Stigma: A Science Fiction Story

The laboratory seemed long deserted. No vital sign of breath. Somehow, at the secret underground part, there was something going on. Insignificant stage of a significant mission. And there he was, Dr. Hue, standing in front of a huge machine in the shape of a metallic ring. This machine, was the proof of Dr. Hue’s untold story of failure, patience, hard work and devotion for the past three years. But there was still a lot more to go.

He sighed. He was too tired, awaiting a good nap. Drops of sweat were rolling down towards his pointed chin. “Just ten more minutes”, he told himself and resumed his work to fix a small metallic part.

Four…five…six…

Suddenly, he sensed a faint pull of gravity on his back. As soon as he turned to look what’s going on, he saw a disappearing round void from where a man jumped out. He froze for a moment. How come there is a man, appearing suddenly, out of the air in an empty place like this? The man started to approach him. Now he could see him clearly. To his amazement, the man looked very familiar, like as if they had met before. The man had same body features as his father’s. And now the man was two feet away from him. Before he could utter a word, the man took out a revolver. Dr. Hue went totally numb. With rage, the man closed his eyes and seconds later, two bullets pierced right through his chest. Dr. Hue fell down. The whole world around him started fading and he could not breathe. He lied down there in his own pool of blood without any movement.

[ Dr. Hue’s voice recording was found a day after his murder.]

“Hello world, this is Dr. Hue, but not the one you used to know. I am twelve years older Hue from now, killing my younger self. Why and how did I kill myself? Please listen to my story:

I was a physicist and a talented cryptologist, but not any famous. Once somehow, I appeared in a long series of test which was mostly ignored by all brilliant minds. I passed the exam and then got included in a small team of scientists formed by a non-famous organization which had some significant trades with the government. No one knew about us and every other scientist in the group was infamous, but exceptionally brilliant in a specific field. We were an alliance of ambitious young minds who were craving to do something to be famous and successful. And we got it. We all were given a project individually along with an assistant and we had to complete it within five years.

But we went wrong somewhere. We went wrong because, we did not feel the urge to analyze the true motivation behind this mission, we went forward thinking of our own greater good.

We started our work in a secret lab at a deserted island. We worked like crazy-dedicating ourselves to it. My task was to build a machine which can create an artificial wormhole- through which we can travel through warped space time. We can travel long distances in a flicker of a minute or we can go for a time-travel like we had been reading in fictions for decades. It was indeed a huge project, modifying and developing theories, deciphering codes, and then building the machine.

How ridiculous! I dedicated five years of my precious youth on something whose impact I was unaware of.

Finally the day came when we were to present our invention in front of the world. But the managing team insisted and told us to keep it a secret from the people, and hand these over to the government as per the agreement. We still had no idea what on earth they were planning to do with it. Though we got everything we craved for, this did not feel right.

After a few months, an alliance force of the US, the Great Britain and Russia arose and started a cold war of technology and artificial intelligence against the every third world country. The backbone of economy and politics of those countries were destroyed. This was so tactful that they had to surrender and there was no other way around. The alliance started to abuse the citizens; their privacy and legal rights were seized. There were civil wars across the globe, and lots of lives were taken everyday. No one could raise voice against them as they still did not know how to deal with those advanced technologies. Eventually within a few years the alliance became the controller and they became their puppets. And do you know what the hidden weapons were? The technology we had invented!

So that was it. The fate of the world was humiliated and was tossed over like a coin. And there I was, silently watching the holocaust and doing nothing. I was baffled, finally figuring out the conspiracy behind the mission.

I could not withstand it anymore. My life was at risk and I went to hiding. I could not connect the other scientists too. My conscience was in a total mess. After few days, I decided to work further on my invention. I did not know what to do with it but I insisted on working. For another five years, I worked in my secret hideout. Finally I was able to build the machine to make time travel possible for larger time gap that what we originally had.

After it, a lot of things crossed my mind, and the most important part was that I had to prevent this horrible holocaust at any cost. Eventually I came up with the idea to destroy it at its bud. The stigma of this aftermath had cut me so deep that I really cannot see any other way around than this; to kill all those pioneers of this new technology including myself.

Now here I am, after killing the other pioneers of the mission and destroying their inventions, I am going to make my younger self disappear too. I am recording this before my murder, since I do not know what will happen to me right next the moment I kill my other self. But I hope this will be for sake of the world’s greater good. This is the least thing I could do to prevent us doing a great mistake.”