still, something gnawed at her insides. This wasn't like any other experiment.
Three seconds.
The machine hummed louder, a deep vibration she could feel in her chest. It was as if the
room itself was holding its breath.
Two seconds.
Miriam's eyes flicked back to the countdown. This was it. After years of work, this would be
the moment she proved that time could be altered—that the past could be changed, if only in
the smallest way.
One second.
The machine sputtered once, then emitted a series of high-pitched beeps. A bright flash of
blue light burst from the core, filling the room with an intense glow. Miriam’s hand shot out,
slamming a lever to engage the failsafe, but she was too late.
The light flared for an instant, and then—silence.
Miriam blinked, disoriented. The lab looked the same, the humming of the machine replaced
by a faint, eerie stillness. She hesitated, reaching out to check the console. The numbers
flashed erratically. The test had been a failure—or had it?
"Shit," she muttered under her breath, running a diagnostic. It wasn’t possible. The
calibration had worked. The analyzer had been flawless in every trial. But the readings didn’t
match up.
The machine flickered again. A new set of data appeared on the screen, but Miriam froze.
Her hands went cold as she read the words.
Temporal distortion detected.
She squinted at the numbers, but they were nonsensical—jumbled figures that didn't
correspond to anything in her calculations. Time wasn't supposed to distort like this. It was
supposed to be a smooth, continuous flow, a line stretching from past to present to future.
But this... This was something different.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a sudden noise behind her. The air in the room shifted, as
if something had passed through it—something unnatural. Miriam’s pulse quickened. She
spun around, searching the empty lab. The door was closed, the windows sealed. No one
was there.
A chill ran down her spine.
"Hello?" Her voice trembled as she spoke. She took a cautious step forward, her mind
racing. There was no reason for this. No explanation for the strange distortion, or the odd
sensation in the air.
And then it happened.
A voice. A whisper, but not from any living person. It came from everywhere at once.
"Miriam... you have to stop."
Her breath caught in her throat. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She swallowed
hard.
"Miriam, you have to stop it," the voice said again. Not now. Not yet.
She spun toward the source of the voice, but the room was empty, as it should have been.
There was no one there, and yet... she could feel someone, something, watching her. The
voice was faint, barely audible, but it carried an authority, a sense of urgency, that sent a
wave of dread coursing through her veins.
"Who—who are you?" Miriam gasped, taking a step back, her hand instinctively reaching for
the emergency shutdown button on her console.
The room remained silent, but the chill deepened. The lights flickered.
"We are you, Miriam. From a future you cannot comprehend."
The voice didn’t sound human, yet it was undeniably hers.
Her heart pounded. She knew it was impossible. There was no way for someone—or
something—from the future to be here. She had just completed a small test. A calibration.
But the voice... It was so real. And the words—We are you—sounded like a warning.
With trembling hands, Miriam hit the shutdown button. The machine powered down with a
mechanical groan, and the room fell into complete silence. The hairs on her arms stood on
end as the strange voice faded, leaving nothing but the residual echo of its final warning.
"Stop it, before it’s too late."
Chapter Two: The Visitor
Miriam spent the next few hours poring over her data, trying to find any rational explanation
for what had just happened. Her notes were scattered across the desk, filled with equations
and scribbled observations that made no sense. She had come to the conclusion that the
machine had created a form of temporal interference, something far beyond her
understanding. But the voice... the voice was something else entirely.
It couldn’t have been a hallucination. She knew her mind well enough to recognize the
difference between panic-induced paranoia and a legitimate phenomenon.
She needed answers. Real answers.
After a long, sleepless night of searching for any patterns in the data, Miriam finally decided
to take a break and clear her head. She grabbed her coat, locked up the lab, and stepped
outside into the crisp morning air. The city was still quiet, the early morning fog clinging to
the pavement.
She hadn’t gone far when she spotted a figure standing by the corner of the street, leaning
against the lamppost. Tall, cloaked, with a hood that obscured most of their face. The figure
didn’t move, didn’t acknowledge her presence.
Miriam hesitated. A strange sense of déjà vu washed over her, as though she had seen this
person before, but she couldn’t place where.
As she walked closer, the figure straightened up, pushing away from the lamppost. Miriam's
heart skipped a beat when she heard a voice—soft, familiar, but not quite.
"You’ve already begun."
Miriam stopped in her tracks, her breath catching in her throat. The voice. It was the same.
The same voice from the lab.
"No, no, no," she muttered, taking a step back.
The figure took a step forward, and for the first time, Miriam saw their eyes. They were
impossibly familiar—her eyes, but somehow older, more weathered.
"You were warned, Miriam."
