"The Magic Box," by Mihai Burlea

In this short science-fiction story I would like to explore an idea that I have since a while ago, that actually bothers me because I can’t figure out the answer to it. The idea includes time travel and technology. In this short story I would like to incorporate the time travel and technology in a way of how they can both work together, and what they can do one with the other. As we all know, in our days we are coming up with a lot of new and ingenious technologies that make our life easier, or at least that’s what they make us believe that they do through heavy advertising.

My story is going to explore a little bit of this problem, and I will try to make my philosophical thoughts as clear as possible to my readers. In the story there will be two main characters that will be the main engines of the story. They will give contour to it, and will make it a little bit more realistic that it is. They are two scientists, Jack and David that are working on this travel machine since year 2200. They discovered that with the technology that is available to them by that time there is a possibility to build a travel machine that will be used to help the humanity to evolve a lot faster than we are, in order to compete with our alien enemies that are approaching to the planet earth with a speed of 2000 miles per hour from a different galaxy to take over us. Jack and David, they both believed that by building a time travel machine, they could go back in time to introduce the technology that we own today in the year 2200, and encourage the people back in the day to work with us to advance the technology faster in order to be able to keep the control over the Planet Earth.

January 23rd, Year 2200

This morning the NASA received a coded signal from a colony of aliens that had established their new residence on planet Zion, part of the galaxy Neuron. The Dark aliens are the aliens that come from far away from the Galaxy Sapatos from a small planet that is called Z. They were discovered by a human space ship that was sent into the space in the year 2150 by NASA in collaboration with the ZINA which is the Russian NASA.

At first when the humans discovered the planet Z and its occupants we found that our cultures have many similarities, and we can actually say that the planet Earth and Planet Z are sister planets that also share many similarities. One of the most common things that we shared was the essence of life: the water. Planet Z was obvious a lot more advanced than us, and the Z planet’s government sent a fleet on the earth to check it out. The human fleet was traveling back to the Earth on a more advanced space ship that could travel 10 years of traveling with a human space ship in just 10 minutes. At the time, Jake and David happened to be part of the expedition and that was a blast for them because they dedicated their entire life for that kind of stuff…they wanted to see more than the world, they wanted to see the universe and find life on different planets. They fulfilled their dreams, and found what they were looking for, and on their way back home on the more advanced space ship, they discovered that their ship was a concept of time travel machine, and that’s why they could travel so much faster to the earth. Ten years of traveling for us humans all of the sudden become ten minutes.

Jack: David, this is amazing! Pinch me please, is this reality?

David: Yeah man, this stuff is crazy. Who thought that we will actually discover such things. I am so excited to get home to share our discovery with the world!

Jack: Yeah, this is pretty unbelievable to me too.

They went back and forward like that for about 50 minutes, laughed about it, celebrating with special beer that was brewed on board of their old space-ship, and all of the sudden they realized that they were seeing the earth like planet on the screens.

David: Jack, this is crazy! We discovered another planet that looks just like the earth! What a day, we discovered two planets that look like earth in just a few minutes!

Jack: No, man that is our home. We’ve been traveling for 50 minutes now, and that means…yeah, that is the Planet Earth.

Back a forward like that, both Jake and David could not believe their eyes what they just experienced. They were so excited to land on the Earth to introduce their new friends and talk about the new technology that they just experienced.

Finally back on the earth. They landed in Virginia where the headquarters of NASA and ZINA was.

Jack: Colonel, these 3 Dark aliens are part of the Z planed population, a planet that we discovered yesterday in the Galaxy Sapatos. They seem to have a lot of stuff in common with us humans, and they speak English as well.

Colonel Smirnoff: Hey Darkies! Nice meeting you. We’ve been looking for you guys for centuries now, and who believed that we will all experience all this in our life.

Z Unit (the dark alien): Nice meeting you too. We knew all about you because we’ve been watching you, and all those things that you saw on the skies at night, UFO’s is that how you call them right? Well they were us.

