This is a piece of short fiction I wrote for a writing exercise for the Writer’s group I participate in. The idea was to take a story everyone knows (in this case The Time Machine by H.G. Wells) and remove one character, the ‘e’, and write a new story with that as the title. This is the work that was inspired by the ‘The Tim Machine’:
“Not again…” Was the first thought that crossed eminent geneticist Dr. Roland Tellers’ mind as he looked at the mess in his backyard, the next was “how does this keep happening?” A dark stain underneath the junior jungle gym led him to believe it had started there, the lack of a body though momentarily confused him until he heard the low growl of the family pet, Tilly, a supposedly harmless chocolate lab, beyond the tree line, as he walked across the manicured lawn he noticed a depression the grass weaving itself back to the sound he was following. Just under the trees he caught a glimpse of Tilly and she of him. The dog, usually playful and exuberant let out a low whine and came towards him her head down, tail wagging, Roland absently noticing her blood smeared muzzle. Dr. Tellers didn’t bother reprimanding the dog, at this point, she knew she was in no real trouble. Besides she’d only being following the instructions coded deep within her, a code Dr. Tellers had was intimately familiar with. Quickly assessing the damage Dr. Tellers recognized that his son was beyond his help and went inside to get a trash bag and a shovel.
He had never wanted a son, never wanted a wife either, the two had just happened Roland considered both of them accidents which had cost him and his work dearly. Roland’s love was only for his work, at a young age he had given up a broader life for the heady pursuit of knowledge. He had made his first notable science experiment in middle school and had managed to get a paper on protein-peptide interactions published in a small prestigious journal, his life unrolled in a predictable matter, college, graduate school, and professorship. The only hiccup was Juliana, who he had met in graduate school, and who for some reason seemed obsessed with Roland. Their “courtship” couldn’t be recognized as such by anyone, Juliana pursued and Roland ignored. It was out of the hopes of reducing distractions that he said yes to her when she proposed to him for the fifth time, a poorly thought out conclusion that was. Juliana immediately intruded herself into the one aspect of Roland’s life he consider important his work… From that low “high” the relationship rolled downhill. Dr. Tellers regretted that he ever had sex with his wife and he very much regretted that after their divorce when she found out she was pregnant she’d decided to keep the baby. The child that shared half of Roland’s genetic makeup was a small, cute, high-spirited boy. Juliana named the boy Timothy. Not wanting a child but unwilling to let the boy go fatherless Roland attempted to simulate what he thought a father should be, when it didn’t interrupt with his work. So it was that every weekend Roland picked up Timothy and took him back to his house, and then attempted to be a father while letting the boy do whatever it is boys do.
The first time it happened Dr. Teller’s was terrified, despite the fact that it was an accident and he himself was blameless, he had been working in his basement lab at the time. Reporting it to the Police or having to interact with Juliana would take too much time. It was dumb luck that Juliana was on vacation and he had the boy for a month, that he had been working on aging, and the simple genius to apply what he had been working on in the lab to his own personal problem. Two weeks and countless failures later he pulled it off, just in time to hand the boy back to his mother when she came to pick him up. Of course, that first model had some kinks to work out, a few bugs and oddities to it, Roland noticed them almost immediately. The boy was lackadaisical, absent mind and ed, his skin took on an odd tint under direct light. Dr. Tellers though had ample time to perfect the process, he did after all see the boy every week. Better though, the work he had done on Tim, had given him insights into aging and the proteins responsible for the process. Paper after paper came out of his lab as he recreated the field of gerontology, making Roland Tellers famous, respected, and rich. Tellers hardly noticed and everything went back into his work. By the fourth model Dr. Tellers had perfected the process, had grown bored, and moved on to other things.
His son though seem gifted with an ability to find new ways to end his life. Assisted by the near total absence of adult supervision Tim found ever increasingly bizarre and improbable ways to kill himself. Dr. Tellers at times suspected that somehow, despite the scientific impossibility, his son knew that it didn’t matter what he did, a new him would be back the next day. As he got older, the boy was ten now, the deaths became more and more ridiculous, and then they became mundane. As Roland gathered his son’s, more precisely another copy of his son’s, intestines in a bag he began to regret ever having cloned and rapidly aged his son 10 years ago, but after all this time it was much, much too late to go back. Having gathered the boy into the bag he carefully took the bag down into the basement and threw it carelessly into the incinerator and started the beast up. As he made his way into his basement lab he absentmindedly started up the machine that he so long ago had callously labeled “The Tim Machine”. He still chuckled at the name… By the morning Tim would be back in his bed and no one but him and Tilly would know anything had happened.
