Reptillian
Hamburgler Extraordinaire
I wrote a short story for a contest (500 words or less), and I'm curious about what people think. I hope I posted this in the right place.
Here's the story:
They were Temporal Cartographers, a team of time travelers tasked with mapping Earths surface in the past. Specifically, the pair focused on Earth during the Ediacaran period. Ordinarily the central time travel facility, dubbed The Hub, placed temporal mapping pods into low earth orbit at a specified time using directed general relativistic quantum tunneling. Pods remained tethered to The Hub in the year 2543 via energy stored up in their quantum cores, and their hulls contained a field generating device that locked them into their destination time. When a traveler wished to return to the future, he simply released the lock and the potential energy stored in the quantum core pulled the pod back to The Hub; like a ball attached to a rubber band.
Unfortunately for Sarah and Milton, the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics had reared its ugly head, and the duos pod had come to rest deep beneath the Earths crust in some sort of cavern or lava tube. They found themselves, against all odds, trapped miles beneath the surface in the year 600 million BC. Sarah realized that a loss of energy meant that the pod wouldnt be able to make the journey back to its own time, and ran a quick calculation. Due to the large temporal displacement involved, even this small energy loss would meant that the closest time they could reach to their own would be 30 million BC. Even then, they would remain entombed miles beneath the Earths surface buried alive. "Maybe well get lucky" said Sarah grimly as she prepared to release the lock.
Here's the story:
The red flashing lights on the control panel told her that something wasnt quite right. She glanced over at Milton. His gaze was fixed forward as beads of sweat poured down his chubby face. A locked look of sheer terror expressed the absolute horror gripping and crippling his soul. He was frozen; dead and useless. As the meaning of the flashing lights crawled into her consciousness, the stuffy cockpit seemed to constrict, twist, and contort around her. Was the room growing warmer? A pearl of hot sweat trickled down the back of her neck as she felt the paralysis afflicting Milton slowly well up from the depths of her own psyche. It was primal fear, experienced only during moonless nights by those men of ages long forgotten in forests filled with savage monstrous foes. Sarah and Milton sat in an ancient place dark beyond imagination, and the flashing light indicated a slight power fluctuation in the quantum core of -0.25%.They were Temporal Cartographers, a team of time travelers tasked with mapping Earths surface in the past. Specifically, the pair focused on Earth during the Ediacaran period. Ordinarily the central time travel facility, dubbed The Hub, placed temporal mapping pods into low earth orbit at a specified time using directed general relativistic quantum tunneling. Pods remained tethered to The Hub in the year 2543 via energy stored up in their quantum cores, and their hulls contained a field generating device that locked them into their destination time. When a traveler wished to return to the future, he simply released the lock and the potential energy stored in the quantum core pulled the pod back to The Hub; like a ball attached to a rubber band.
Unfortunately for Sarah and Milton, the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics had reared its ugly head, and the duos pod had come to rest deep beneath the Earths crust in some sort of cavern or lava tube. They found themselves, against all odds, trapped miles beneath the surface in the year 600 million BC. Sarah realized that a loss of energy meant that the pod wouldnt be able to make the journey back to its own time, and ran a quick calculation. Due to the large temporal displacement involved, even this small energy loss would meant that the closest time they could reach to their own would be 30 million BC. Even then, they would remain entombed miles beneath the Earths surface buried alive. "Maybe well get lucky" said Sarah grimly as she prepared to release the lock.
It probably doesn't help that I've been reading a lot of Shakespeare and Dante's Divine Comedy lately. I've found that my writing style is influenced by whatever I'm reading at the time.
But i neeeeed a happy ending here, plz plz perty plz, just like let some dude in a horse-pod come save her or how about oh I dunno God? okok I am pushing here, Let's go with the Horse-pod and make sure It is white and handsome.