Colonel Smirnoff: Oh, now we understand so many things that we couldn’t find an answer before. Many people that believed in UFOs were considered insane, but I guess the unbelievers were the insane ones! Good to know all this, I will write this down in my report, and I will personally make sure that the world will know the truth now.

The humans welcomed the Dark aliens, and made them feel like home, without knowing what the dark aliens were up to. Now that the Dark aliens had the opportunity to actually land one of their ships on the earth without problems and news papers writing about them, they took a closer look at what we had on the earth and they could use to save their more advanced population from the planet Z. On their planet, the people that were living there had technology that was 4000 years more advanced than ours on the earth, but from so much exploitation of the planet Z, the essential thing that kept everything running, the water, was about to be gone, and the last resources they had left, they saved it for their space ships that can explore the universe in seek of water. The Darkies noticed that water here on the earth is just as important for us as it is for them on planet Z, and they could not ask for half of the amount of water that we have to save their population. In exchange, they decided to send radio signals to the planet Z to let them know that we have what they need, and planed an invasion on the earth to exterminate any obstacles, and reach their goal.

In the mean time, while the humans were celebrating the new discovery and the bright future that the new technology could bring them, the Darkies were sending space ships in our galaxy to get ready for attack over the planet Earth to steal our water.

Z Unit (the Dark alien): They got the juice here. Send back ups on the near planet, and get ready for attack over the Earth.

Z Planet Control Tower: Roger that. We already sent 19.000 tank ships and they are all ready to attack, so get back in the space as soon as possible without living any clues to the cave people, haha!

Z Unit: Roger that. We are going to establish a base on Planet Mars, and wait for more instructions from you.

David: What? David pulls his pistol and shoots down the two aliens. The aliens dropped dead.

David could not believe his ears what he just heard. His dreams, hope and desires were all crushed by what he heard from Z Unit’s mouth. After the incident David reported to its Colonel, which listened to al the conversation that was recorded on the mp3 player that David had incorporated on his clothes to record any activity that he was doing (this was part of their NASA/ZINA clothing design.) The colonel alerted all the nations of the world about the incident and also apologized for putting the humanity in danger. Jack and David the only humans that were in contact with that alien space ship were trying to think about how they could use that technology against the Dark aliens that were close up to the Earth ready for attack.

Many other scientists from all over the world were invited in Virginia, USA to think and take a look at the space ship that was a possible time travel machine, with the hope to put all the pieces together and build a time travel machine. A number of 78 scientists from USA, China, Japan, Germany, Turkey, England, Holland and Romania gathered and dissected the alien ship, analyzed; experimented and tried the, what they called the “magic box.” Finally after just five days they built this time travel machine to go back in time to control the technology from the early ages.

David: Hey man, I want to go 30 years back in time to see my dad, that’s what I want to do first with this machine, because I might die anyways.

Jack: You are crazy man, we are trying to save the humanity here and you want to go visit your dad? This is not possible; we are working under the pressure of time here. We have to find a solution to this mess that we brought the earth in.

David: I know man, chill out! I’ll do that when we are done exterminating our “dark” friends!

Going back and forward like that, trying to forget that the humanity could possibly be exterminated any moment, they made up a team of scientists that were willing to travel back in the time to year 900 when the human kind (cave man) were around.

Their plan was to teach them how to survive and use the earth’s resources to evolve more rapidly with every generation, in order to be able to have equal or more advanced technology than the Z planet people to confront them and keep the water. At this point many questions without an answer were raised. Some of them were:

Jack: What if we go back in time and we become more advanced than what we are right now we are going to end up the same like the darkies, looking for water in order to survive?

David: Yeah, but what if we get so technologically evolved that we in the present are going to do something else than trying to defend ourselves from Dark aliens?

Colonel: As far as I see there is no other solution for our problem. We cannot resist to a 4000 years more evolved creatures, and we will die. I think that is worth a try to go back in time and try to get really evolved despite the fact that other bad things can happen to humanity. There is a 50%-50% chance then. But if we don’t do anything about it we will perish.

David: I totally agree colonel, and I believe that this is a no brainer for all of us. We should go back in time and try to manipulate the evolution of the technology. We will survive to this, and we also have a chance to become more evolved than the Darkies, and who knows…maybe we will evolve so much we won’t even need the water to survive!

