It all began the moment that a strange light streamed through the window. I didn’t know what it was. I got up feeling both angry and tired. Who would ever turn on such a bright light at four o’clock in the morning? I leaned toward the window to see what was happening, and my mouth fell open the moment I touched the glass.
There was a strange-looking, enormous bus outside my window. My head was full of questions, but I didn’t know who to ask. I ran to the living room. Everyone was already there. My sister looked like she was about to vomit. My dad was staring out the window, and my mom was searching something on her phone.
The second I entered the room, my mom rushed toward me.
“Oh my God! I forgot to wake you up,” she said. “The government is sending time checkers to all states.”
Knock, knock.
The doorbell rang.
I walked closer to my sister, who was half crying and half shocked.
“Do you know what time checkers are?” I whispered.
She looked at me nervously. “You don’t know either, do you? I was too scared to ask Dad. He looks way too focused.”
A man wearing yellow clothes stepped inside.
“Hello, ma’am. We need to check the entire house, so please wait outside.”
“What? What for?” my mom shouted angrily. “We are not time travelers! Nobody here is!”
“Ma’am, we need to check if you have a time machine,” the man replied calmly.
Before we could react, they barged in through the back door. There were about eight men in yellow uniforms inside the house. We all stood still and waited for them to finish. When they finally stopped searching, they left with disappointed expressions on their faces.
The next morning, I woke up feeling strange… different. I grabbed my phone and felt an instant shock run through my body. It wasn’t an iPhone. It was an old phone with eighteen buttons and a cylindrical antenna.
What was happening?
Was this another joke from my sister?
I ran to her room, but she wasn’t there. Then I rushed to the living room and saw Emily putting on extremely old-fashioned clothes.
“Emily! What are you wearing?” I asked.
“Well… you know… our school uniforms, maybe?” she replied.
“Those are not our school uniforms, Emily!”
Everything was getting even stranger. I felt sick that day, and my mom even left work early. While sitting on the couch, I noticed a newspaper. The headline caught my attention:
“Marcus Flint, who allegedly discouraged Graham Bell from pursuing his invention, is accused of stealing a copy of Bell’s work and disappearing.”
My throat tightened.
Time checkers… time machines…
It was Marcus Flint.
He had a time machine. He had changed the future.
I pinched myself. It wasn’t a dream.
That night, I couldn’t sleep—until something started shining through the window again. I looked outside, and relief washed over my entire body.
It was fixed.
We were back in our own time.
Then I heard a voice.
“Mom, we fixed the timeline. Thank you for your help.”
I looked at my desk. There it was—my old, thin phone lying on top of my books.
What a shock it was.