the future that's meant to be?
Serin knew she wasn’t allowed in the lab without her mom. But here she was, rifling through the unlocked drawers, in search of the remote to her mother’s time machine prototype. With the darkness as her veil of secrecy, Serin knew her mother wouldn’t suspect a thing, but the trouble was that now Serin couldn’t see a thing.
There- underneath the dozen hologram chips that she sometimes liked to experiment with- the sleek and thin black remote that could take Serin where she had to go. She slipped it into the pocket of her midnight black rhinestone dress.
Rumors from the pretentious girls at school spiraled through her head. The dances are so much more fun in the future! The A Night in the Stars dance was breathtaking! Oh Serin, it’s too bad no one took you. Just thinking about it started a fire inside of her. In Serin’s school, technology determined social status. Serin was pretty well off, but the other academy girls were better off. Only the elite of the elite had access to the outrageously expensive time traveling devices that were all the rage.
Did you see the girl in the sparkly black dress who was dancing with the commissioner’s son? I wish I knew who she was; I am so jealous. That was the remark that kept the current of hope coursing through Serin’s veins; no one knew the girl who stole Bennett Findley’s heart that night. And it wasn’t that the girls had never seen her before. The dance was a masquerade ball.
As the gossip spread like an avalanche, collecting listeners exponentially, soon everyone knew the girl’s attire. But no one knew that Serin owned every item they described.
Serin clicked her metallic heels that fit the girls’ descriptions of the mystery girl together and twisted the glittering opal ring that was slightly loose on her ring finger. It had to be her, the girl just had to be her. She turned to face her mother’s newly assembled time machine in the center of the room. Her mother explicitly stated that the time machine was only in its preliminary stages, and could travel for at most, four hours, but Serin never heard her say she couldn’t use it.
She pulled out the remote and flipped it, the anticipation overwhelming. Serin stepped into the person-sized box and then a glass door slid shut behind her. She whipped around excitedly and pressed the green button on the remote, listening for the robot voice her mother had described in her research papers.
“Stand still. Scanning will now commence. Transfer taking place in 10.” Serin felt a wave travel through her insides, and lights strobed against the back of her eyes. She clenched the remote and shoved it back into her pocket. A floating sensation held Serin captivated while the machine did its calculations, and finally, she was gone.
