By Joe Haldeman
“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.”
― Eric Roth, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button screenplay
Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman
This story was the Accidental Time Machine was about a young scientist who invented a time machine by accident. He traveled to futuristic places within it. I started in on May 5 of this year and finished it on May 15. It was a very interesting read.
Matt Fuller's supervisor, Marsh, hadn't been watching when the time machine made its first voyage. His supervisor didn't believe him and attributed it to sleep deprivation.Matt stayed a little longer, his supervisor went home.
He then went 33 minutes into the future in the time machine and it went 12 times longer each time.
Matt took the machine home. Matt stayed in the lab so much because he didn't want to come home to an empty house.
Kara, his girlfriend, wasn't home. Kara came home after Matt talked with his mom. Kara broke up with Matt for she didn't believe he was at the lab and she couldn't reach him. Next, Matt took the Time Machine home secretly. He timed the voyage with his stopwatch. He set a continuas video on his camcorder. He was going to proceed at ten, a few seconds before he started up the machine. He jammed his thumb down on the button and disappeared. He then thought he should have put the camcorder on the machine with him. His mother called in concern of the storm, so he stopped. Matt decided to take the time machine for a longer voyage, but first he had to build a copy, so it wouldn’t be missed. Matt wanted to put an animal in the time machine, but the pet store was closed since it was Sunday. He put a gallon of water in the time machine to see how much would evaporate. He then set the machine to go six hours into the future.
Matt couldn't come up with a name for the machine, he now called it a photon callibrator. He could of made it appear in his lab, with hundreds of students witnesses. He found out that night in an email that his funding was being cut by New Years. To make matters worse he got fired from MIT. So he thought of playing on the rivalry of Harvard and then his lead, Marsh, would be fired, but decided against it. To still worsen this Kara's new boyfriend, Storm Lewis, would be taking his old job. Matt asked Dr. Marsh what was going on, to which he got no response. He.realized he helped Storm get the job, from the way he graded his papers.
Matt fell into a great depression because of this, where he slept for a day in a half. His job situation put him in such a mood that him going to a nudist bar didn't even help. However, he started working on his dissertation to pass the time, which was on the topic of the pattern local asymmetries in the gravity wave induction with a supernovae. Matt found out the machine went back in time because he found an engineering ruler, which he hasn't used since he was an engineering student.
Matt now was going to test the machine with himself. He brought a gallon of water, 1,005 calories of food, and burbon to keep him sane. He was taking a wetsuit and snorkel if he landed in the water and a raft as well. He asked his friend Denny to lend him his car. He was asked to videotape the whole thing as well. Matt just went a nine months and a few miles and was arrested and crashed into a into a bus. He was arrested for the fact that Danny was dead and he stole his car. Dennis died when Matt left, Matt was interviewed by a police officer. Matt's bail of 1,000 dollars was given by an unknown source.He conned the officer to take him to his car and jumped in time thirty nine days and thirteen hours into the future.
In the future Matt jumped to he was a professor at MIT. There was a big parade welcoming Matt.Professor Marsh came up with a way to detect when the time machine was returning. Marsh suffered an illness from all the excitement of the.day before. Kara, his ex-girlfriend and Storm brought Matt some books in the hospital so he could catch up with the physics he rewrote. He asked if they new who bailed him out in the previous timeline, they didn't know who that was.
Matt's mom was in a nursing home when he returned, lost to Alzheimer's. He went to his 25th high school reunion, which was actually troubling to him. He found it very difficult to make friends. Kara was still in love with him, however she had a son, so that complicated things. This made his desire to time travel even more then him being out of date on everything. The team that was researching the time machine brought Matt in to study the effects it had on him. Matt activated the machine, making it look accidental.
Matt's next jump was to a forest. He was following a road. He found abandoned cars, spread out every mile. He stopped for a night after a guy ran away. Matt met a family that was fishing. Matt decided to fish with them and cought a big fish.
