I'll Only be Here a Moment
Mara Woodbine looked at the words which covered the papers, and they were in her own handwriting.
The papers on the desk certainly hadn't been there before, but she looked again and they were gone. Mara was used to this happening; she would occasionally see things as they had been or as they will be instead of as they are. Sometimes she would see a thing in all times at once. She saw the sheets of notepaper appear and disappear many times and she paid them no more attention than any of the other things which would come and go and change as she watched.
Every time she saw the papers after that, she would copy down what text she could. She did not manage to read every word written on the pages, but she caught enough to understand what they were about. The papers spoke of time and of a place beyond time. They mentioned the old plans which were locked up in a trunk in Mara's attic, and they mentioned searching the world for something and many years spent researching and studying. These papers were something Ms. Woodbine would write at some time far in the future. It seemed that at some point she would perfect the device described in the plans. Indeed, the papers seemed to imply that the plans were already complete and that the device would work if only it was constructed of a different material.
Mara Woodbine decided to take an interest in these plans. After many years she became absorbed in the work itself and forgot about the strange papers which had sparked her interest. The plans were drawn in faded brown ink on parchment brittle with age. Mara built the machine they described many times, but all she ever produced was an immobile mass of gears, levers, wires and mirrors which could do nothing but emit a low humming sound. She was convinced that the plans themselves were correct and that it was the material used to construct the machine which prevented it from working. She turned her studies to the history of the device itself. The plans were possibly hundreds of years old and were written in three distinct hands, surely someone before her had also attempted to build this mechanism. She thought that if she could find the previous attempts themselves, she might see more than was written on the parchment. She spent years searching the world for a sphere of cogs, wheels, mirrors and wires even remotely similar to the thing described in the plans. There was very little word of such things, but what reports there were were remarkably distinct. She found over a dozen machines which fit the description; they had been crafted of various materials, some of wood, some of metal, some of stone, even one of glass. Collating all the information, she was sure that what she had read in her own handwriting was correct. What she had built of brass actually worked, but could not withstand the stress of time. Several of the previous attempts of iron, glass and marble also worked, but with the same fatal flaw. The machine simply needed to be built of some material which could last unharmed through all of time.
Ms. Woodbine set up a laboratory and for years she researched different materials. She finally succeeded in creating a fabric of carbon, similar to diamond, and of this she built her machine. The moment it was completed, she activated it. If the design was correct, and if the material was sufficiently sturdy, she would be whisked far forward through time to this same room hundreds, or maybe thousands, of years into the future. Then all she had to do was to rearrange some of the gears and she would be taken backwards through time to the point from which she had started. She only needed to experiment with different arrangements of the gears, and she could visit any moment in the past or the future no matter how remote.
Mara Woodbine built her machine and used it, and she found herself in a strange place. Unable to touch any of the things about her, she used a notepad and a pencil from her pocket to write a warning to any who might come after her.
In a time between times, time does not pass. There is a sense of now, but no then, no later and no when. We understand time as cause and effect, as an endless sequence of events. We remember the past, we guess the future, but all we are certain of is this very moment, the tiniest moment, shorter than a second, than a breath, than a blink; a moment so infinitely small that we do not even notice that it exists.
There is a concept of a number approaching zero and becoming smaller and smaller without ever winking out into nothing; I am trapped in a moment that small, so small that if it were any smaller it could not exist.
Many people before me had studied this device, and the plans for it were many hundreds of years old. Comfortable that the plans were nearly, if not entirely, complete, I confined my researches to prior designs and to materials which could be used to make the machine function properly.
Finally, after many long years of searching the world for previous incarnations of the device and many even longer years of searching for the correct material, I hit upon the solution and built my machine.
I set the gears and pressed the lever.
And then I was here. Here is not any time in the future or the past. It is not any time at all. I am between times, outside of time. The room around me is constantly changing but nothing is moving. I am seeing everything at once. I know now why I have always been able to see things through time. I am here now, and I am here in all time. At every moment during which I existed in time, I was also here outside of time, seeing all time at once. Every object, every person, every action which ever has been in that room or which ever will be is there simultaneously. I can see myself, my parents, the people who lived in the house before us. I can see an uninhabited wood and the city which it became. I can see the walls of the room going up and I can see them coming down.
I am conscious of all time at once. The whole of history, pre-human and post-human, is packed neatly into one moment so small it cannot be experienced.
I can see everything that ever happens in this room, but I do not see myself after I activated the device, nor can I touch any of the things which I see.
I am outside of time, an observer, no longer a part of it. Time does not pass for me, I will be here forever, and forever will be over in an instant.
The machine works but something in the design is wrong. It was intended to move someone from one time to another and that is precisely what it did.
The machine operates on time, and here where there is no time it is nothing other than a lump of a rather interesting carbon fabric, it does not even hum.
I cannot return to time.
The plans are flawed. Do not build the machine. Do not use it. You will end as I have ended, outside of time.
Mara Woodbine placed the sheets of paper where her desk would be, hoping that they could be read by someone at some time, and then she left.
Not until then did she recognise what she had written as the papers which had fascinated her so many years ago.
But it was too late, she had already read them, taking them away now would change nothing.