[ WP ] A man invents time travel in order to find a cure for his sick wife and succeeds , only to find out he ca n't go back

*Well the League of Legends servers are down so I guess I get to write this instead. * 
 
 -- - 
 
 I woke up that morning and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. It took a little bit to realize something was wrong. 
 
 The first thing was my wife was not in the bed when I awoke. Normally she's not awake by now. She's usually not awake by now, meaning I get to prepare the coffee and act like a zombie until enough is brewed so that we can both have a mug. Maybe she just woke up early. 
 
 The second thing was the blood smeared over the toilet seat. The third thing was the stench that hung in the bathroom. 
 
 At this point I called her name. No response. I began to panic. Fearing the worst, I ran to the living room. Nothing there. I was beginning to panic. 
 
 I found her in the kitchen lying unconscious on the tile. Blood was streaming from her mouth. I yelled various profanities for unknown reasons and picked up the phone, dialing 911. 
 
 -- - 
 
 I got a call from the office that morning. 
 
 `` Where are you, Jim?'' I had the most boring fucking job I could ever imagine. I worked customer support for a company with a dwindling amount of customers. Those customers who stuck around even after the company refused to give in to the future ( we're still running windows ME on our computers ) are all egoistical morons. 
 
 `` My wife is in the hospital, man. I ca n't come in today. I'm staying here, with her.'' 
 
 `` What do you mean you ca n't come in? It's the monthly meeting, for god's sake.'' 
 
 I tried again. `` My wife is dying.'' 
 
 That gave him a moment of pause. But only a brief one. `` Well, is she OK?'' 
 
 `` Right now, the doctors say she's stable. And she'll live.'' 
 
 `` Then get the fuck in here! We need you!'' 
 
 I do n't think he truly understood what it meant to be in love. Actually, I think this was because nobody in his short, pathetic life had ever loved him at all. Garry was a miserable little ass who would die alone because of his uptight ways. He felt no sympathy at all. 
 
 It was so freeing to say the words, `` Fuck you. I quit.'' 
 
 -- - 
 
 I knew customer support was about the dumbest thing I could do. I only did that to support my side project, and my side project was done now. Once I revealed that, I would be rolling in the cash. Theoretically. If it worked. 
 
 I saw a doctor coming down the hall, heading for me. I stood up. 
 
 `` I'm Dr. Francis.'' He said. `` Are you... Jim Fox?'' 
 
 `` That's me,'' I confirmed. `` How is she doing?'' 
 
 `` She's fine. Her heartbeat is steady and we've stopped the internal bleeding.'' A pause. `` To be honest, Jim, we've never seen this disease before. It appears it could have killed her without the proper treatment, but it was easily stopped.'' 
 
 `` Can I see her?'' 
 
 `` Yes, but you'll need to put these on.'' 
 
 -- - 
 
 I stood at a distance and watched her. They would n't let me inside because she had a new disease. She lay face up, eyes lifeless, looking in an almost comatose state. 
 
 `` Is that'OK'?'' 
 
 `` Yes. She's OK. She's breathing normally, look.'' He put his hand on her stomach as it slowly rose up and down. `` And her heart is normal, too.'' He pointed at the graph. As if on cue, she flat lined. 
 
 `` Damn,'' I heard him mutter, and then the room sprung into action. I felt almost detached as everyone around me rushed to her side to resuscitate her. 
 
 And eventually, her heart started again. Beep. Beep. 
 
 `` Just a side effect of the drugs,'' the doctor said. 
 
 -- - 
 
 I knew somewhere in my heart the doctors were wrong. Not only was this disease going to kill her, it would also probably spread and kill everyone around her. She was patient zero of the epidemic. 
 
 I'm not sure entirely what else was going in my head at the time, but I knew that it was the perfect opportunity to test the time machine. Go into the future and find the cure to my wife's disease. I'm sure that in twenty years, when the world was ravaged by the epidemic, some lone scientist would find a cure, save himself and one lucky female, and rebuild the human population. At least, that's how it went in my mind. I watch too many movies. 
 
 The time machine was simple. A small, unassuming stand of copper that would take you to whatever time you specified. The only real `` catch'' was you could only stay on the time machine - so you'd end up wherever the time machine was twenty years from now. If the machine simply did n't exist in twenty years, you'd die. And if someone was occupying the stand at the same time you arrived, you both died. Fun, right? 
 
 But I assumed that it would last until then. I locked all the doors from the inside to our basement. I had already reinforced the walls. Nobody would be coming inside this place and moving or breaking the stand. I was set. 
 
 I flipped the switch and hoped to return with a cure. 
 
