ALEXANDER

We as people come across a single question: "What if?"

Obviously, we don't know the answer. We don't know what would have happened if we had an opportunity to pursue that question. But what if you had the opportunity to pursue it and make life better for yourself?

As he stared at the stranger sitting on his living room couch—a stranger with his own face—he realized some questions are better left unanswered.

As he stood there in shock and fear, he knew what he had done came at a great price. His mind raced back to where it all began: six years ago .

He was unemployed. He had a PhD in Chrono-engineering—the study of time. He had sent out multiple job applications and gone through interviews, but with no success. He was patient, but there was still no success.

Then one day, as he was watching television, he saw a cartoon character delete their old emails and text notifications from their phone because they were stressed. The character accidentally hit the "undo" button.

Alexander stared at his phone screen and thought: If a human mind can program an undo button for digital data, why can't the laws of physics have an undo button for human choice?

He realized that chrono-engineering isn't about moving physical bodies through a magical portal. It's about treating the universe's timeline like a digital hard drive that can be rewritten.

For a long time, time travel was nothing more than a theory to humanity—a wild dream written in sci-fi books. But at that exact second, the theory became a blueprint.

Alexander realized if he could engineer a way backward, he was going to rewrite his life.

Rewriting a life is easy to say, but doing it with an empty pocket is a different matter. Alexander began his journey not in a high-tech lab, but in the city's scrap yards and dustbins. With no money to buy proper parts, his only choice was to hunt for discarded electronics that normal people threw away.

Food was a luxury he couldn't afford. To keep his stomach from cramping while he worked, he scavenged behind local supermarkets after closing time, picking through thrown-away boxes for stale bread or slightly bruised fruit that was still safe to eat. Sometimes, on the worst days, he would simply drink massive amounts of tap water just to fool his stomach into feeling full.

People on the streets watched him do this everyday. To them, he wasn't a genius engineer—he was just a crazy person. Some laughed at him, others questioned what he was doing with piles of junk, and most simply looked away. They assumed he was just another junkie lost to the streets.

His fingers were constantly cut from sharp metal edges, and his clothes were covered in rust, but his mind remained locked onto the blueprint. Yet, when the midnight cold crept into his cramped room, the exhaustion would finally break him. He would pull his blanket over his head and silently cry himself to sleep, his heart pounding with a terrifying question: What if none of it works out? What if he spent years starving and digging through trash just to remain a certified failure?

But when the morning sun hit the floorboards, he would dry his tears, pick up his rusty soldering iron, and piece by piece, turn those broken wires and discarded circuit boards into the foundation of his impossible machine.

And after three years, his machine project was complete.

He cleaned himself up, went inside the machine, and started it. The machine powered up, and he smiled, sighing in relief. He stood there completely ready to be sent back.

But the machine shut down before it could do its job.

He squatted down in tears, entirely broken because it didn't work.

Suddenly, the machine turned back on its own. He stood up quickly, about to check what turned it on, but before he could fully react, the machine took him back in time.

He was dizzy and his vision was completely blurry as he stepped out into an unfamiliar place. He staggered toward a passing stranger and asked for today's date and time.

The stranger answered. The response confirmed that he was truly back in the past.

He had done it.