Prologue: The first spacetime travel
In the year 7 A.C.E., Anna became the first human to successfully travel through spacetime. It wasn't by design—her only goal was to experience the world outside, but she understood her parents’ invention better than they dared to. They had built a spacetime machine, but fear held them back from testing it.
One night, Anna decided it was time. With steady hands, she disabled the alarms surrounding the lab. As the machines powered up, she entered her target coordinates into the console. But then—a blaring klaxon shattered the silence.
Of course, she thought. Her parents had added a fail-safe for unauthorized destinations. With no time to waste, she dashed into the machine and locked herself inside.
Outside, her parents were scrambling. Her mother’s panicked voice echoed through the lab as her father tried to override the system. But Anna laughed softly, knowing her encryption was unbreakable. The system would only unlock after she’d already left.
“Where did she go?” Ara asked in shock, scanning the data.
“This is not possible,” Doctor Pulag replied, staring at the screen.
Ara’s eyes widened. “She travelled 270 years into the future? And…” she trailed off, glancing at her husband.
“…In a time stream fourteen branches away from our own!”
“How did she—”
“Hi, Mom! Hi, Dad!” came Anna’s voice through the speakers.
They turned to see a teenage girl standing in the observation room.
“How did—” Ara began, but Anna vanished, only to reappear beside them in a blink.
“Woah, hold on!” Ara gasped, now seeing the resemblance more clearly.
“I'm back! Ten years for me, just a few minutes for you,” Anna grinned, “As you can see, I’m seventeen now and I’ve got a few upgrades.”
“We can see that,” her father muttered, still in disbelief.
“I know what you're thinking, but relax! Nothing bad will happen to us—we’re crucial to spacetime travel.”
She smirked. “The moment I jumped, I created new branches in spacetime. Now, entire communities of travellers exist—colonies are being established on distant planets, even as we speak.”
“How…?” her mother whispered.
“I'll explain later. For now, I’m starving! Cookies for days get old fast.”
Haus of Ken: Yekum: Buglas (y-yoo7:bgls)
Part of Haus of Ken, a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC By-SA) 4.0 collaborative and shared world initiative by the Kolverse Worldbuilding and Writing Project (KWWP).
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