Time War: A Science Fiction Story

As Jane and Tom walked toward the vice-principal's office, the high school students started to speculate on what they might have done to get themselves into trouble.

“Did you mess around with the school's database again?” asked Jane.

“That was a one-shot thing, long ago” said Tom. “I bet it's your fault. Did they catch you smoking pot on the school grounds?”

“Hell, no,” said Jane.

The two students walked into the office of the school's vice-principal, Mr. Donahue. “Are we in trouble?” asked Jane.

“No, you are not,” said Mr. Donahue. “I have some very important news I have to break to all of the students at our high school. I thought I'd tell you first, to get a feeling for what kind of reaction the news will provoke.”

“I knew it: you're going to cancel the school play,” said Jane. “It's not fair, dammit. I worked so hard to get the lead part.”

“No, it's not that at all,” said Mr. Donahue. “It's something much, much bigger than that. What I have to tell you is this: the world is totally different from the way you think it is.”

“What do you mean?” asked Tom. “Oh, is this some kind of broaden-our-horizons talk or freshen-our-perspective lecture?”

“No,” said Mr. Donahue. “What I mean is that the world is really, truly, radically different from the way you think it is. Believe it or not, you don't even live in the century you think you are living in.”

Tom looked at Jane, and they both tried to suppress a laugh. “So tell us how that works,” said Tom with a smile.

“This isn't the year you think it is,” said Mr. Donahue. “This isn't even the twenty-first century. You are now living in the year 2527.”

Jane tried not to laugh. “How do you figure that?” she said.

“Have you ever heard of a time machine?” asked Mr. Donahue.

“You mean a machine allowing someone to travel through time?” said Tom. “Yes, but no one's ever invented that.”

“You're right,” said Mr. Donahue. “But one day someone invented something pretty similar. It was a machine that would prevent the passage of time. It was a machine that would prevent time from flowing.”

“Go on,” said Jane.

“The machine was invented in another country,” said Mr. Donahue. “By tinkering with the machine, the inventors added a feature they called geographic selectivity. They were able to stop the flow of time in only some places they had chosen, allowing the normal passage of time to occur in the rest of the world.”

“Wow, that must have been fun to play around with,” said Tom in a skeptical tone of voice. “What happened next?”

“The inventors of the machine sold their device to the government of their country,” explained Mr. Donahue. “That country declared war on the United States, Russia and China. That small country very quickly won the war by freezing time in the United States, Russia and China. They call this war the Time War. Our country lost that war, as did Russia and China.”

“So time is frozen in this country?” asked Jane. “But that's crazy. It that was true, I couldn't be talking right how.”

“No, time isn't frozen right now in the United States,” said Mr. Donahue. “They just recently unfroze time in this country. But for the past five centuries, time has been frozen in the United States, Russia and China. But in all the other countries, time has been flowing normally. The rest of the world is now far more technologically advanced than we are. Kenya and Ethiopia are now the most advanced nations on the planet.”

“Why would anyone do some crazy thing like that?” asked Tom, still not believing a word of the story.

“The country that did it said that it was necessary, to stop global warming caused by the superpowers, and to get rid of all the nuclear weapons,” explained Mr. Donahue.

“So I'm now more than 500 years old?” asked Jane. “Funny, I still don't have a wrinkle.”

“Of course, you don't,” said Mr. Donahue. “Because for most of those 500 years, time was frozen for you, and everyone else in the United States. So you didn't age an extra day.”

“So what do we do now, now that time has been unfrozen here in the US for the first time in five centuries?” asked Jane

“Well, the first thing we have to do is to inform everyone in the school, and convince them what happened,” said Mr. Donahue. “Then we have to work out a program for getting everyone up to speed on all the new technology. We have five centuries of progress to catch up on.”

"So what kind of things were invented during those centuries?" asked Jane.

"Things like self-dissolving garbage, instantaneous home construction through nanobots,  bottom-of-the-ocean entertainment resorts,  robotic husbands, 200-year-old Olympic medalists, and graduate degrees by syringe injection," said Mr. Donahue. 

“You'll never convince the other school kids that this crazy story is true,” said Tom.

“I think it might be easy to do that,” said Mr. Donahue. “You see, I've already made use of some of the new technology that was invented in the past five centuries while time was frozen here in the USA.”

Placing his hands on his neck, Mr. Donahue twisted something, and took off his head, placing his detached head on his desk. Jane and Tom began to scream.

“What are you screaming about?” said the detached head on the desk. “Having a detachable electronic head like this is very popular these days. It's so much better than one of those old-fashioned flesh-and-blood heads.”