Prologue - The Introduction

One cold night of the month October, Anna had been tasked by her mom to take the trash out, because if it stayed in the house for too long, the whole building would reek of the smell of weeks old food and plastic wrappers. Even though her parents weren't home and were planning to return way later, Anna decided not to neglect her assigned task this time and do it. Her neighborhood was fairly small, with rows of different houses flooding the green area. And yet, it was creepy at night. Halloween was coming up and that made it even creepier thanks to the eerie decorations people put outside their houses. Putting on a teal jacket and her sneakers, Anna grabbed the two black bags and went outside. Her only company was the moon which was offering her its dim light. There was a certain trashcan on the other side of the road; this is where she and many of her neighbors got rid of their trash. Anna smiled as she approached it, but that's when she noticed something that made her retrieve; a black stray dog was sleeping right besides it.

Her neighborhood had many stray dogs. These were a pack and, albeit aggressive, the county didn't do anything for them. They hadn't attacked or bitten anyone, but they usually barked loudly to whoever passed by or if they were hungry began chasing them. Nobody had gotten hurt—miraculously so—however either someone had but the neighbors were total ass at spreading the news around (something most neighborhoods excel at) or the people being attacked had exceptionally good survival skills and avoided it. Whatever it was, Anna knew the dog was bad news.

She tip-toed away so she wouldn't make a sound and wake the sleeping animal up. She knew there was a different trashcan that was three blocks away. She walked that distance. She felt shivers go down her spine as the trashcan was located inside a dark alley. "Goddamn," she muttered under her breath. "This is where most murder scenes happen." she said a bit louder and took a step closer, whilst realizing her shoelaces were untied. You watch way too many horror movies, Anna. she gently reprimanded herself. She could see many profanities written with low-quality graffiti spray such as "EAT DICK" (she knew that was her classmate Andrew's) or another dick drawn with hair on it. She scoffed. It was really dark in the alley so she had to squint her eyes. She had her phone in her pockets somewhere; searching for it, she pulled it out and opened the flashlight. She could finally see more clearly. She took care of the bags and then noticed something else. A tall machine. 

The machine had many different buttons for many different functions. Red, blue and even green ones. It also had something like a glass door which could easily open and close, and a small box below. It wrote something but Anna couldn't see what it was. Her vision wasn't bad, the machine was just old and rusty. She could leave it there and go on with her life, or she could find a way to challenge herself, take it home and hide it from her parents who didn't check up on what she was doing anyway. And they were absent. Anna always had a strange love for collecting odd objects, no matter their size or convenience. She needed to find a way to carry this armageddon of metal wires, buttons and whatever else it was made of home. She looked around and just as she was about to abandon the task because it seemed impossible, she noticed the machine had four small rollers. She almost gasped! She went behind, shuffled between the bad-smelling bags and the machine, before pushing it forward a bit. It moved. Anna repeated that motion, and in no time she and it were out of the alley. She continued rolling it until she'd reach her house's front door porch. Now, the difficult thing was getting it inside.

Anna let it there, unlocked the door and pushed it inside. Its rollers were dirty and she would surely need to clean the floor so she wouldn't raise any suspicion. Thankfully her house had no first floor. Her bedroom also had a secret door which was connected to their basement. This house was made by her great-grandparents in 1887. They had built a basement door for unknown reasons in one of the bedrooms which was decided as Anna's even before she was born. Maybe her parents didn't know it was there; no way they'd trust her with such an asset. 

She carried it in her room. It was a mess, just like she had left it. Papers were thrown on the floor that was covered by a pink carpet. She had shuffled god knows what under her bed and her closet was overflowing with unironed clothes. She had promised her mom to iron them, but she had neglected it in favor of playing her favorite game, Project Sekai. Her window was open, even if she remembered closing it and the TV she had was playing a random YouTube video. Anna enjoyed putting on videos on her TV (which had YouTube) and let it play in the background as she did stuff. The girl put the machine inside the basement, before rushing to tidy up everything. She hastily ironed the clothes, mopped the floor and took care of whatever else she could. She was left exhausted but she saw examining the machine, something she was planning to do as soon as she finished her chores, as a reward

She inspected the machine once more. It looked like something out of a sci-fi movie and she couldn't help but wonder who the hell would throw out such thing—or quite frankly, why did it exist in the first place. She only had a neighbor who could have made something even remotely similar to it. "Dr". Evans—basically, he was a self-proclaimed scientist who could pump out something only found in "one's wildest fantasies", as he put it. He was old, around 80 years old, a widower with two sons whodidn't talk to him for a good reason. Even then, Anna couldn't see him making anything actually remarkable which could ever contribute to humanity in any way, shape or form. 

