It could have been better.
It could have been revolutionary! If Dr. White had more time to iterate, modify, and analyze the material in front of her, it could have forced Dr. White's bastard of a husband into retirement.
War wasn't cheap, and Dr. White was sick of paying the price. She already raised two kids, and she was tired of waiting for her husband to return her calls.
It was taking longer and longer to hear back from him. At first, it was a few days, then a few weeks, then a month or two before she received any news from the front. It's been six months since Dr. White heard from him. Staying in that house alone for years on end was enough for Dr. White to resign from her teaching position at the University of Urbana-Champaign and sign her first non-disclosure agreement in nine years.
Dr. White wasn't going to wait for her husband anymore. She was going to take matters into her own hands.
The alarms inside the room were deafening.
Dr. White was going to stay in this room and end this stupid war herself.
The weight of the nation's future rattled in a glass case, and Dr. White wanted to stay rooted to the spot. The black heel of Dr. White's military boots were warn down from pacing in the rugged halls of an emergency underground facility built by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The underground facility was probably evacuating because of another targeted missile strike. Even if Dr. White had turned to leave now, she wouldn't have made it out of the facility on time.
As the alarms around her continued to blare, Dr. White gritted her teeth. The shouts of the research team scrambling to the exits muffled the sound of her jaw audibly popping. To the theoretical physicist, the entire team was moving in slow motion.
The last time Dr. White counted, the team consisted of twenty-four doctors and six research assistants, a relatively small amount for a project of this scale. The number fluctuated as more research projects, usually long-ranged weaponry, took precedence over energy research as the other nations closed in.
In the chaos of the evacuation, a leader emerged inside the facility.
"Get moving!" screamed Dr. Schmidt, "Turn that damn thing off already, White! Go, go, go!"
Dr. Walter Schmidt. A sergeant in the Air Force. Honorably discharged for acting carelessly and shooting himself in the foot. A talented materials engineer with no time to waste on "theoretical mathematics".
Dr. Walter Schmidth. The type of person Dr. White couldn't stand academically or personally.
Dr. White ignored Dr. Schmidt in favor of watching assorted colors from the specimen. The heat was enough to make Dr. White's face burn, and the second she leaned in to get a closer look at the specimen, the theoretical physicist found herself lost in a brilliant flash of bright blue, violet, and white.
Bright flashes of sparks, well over a thousand lumens, rattled inside a glass case of reinforced fused silica. Dr. White specifically selected this case for its spectacular optical properties, but now, it amplified the energy inside the container. The second the flashing white light of the fire alarm hit the specimen, it absorbed more energy. The material in front of the team was photoreative.
The more energy the material absorbed, the more unstable it became.
"Dr. White!" Dr. Schmidt screamed.
Dr. White couldn't hear anymore. Her coworker's scream felt like a ringing in her ear, and when Dr. White looked down, she saw shrapnel inside her entire body from head to toe. It didn't take long for Dr. White to figure out what happened.
The glass containing the specimen exploded.
A second later, Dr. White found herself crumbling to the ground, and her vision went pitch black. The only thing she could feel in the darkness was burning splotches of colorful light, which embedded itself in her dreams and ate away at her nightmares.
Dr. White's head felt like it was on fire.
"Dr. White?" Dr. Schmidt called.
Dr. White opened her eyes again, and the glass container was completely intact. The evacuation alarm wasn't going off, and the specimen was functioning normally. The data analysis on the screen to the left of Dr. White had the same readings it did exactly 5 minutes and 28 seconds ago before-
Dr. White's eyes went wide.
5 minutes and 28 seconds.
Dr. White traveled back in time to exactly 5 minutes and 28 seconds before the missile strike took place.
After three long years, Dr. White's experiment was a success!
Dr. White moved away from the specimen and hurried to the locked fine cabinet in her desk. She kicked the drawer open with a sharp "clank", and when the lock broke, Dr. White pulled out a manilla folder. Inside the folder, a series of assorted studies were stacked neatly in alphabetical order. At the time, the theoretical framework Dr. White wrote nine years ago, titled "A Systematic Approach to Energy, Light, and Time", sat neatly on top of the stack.
Dr. White had to fight for funding on this project. The concept was radical, and she had to pull strings to order the right equipment. DARPA laid out a series of objects, but Dr. White only had three:
1. Turn back time.
2. Fuck with the enemy.
3. Drag her husband back home by the hair in his ass before he dies on the front lines, just like he did six months ago.