Their conversation and deep thinking didn’t last for too long until they made a decision that they all agreed upon. They had the time travel machine, and all they had to do is to get more scientists back in the past and try to save the humanity. After pushing some keys inside the time travel machine, five people at the time teleported all in one area where they found a numerous tribe of people. That was in what we call today Japan, only for the fact that we believe that Asian people have a higher IQ than the rest of other species of human kind.

First, they all built a new travel machine in the past with the intelligence that they brought from the future. That gave them flexibility to go back in the future when needed. The next step of their mission was to recruit people and teach them how to use the planet’s resources for a better living and thought them to be creative and think outside of their cave. Many of the people of the tribe learned really fast how to use the resources, and now if they would go back in the future all the history that they were taught in school disappeared, because all the different things were invented by different people at different locations. This travel back in time allowed the humanity to become more technologically advanced and probably more advanced then the Darkies.

In the meanwhile Jack and David were together working with these cave men trying to teach them how to advance more quickly. Both of them were asking themselves what is happening in the future, if the Darkies attacked us yet or not.

Jack: Hey David. Do you think that whatever we are trying to do here in the past will change the future? Do you think that our work will affect the future in such way that when we are going to go back in time, we won’t be able to use many of the technologies that are available because we will be so primitive?

David: I have no idea Jack, but I don’t care much about what I am going to be able to do in the future. All I care about is that the damn creatures that we found won’t attack us and make us all disappear. If they all attack us and the humanity won’t be there anymore, we will be the responsible people for all that happened.

Jack: David, we need to believe in this. We need to trust each other and continue this process that we started. We won’t let the Darkies to take over us. We won’t let then kill us that easily, we got to be strong, we have families there.

By saying all this, Jack broke down crying, but his tears encouraged David to believe in his work and keep doing what he was doing. Hope was their last resort. After just two days in the past, they notices that by them being there the past was changing very fast, and everything was getting out of the normal speed of evolution.

They calculated some numbers mixed with some data samples that were noticed by them, and they said that it is not necessary for them to be in year 900. They decided that they should travel in the future in the year 1803 and start the world changing process from there. As we can see, both of them become smarter and smarter every hour spent in the past. They became smarter because the world was evolving without them knowing that they will be affected too. All of the scientists went back in the future and start the process from there. By the time they all got back in the future, they realized that the world was way different, but they were able to handle everything because they were part of the process too. The world was way more advanced then when they left from the future, year 2200.

David: Hey Jack, let’s spend a couple more days here, make some more changes and let’s go home.

Jack: That sounds good David. At the speed that we evolve now, we are able to defeat the Darkies really easy.

It took them just five days to figure out that by them being back in the past the world was changing very fast, and now the humanity was evolving fifty times faster every year, they became fifty times smarter every year too, and their knowledge was so much advanced by every year traveled back in the future. After all, they all got back in their days hoping they will change the world. They were teleported at NASA/ZINA base in Virginia where they were hoping to find all the people that they were working with, and the same problem that made them travel back in time. But they all had a very pleasant surprise to see that everybody was happy and not stressed about much.

David: What is going on here? I thought that we are all going to die…

Colonel: Yeah, I know but that was a while back when we all started working here at NASA, about twenty years ago. Because our technology, the Darkies didn’t had the courage to attack us. They were a lot more underdeveloped than us. Thanks to you our main source of life is not water like in the past, now we have these little blue pills that make our body, machines, and all that it used to use water, to make its own water. Now humans are autotrophs, we are like plants, we produce our own food, and water is hardly needed. All this thanks to you guys!

David: This is cool man. Thank you. We definitely changed the course of life. We will be in the history forever!

Jack and David’s work was replaced with huge scanners. People didn’t have to travel to explore the universe for new civilizations. People in the year 2200 were keeping in touch with thirty three other civilizations on just as many new planets. Exchange of goods was made between these planets, and now the universe was united, and called The United Universe. The planets with life on them were all united in this huge universe (just like the states in USA were united a while back.)