As she continued her "thorough inspection", she found a label on the back. It wrote: TIME-TRAVELING MACHINE, USE IT WISELY AND CAUTIOUSLY. Anna's green eyes widened at the label—had she just brought a time-traveling machine into her home?! That's why it ticked all the boxes! Tall, weird and found in suspiciously abandoned in a weird area. Yet, she knew better than to immediately get excited. "Whoever made this is a big idiot," she thought. "Did they really think they could make anyone believe this thing is a time-travel machine?" she scoffed. These only exist in movies, she thought to herself. But, how I wish they were real. Despite her initial skepticism, Anna felt an urge; she felt an urge to play with the buttons just to see if this big piece of junk was actually what was written on the back. She looked down at the box and she saw a series of letters and numbers she couldn't make out. She sighed in disappointment. Even whens she shone her flashlight on it again, she couldn't see shit. It was the machine's fault, not hers. Anna quickly began playing with the buttons; most didn't work, and some beeped a bit, making her stare at it with wide eyes, and then produced a failing sound. 

Anna waited, and waited, she played with the cables a bit, dusted it off meticulously and had overall huge expectations, only for the machine to stay unresponsive. "Ugh, this is ridiculous." she said and from her anger she kicked it. The idiot didn't think about it as she started jumping up and down from the stinging pain, before tripping over thin air and falling on her butt. The floor was so cold she froze in addition to the pain. Anna groaned and dusted her clothes off. She still hadn't taken them off since the time she returned from school. She was wearing a dark red off-the-shoulders sweater and bleached dark blue jeans. They were slightly buggy against her feet. She returned to her bedroom when she heard the front door click. Peeking her head, she noticed her parents entering the home. Her mother, a fair woman in her 30s with short black hair, a red blouse and white pants that had fallen out of style long ago approached her. 

"Did you take the trash out like I told you?" she asked.

"I did," Anna replied. "And I also tidied up."

She stepped aside in order to let her mom take in the sight of a finally clean house. Anna was a girl who was good at school and lazy at everything else; no, actually, even school seemed like too much work for her, but she always managed to somehow get decent grades. When it came to anything else, Anna had the passion but not the ability to keep up with how hard work it usually required. And these personality traits were something her mom—and everyone else—couldn't correct easily. The eyes of Anna's mom widened like she had seen a ghost and her mouth traveled to cover her open mouth.

"Oh! Why, would you look at that? Did someone break a leg?" Anna's dad, a plump man with a balding head and glasses said from the back. 

He knew how to point his finger at his daughter for not doing anything, but he barely moved from the couch most of the time. Anna couldn't talk back—she knew the consequences would be getting a duet, a lecture from her parents. That is something she dreaded...most of the time, they insisted on wrong things and gas-lit her when she tried to show them they were making a mistake.

"Yeah, what can I say." she said sarcastically and returned to her room.

"Kids...you change their diapers, wipe them, feed them and then they grow up to talk to you with such audacity." her father said.

Anna turned back to her bedroom. She needed to make her bag for school the following day, but she was too bored to do so. She took her socks off and popped in the bed. She loved the feeling of her cold feet coming in contact with the warm and cozy blankets. She turned the light off, only keeping a small lamp next to her on, and grabbed her phone. Skimming through her many games, she clicked on PJSK and began playing. Anna played until the clock on her bedside table showed 1AM. 

"Damn, I should probably go to sleep." Anna whispered to herself, albeit she knew her parents wouldn't check up on her. They had stopped doing that when she was still quite young. 

She put her phone away and stretched, burying herself in the blankets and closing her heavy eyelids. She drifted off to sleep as the machine in the basement did its secret magic.