Part Two
I built this machine and it did exactly what I intended. It took time and it stopped it.
I only meant for it to happen to us. It was supposed to be confined to this box, but somehow it bled out into everything.
The world stopped. No one grew old. No one died. No one was born. Nothing changed at all. Living was suspended. Everything was paused.
And I don’t know how to make it start again.
I went back to before I'd built it. That world was gone. Crumbling ladders to dusty attics filled with corpses.
I went forward to long afterward. That world was empty. Swollen grass and gnarled buildings echoing the whispers of my failed conceit..
We're all that's left. Us. Inside this box. That goes everywhere that's ever been. All the nothing that remains of it.
This box. Staggering with all the voices of that no longer are. Because of me.
I ache for everything I loathed before it was lost.
I want it back. The deceit. The greed. The hate. All the foul traits that made us strong and compelled us to love.
We decay in the truth of my success. It’s all gone.
I built it thinking I had won. That time was a disease and I had cured it.
Now the whole world is only the contents of this box. Just us. Trapped in the void I've created. Both alive and dead. Waiting for this vial of poison to finally break.