BEFORE YOU GO TRAVELLING

Before you go travelling, you always feel a little sick but it’s never been this bad. Normally you might get a bit queasy, maybe a sleepless night just before the flight. You feel the same this time but it’s much, much worse. You can manage the nausea and anxiety but the dreams. You can’t shake them. You used to dream in first person, not that you really noticed, but after the first test, after… after you saw your own face. Now your dreams are all in third person, like you’re watching someone else. Someone else’s story. Someone else with your face.

That’s enough. You shake off the memory and head into the lab. It’s a bright room, about the size of a warehouse. The air is sterile but tastes of metal and no matter where you are you can always hear a distant hum or beeping. In the centre, on a platform, is a large cannister of shining steel. Wires, pipes and precision instrumentation splay out of it like it’s some great metal octopus. The room is filled with technicians, head to foot in white overalls. They’ve all been waiting for today. Waiting for you. When you enter you can tell everyone’s looking at you, even if they try to hide it. Doesn’t help your uneasiness.

Metz stands up to give the usual briefing. There’s an applause when he finishes then everyone takes their position for final checks but you just stand there for a moment. What are you supposed to do? No one’s done this before. Thankfully, Ash takes you to one side for final suit checks.

“So, we’re going with ‘chrononaut’ then?” you say, trying to make small talk.

“I guess so. Beats me, I voted for ‘timeketeer’,” she says as she refastens the padded white glove of your support-suit. “Nervous?”

You’ve been wanting someone to ask that for months but now they have, you wish they hadn’t.

“I don’t think I’m allowed to be. The mission succeeds.”

“It’s a big day,” she smiles up at you, “You’re allowed to be nervous.”

You nod but don’t quite believe her. You don’t want your nerves to let everyone down.

“When I’ve made the trip,” you say, “When I’m on the other side. I’m still not sure what to do. I mean, with my hands, do you remember what I did with my hands?”

“I think you waved? Don’t overthink it, just do what feels natural.”

She’s right. You probably didn’t overthink it then, so don’t over think it now. You walk up to the gantry and as you do Ash says, “Godspeed, timeketeer.”

You smile and climb up to the top of the large metal cylinder. Given how cumbersome the suit is you needed to be helped up by the half-a-dozen technicians at the ready.

You reach the top of the cylinder and you’re fastened into a harness. You feel a lurch as you’re lifted off the gantry and slowly lowered down into the cylinder. The sound from the lab is instantly cushioned to a muffled hum once you’re inside the chamber. The space is lined with wiring and shining gold instruments in repeating patterns. In front of you is a very small port hole of thick glass. There’s only just enough room to raise your arms but not enough to sit down. It won’t matter, this will be a short trip.

At least you know what to do in here and you set to work fastening up your legs, stomach and chest to the tubes and valves necessary for the experiment. Once in place and you have even less mobility, you give a thumbs up to the techs above you who reach down and plug in the parts of the suit you can’t reach. Then, for the final touch, they pass you your hood and you slip on the padded helmet until you can see out of the clear visor. You take the breathing apparatus in your mouth and inhale. It’s soft, but incredibly tight fitting, like being vacuumed-sealed into a bag.

Oddly, for the first time in months, you feel calm. You can feel all the little nodes in the suit that will track your bio-chemical status down to the atomic level and it feels like a nice, tight hug. There’s no sounds. No outside world. Just you. And you’re safe.

Through the porthole you can see across the lab to the viewing galley where rows of people are tapping away at consoles. Metz stands at the centre and gives you a thumbs up. You give a thumbs up back. Then the hatch above you is closed and sealed.

There’s still a few minutes of checks and calculations to be done. Preliminary full body scans are being made but you don’t feel any different yet. There’s nothing for you to do but sit tight and wait.

You eye up the controls to your right. Since all the controlling happens in the other room, the controls are laughably simple. Just two buttons, one green and one red. ‘Go’ and ‘abort’. In every test you’ve never needed to hit the red and since it’s inevitable that you hit green, you guess you won’t now either.

A voice crackles in through a miniature speaker in the hood, “Comms check, one two, one two.”

“Comms check good, loud and clear,” you reply.

“Alright kiddo, you ready to boldly go where you’ve already been before?”

You do a final spot check and verbally run through the checks with Metz. Once you have the all clear he says, “OK, then we are a ‘go’ for traversal. One month. Whenever you’re ready.”

You take a breath and say, “Ready.”

“Alright, then traversing in, twelve… eleven… ten…”

You feel your breathing slow to match Metz’s counting. You know there’s nothing to worry about now, it’s all out of your hands.

“Nine… eight… seven…”

But it’s still there. You can’t help the nerves. Can’t help but see your own face from your dreams.

“Six… five… four…”

You rest you hand just above the buttons. You’re ready to hit green but your hand is not on green, it’s just between green and red.

“Three…”

You didn’t hit red. You saw yourself travel. You know you didn’t hit red.

“Two…”

You have to hit green. You have to hit green. You have to hit green.

“One…”

You press it. You hit the button.