 -- - 
 
 What I found instead of an empty world was a normal, bustling world, advanced twenty years into the future. I wanted none of what the future had to offer except a cure, so I found the nearest doctor, Dr. Francis. Go figure, he was still in the medical profession after twenty years. 
 
 I explained the symptoms of my problem. My wife had recently been afflicted with internal bleeding and was in a comatose state. I did hope that Dr. Francis had been the one to discover the cure for the disease. 
 
 `` Jim,'' he said instead, `` you did it, did n't you?'' 
 
 `` What?'' He still recognized me? 
 
 `` Those are all side effects of time travel. If a time travel machine is used in your near vicinity and within about a day of the actual travel, you can be affected with a range of symptoms. All that you have described to me is pretty common, and usually is done after about a week.'' 
 
 I stood. If I were the type of person to stand with my mouth open, I would have been standing with my mouth open. Instead I just sort of stared into the distance, coming to terms with this revelation. 
 
 Not only had I caused the sickness of my wife, but it was nowhere near a deadly disease. And I assumed that Dr. Francis had figured this out as well. 
 
 `` Time Travelling was almost as quickly outlawed as it was discovered, since the symptoms can get more serious. But your wife's case... was not that deadly.'' 
 
 `` Where is she?'' 
 
 `` I can tell you one thing,'' he said with a heavy sigh, `` she did n't wait for you.'' 
 
 -- - 
 
 I arrived at the address he gave me. It was a small house by the countryside. A single car was parked in the driveway, an SUV. 
 
 It was about nine in the morning and they had left the windows open. I could just make her out. She was cooking breakfast. She still had the same pan we used to use to cook pancakes with. It had little faces on it. She thought it was hilarious. She'd drizzle syrup over her pancakes and laugh like a maniac before consuming them whole. Always so goofy. 
 
 My heart dropped when I saw the two children walk into the frame. Laughing, she flipped the pan and the pancakes landed on their plates. One was a teenager and the other a little boy no more than ten but no less than eight. They all looked so happy. 
 
 I tried not to cry, but the tears came anyway. I left. 
 
 -- - 
 
 Back at the old house I ran onto the time machine and got ready to return with the knowledge that her disease was not life-threatening. But as soon as I stepped on it, it cracked and broke under my weight. Shit! The rust had done it in. 
 
 I dug through the supplies for older supplies. I looked for anything that might work. But I knew that almost all of my old attempts at time travel malfunctioned terribly or were inaccurate. I had a test subject - a rabbit I called Frankenstein for various reasons - who I sent to five minutes in the future. He never returned. 
 
 I wanted to make this right. I wanted to change the future. But the more I looked, the more I came to realize that it would n't be possible. 
 
 Behind me, I sensed movement. I turned around. Dr Francis stood there, looking somewhat sinister in his full doctor outfit. 
 
 `` What are you doing here?'' I said, bewildered. `` How did you even get in here?'' 
 
 He coughed. `` Teleportation and time travel - the three deadly Ts - were all banned with the 2015 Protection of Personal Rights Act. This law mostly nulled and voided the DMCA and all of the NSA's spying, so it was generally supported by the populace. I mean, you do n't want someone coming from the future and telling everyone a dirty secret you were n't even aware of, right?'' He pulled out a flash drive `` Some of us, we were n't OK with the government outlawing the future. We made our own advances in the underground. We made them safer.'' He handed the drive to me. `` This contains everything we've found so far. It should work on Windows 7 or any Linux kernel since 2005 - older operating systems ca n't handle how big it is.'' He took out what looked like a buzzer from jeopardy. It fit exactly into my hand. `` This will take you back to 2012. You'll keep whatever you're holding.'' He nodded toward the flash drive. 
 
 It slowly began to dawn on my what he wanted me to do. `` 2012 is a year before I even met you,'' I said. 
 
 `` If I never meet you in this alternate universe, my work will have been accomplished. What's on that flash drive should eliminate Time Travel Sickness entirely, among other things.'' 
 
 `` So you want me to go back and invent safe time travel, therefore nullifying any concerns the general populace might have about it.'' 
 
 `` Exactly.'' 
 
 I tossed the switch in the air and caught it again. I did n't know what to do. It was a second chance. 
 
 `` You'll forget all you've learned up to this point,'' he said, `` but the flash drive has all you need to know.'' 
 
 I took my mind back to when I had seen her. I remembered her cooking pancakes. I remembered how the marriage was n't working. I remembered the fights we had. 
 
 Did I want to go back to that? Did I want to try again? 
 
 Or did I leave her happy in this universe and live my life without her? 
 
 I did n't press the controller that day. But I still have it tucked away. I guess I never really did make the choice. One day I'll destroy that controller. I'll throw it off a bridge or snap it over my knee. Or maybe at my worst moment I'll... 
 
 I do n't know.
