Credit: Jamie Tufrey

Zane smiled as he lifted his gaze from the text. His rational mind sneered at the unqualified statements and the blatant tricks of using targeted marketing to coax a sense of authority.

The fact remained, however, that he'd had a déjà vu at the precise moment the book had predicted. If nothing else, he rationalised, it would be an interesting read for the evening. Anything would beat television and the emptiness.

"Hello there. How much for the book?" he asked the tattered lady. She raised her frosty eyebrows in appraisal as he showed her the cover. A glint of recognition crossed her age-softened features.

"My son used to read that book all the time," she said quietly, slipping away into the memories where the old seemed to dwell. Zane found himself wondering what had happened to her son, but didn't want to ask. He could feel anxiety building within him; he had to read more.

"Twenty five cents will do," she said. Clouds bruised the sun. Zane dug out a dollar bill and waved off the idea of change.

His tea sat cold and forgotten on the coffee table. The living room reading lamp had a bulb that Emily would have found too dim, but Zane didn't bother stopping to change it. Chronocide had him entranced.

The act of time travel tunes you in to godliness in a way that no church, shaman, or guru can. Objects you thought lost forever, return. Events you thought untouchable, you may now change. You will witness the broken things of your life repaired as if they'd never come apart. Order flows out of chaos, and all the world obeys your inverted perceptions.

Zane tore through the chapters, only occasionally re-reading a paragraph that struck him as particularly right or familiar. The diverse changes in tone suggested more than one person had added a hand to the work. The technical areas were dry and factual with exact proportions, while others read like a drug experience. A strange, nearly forgotten obsession with time travel resurfaced; he found himself wanting to skip.

How was it supposedly done? He justified his fascination: it was so he could examine the pseudoscience and discredit it, finishing the ridiculous subject once and for all. But he knew that wasn't the reason at all. That he wanted to try it for himself.

I hold degrees in biochemical engineering, neurobiology and quantum physics. By all accounts I am a qualified scientist, but scientists are not the only pioneers. In fact, we often forget our counterparts, the pure experimenters who focussed on attempting the impossible, rather than pontificating about what could not be done--people like the Wright Brothers, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Timothy Leary and Nikola Tesla.

I cannot properly and fully explain why my method of time travel works, I can only assist you in demonstrating that it does. I will provide a basic framework for the mechanisms I believe are involved, but ultimately these are irrelevant. What is important is that I can reveal the limitations and possibilities I've discovered, and I can show you how to achieve time travel for yourself, because I, myself have achieved it. I am not simply a scientist, I am an experimenter.

Zane read and reread the techniques, the formulas for the chemical compounds and the obscure electronic devices that would be required. Flipping to the end of the book, he half expected to find an order form to confirm the scam, or at least a place where one had been. No such luck.

Re-examining the materials needed, he saw that it would take more time than money, ironically, to construct what the author had in mind. The obvious hazards of electric shock combined with the mysterious nature of the chemical compounds vaguely frightened him. If this book really were self published, could the author have gotten away with suggesting something that might harm or even kill people?

Zane set the book down and looked at his watch. The hour hand had slipped well past midnight, and he had to get up early for work. With a half grin at his own childish curiosity, he marked his page with an unopened letter from the power company and went to bed.