Vortex Of Time

• Elijah Hume, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2019

Doctor Stevenson finally stopped sprinting. He leaned against an enormous elm tree. His breath sounded like a burnt-out engine cylinder. He reflected over the past three minutes… well… technically it was 8 million years, but that didn’t matter now.
29th October, 2036, 9:16 am
Dr. Stevenson leaped enthusiastically onto his hover board and sped off towards his lab. He had just invented a fully working time machine! He was so certain that the contraption was going to work that he was going to test it on himself…
15 minutes later…
Our hero smashed through the door of his office and briskly walked over to where the time machine – ‘The Stevenator’ as it was called – stood, waiting to swallow a mortal human into its vortex of time…
Dr. Stevenson stepped into the dangerous contraption, set the timetravelometer to 7997964 B.C.E., & smacked a button marked ‘Let’s Go’. He heard the hum of the veeblefetzer (the component that creates the vortex) warming up. Suddenly, he was swallowed up into a whirlpool of time…
Our Daring Doctor blinked. He found himself lying in a clearing about 5 meters square. Lush vegetation surrounded him. “This is too quiet to be safe…” he thought. He was correct. Seconds later, a giant Tyrannosaurus Rex crashed through the undergrowth…
The Doctor screamed, scrambled backwards, jumped up, & took off. What he didn’t know was that a Velociraptor was trailing him closely, and a second later, it plucked him off the face of the earth! He figured out his situation almost instantaneously. This ravenous ‘raptor was going to fly up really high, then drop him!!!
Dr. Stevenson was correct. The caustic crustacean dropped him. He reached terminal velocity almost instantly. He had less than 3 seconds to live! He shut his eyes and awaited the inevitable impact that would crush the life out of his body…
SPLASH! What incredible luck! He had landed on his back in a pond! It felt like invisible hands were stabbing daggers through his back, but he didn’t care, he was alive!
He gulped in a gulp of precious air as soon as he breached the surface. He opened his eyes, and then gasped for real! An enormous Diplodocus at least 30 meters tall was sipping water less than a meter away! He looked around the lush forest surrounding him. He sighed with relief as he spotted the time machine around 9 meters away. He staggered inside, cold, wet, hungry, & enlightened, and typed into the timetravelometer the present date, and pressed ‘Go’…