The Helix

By Keertana Saji

Her hair fell gracefully on her face and shoulders. The silent breeze in the sky skimmed her skin and her brown eyes glistened in the reflection of moonlight. 

The sea playfully touched her feet. She was sitting on the sand, staring at the end of the horizon. 

She was waiting for me.

I ran to her, “I was right, it is happening. No one believes me, but it’s the year 2123 just like I predicted, you have to trust me and come with me.”

“We can’t,” she said in her soothing voice. 

“We must. Everything here is going to crunch itself out of existence. You have to understand, the world is going to die and we can save it!” I almost begged her.  

“Maybe it’s time to enjoy this last view,” she smiled. 

“I’ve spent a lot of time and I finally found a way to break the barrier of space and time, meaning we can go back in time and stop this from happening.”

“Things are meant to end so that there are new beginnings.” 

“I cannot accept that, I shall go back, whether you come with me or not.”

“You say that you do this for me but if you change time, you may come back to a future that’s different, a future where I’m not yours.”

“I don’t care, I just need you to live more than this, everyone deserves to have more time” I said, “I may not see you again now, I hope whatever happens in the new timeline, you’re happy.” 

Her eyes caught on something behind me, she smiled and looked me in the eye.

“380, we’ve loved each other for 380 days… remember that”, she whispered as I walked away. “You’ll come back to me”

*** 

I was determined. 

Yes, I was going to go to the past, to 2030, so that I would have more time to study the solution for the survival of the universe. 

My ancestors had warned everyone many years ago, in the early 2030’s. They had said that around 2120’s the world would die. Nobody believed my family.  So, we took matters in our own hands. A project started by my family 100 years ago, I completed by making myself a route to the past to save everyone. 

I wished she was with me. I truly did. I could not understand why she did not listen to me, she was a scientist herself she knew I was saying the truth and I was right. 

It didn’t matter, anymore. I needed to go far away and chose best not to think of it. 

My way to the past consisted of me travelling in a kind of probe which supported human life. A probe which resembled a spaceship. 

I just needed to sit in there, flick a single switch and write how many years I needed to jump. The control panel had a few switches, buttons and one timeline setter. 

As I sat in my time machine, I should’ve been nervous or scared, yet I wasn’t. I was ready for the challenge I took on myself. 

I flicked a switch on the control panel and immediately a wormhole looking energy was produced infront of me. It seemed to be blue, but when I looked closely, I saw every colour, every shade, every hue existing. It was a barrier of endless colour. Endless combinations. Endless possibilities. 

I remained shocked; marvelling its uniqueness. I needed to enter it. I needed to see what was within. Till now all studies were theoretical, and this? This was real. I pressed another button and my probe began moving forward until I crossed the barrier. 

*** 

I was so lost in anticipation of seeing more about the colours of the wormhole that I forgot to set a timeline. 

*** 

The wormhole sucked me in and spit me out in a timeline of its own choice and I had no idea where I was. 

Staring out the window I could see nothing. There was only darkness surrounding me. 

I was about to exit that timeline, when in a fraction of a second, I felt a difference. I looked out and saw, where outside everything used to be dark as black, now suddenly there was a small misshaped heap of heat. It just simply appeared, and it kept inflating right before my eyes. Before I could admire its sheer beauty, like fireworks, red streaks of fire flew out in all directions. 

I didn’t move. I just watched. I watched in awe. There was a luminous fog around the small ball of heat but not enough to block my vision of it. 

I understood, I was witnessing one the most beautiful things an eye could see. I was witnessing something no one ever had. 

As the heat ball kept expanding in a painfully slow pace, within the next few minutes the fog had become thick enough for it to block my vision. 

I decided that it was time for me to leave. 

I wondered how long ahead I might need to go to reach my time again. I decided to jump ahead to a random number of years and figure it out. 

I wrote 3,80,000 years ahead and flicked a switch. 

*** 

I expected myself to reach a time after the universe completed its process of being born. 

But, when I passed through the appeared wormhole once more, I came out to see that the fog had just cleared. After all this time it had just cleared. After 3,80,000 years. The universe was transparent. 

I felt myself feel more overwhelmed than I had ever been in my life. 

The expansion of space was still going on and everywhere there was a fading red glow. A red glow becoming redder and dimmer. It was the most beautiful red I had ever seen. It was the kind of red that made my heart want to never look at anything else. 

The colour grew dimmer and redder until there was nothing left to see. It became black. There was absolutely nothing to see. It was just darkness; I had entered the Cosmic Dark Ages. 

 I had to leave. 

I typed in a few 100,000,000 years ahead and entered the wormhole once more. 

*** 

I came out of the wormhole to see something I never thought I could. I saw the birth of the first star. I saw the diamonds of our sky being created. Ending the Dark Age. The darkness around me was broken by nearby blobs bursting into the brightest light. 

I knew my eyes couldn’t handle the light produced so I decided it was time for me to leave once again. 

***

I left time and time again, seeing more of the universes birth everytime. 

*** 

I finally reached the year 2030 but I realised, I didn’t want to be there anymore. I had seen all colours of the universe from when they were created, none of them compared to the one colour that I now longed to see. 

I longed to see brown. 

The brown of sand, of sunset on a cloudy day, of a forest at dusk, of a dusty rose. 

I set 93 years ahead and entered the wormhole one last time…

*** 

Her hair fell gracefully on her face and shoulders. The silent breeze in the sky skimmed her skin and her brown eyes glistened in the reflection of moonlight. 

She was sitting on the sand, staring at the end of the horizon. 

She was waiting for me.

I saw my past-self run to her and try to convince her. 

I tried to stay out of sight but she saw me. Her eyes caught mine and she smiled. 

Once my past-self had left I went and sat on the sand with her. 

The waves touched our feet. 

“3,80,000 years. 380 days. How did you know I’d need that number?”, I asked her. 

“You don’t think the wormhole chose to let you witness the beginning of everything, right?”, she smiled mischievously. 

“You had already set it… I saw the real beginning of everything. Thank you.”

I had just watched the universe take more than hundreds of millions of years to be born. 

The start of the universe was the end of nothing. The transparency of the universe was the end of a luminous beauty mist. The birth of a star was the end of The Cosmic Dark Age. 

Our end was needed for a new era. For a new universe. 

I figured I was the only one to have the honour to see the beginning and end of our world.

I held her hand, both entangled in sand. 

‘Maybe it’s time to enjoy this last view’ 

She looked out into the horizon and I just kept looking at her. I breathed in her details for the last time. 

Her hair fell gracefully on her face and shoulders. The silent breeze in the sky skimmed her skin and her brown eyes glistened in the reflection of moonlight.

By Keertana Saji