A Glitch in Time Act 2

By Yathansh Sharma

Three years after the fateful day, when future Alex saved Hope from the horrible fate that awaited her and his entire timeline, present-day Alex and Hope are living together. They are happy and ready to take the next step in this relationship. However, things go sideways when another version of Damian, from this new timeline, arrived from the future hunting for the data on the time machine and managed to send Alex into another spiral of black and white. Alex soon realizes that he can't handle the entire problem by himself this time and decides to take the help of Grey, a government agent in his fight against Damian. Will things work out in his favor, or will the government turn on one of their own for their own benefit?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Yathansh Sharma
• Release date: Jul 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005523602

Yathansh Sharma

Stories are our gateway into the unknown. And as long as I have remembered I have kept wandering into the unknown. To be able to think something new is a special gift that authors have, and to share it with the rest of the world is our characteristic. I invite you for a journey into my unknown, so that I may share what I have discovered, and perhaps someday you will be returning me the favor.

Book preview

A Glitch in Time – Act II

Published by Yathansh Sharma at Smashwords

Copyright 2020 Yathansh Sharma

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Prologue – Every story has an origin

We have all had our fair share of weird things. Sometimes things happen which were not supposed to be possible, and other times, something that had a probability of one hundred percent, just does not happen. Things like, talking to your future self, knowing what all life has planned for you. They do not happen to any normal human being. However, the same cannot be said for Alex Richardson.

This guy was born a genius, and at a very young age he realized the gift he had. However, being embarrassed at his inability to find people he can interact with on his level, and therefore unable to make friends, he started acting normal. All he wanted was acceptance. But there was another part of this story that he never realized, the part where he was destined to achieve greatness.

A funny thing about destiny is that, contrary to common believe, you do not choose your destiny. It has been chosen and pre-determined for you. Who does it? It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you will keep walking towards your destiny and then one day, you’ll be there, and then you’ll be at peace. For Alex, that destiny was really far away. This was just the beginning for him. Every story has an origin, and this was his.

The very first part of Alex’s origin story happened a while ago, when he was in his office, working as a Software Developer and suddenly a flash happened. The next thing he saw was a person standing in front of him, who seemed a little bit older version of himself. The elder Alex completely ignored our young hero and walked towards Hope, the girl Alex liked. The elder Alex explained that Hope’s life is in danger and that she needs to hide somewhere. An assassin is coming to kill her and he will stop at nothing to fulfill his mission. Our Alex was a bit reluctant to let this happen first, however upon confirming that this time traveler is indeed he himself from the future, Alex became a bit more cooperative.

While this was happening, the assassin from the future, Damian, arrived there and started firing bullets at our main characters. Future Alex, after a few hit and trials, managed to devise a strategy to stop Damian for a while. He later left with Hope to hide somewhere. While future Alex explained to Hope that she was destined to destroy half of the world, Damian bonded with our Alex and told him the same thing. Neither of the two parties took the news lightly. Alex hell-bent on doing the right thing, devices a plan to lure Hope in. While Hope left future Alex in order to fix everything in her own way, two of their co-workers, Sean and Sasha had their own plans set in motion. They both had some leverage on Hope which they were using in order to blackmail her. Extorting money and getting her to be involved into sexual activities were a few things that she was forced to do.

Now afraid that things might get exposed, Sean and Sasha joined forces with Damian and Alex, while future Alex came back for Hope. With his friend, and co-worker, Ashley’s help future Alex was able to find Hope and was able to uncover the truth about Sean and Sasha. Seeing all this Alex was able to realize the errors of his path and reconciled with Hope. They both expressed their feelings for each other. However, Damian stood his ground and started using a certain time stopping ability to get an edge on all three of our main characters. The problem was that this ability backfired, and his body deteriorate and turned into ash, and then further into atoms, and then even those split up to completely remove him out of existence.

Future Alex, realizing that something severe has changed in timeline, returned to his time. His parting words to Alex were that whenever he’ll find Damian, help him and take him in as a brother, because deep within they both are kindred spirits. He also gave Alex all his research on the time machine, so that Alex can easily create one without suffering the consequences of failed time related experiments. And this concludes the first part of Alex’s origin story.

Chapter 1 – Three years after

Ever since that fateful day Alex and Hope have been in a relationship. She has been showing improvement in her thought process, by being much more optimistic and Alex has been a lot more accepting of himself. He had left his worries, of being normal and accepted, in the past and is focusing much more on the future. He had quit his job as a software developer and has been studying a lot of research papers on space, time and black holes. He wanted to use his own skills to discover equations that’ll help him create a time machine.

However, unlike other mad scientists, he has been taking care of his family as well. He has been close to his parents, even though he is living with Hope now, and visits his parents once a week. Hope has been leading a small team of testers in a different company and has been the main earning member out of the two.

Then one day when she came back from office and looked at the front door of their house open, she became a bit skeptical. She started walking on the lawn slowly towards the door, while being really careful. She used to look at the growing grass on the lawn and get a bit irritated at Alex for not being much careful towards the household chores. But today she completely missed out on that. Upon reaching the front door she saw that the door was unlocked and there was no sign of a forced entry.

Is Alex home? she said to herself while slowly opening the door. The truth is that the entire ordeal with future Alex and Damian has left some sort of trauma in her mind. Mostly she is dealing with it well, however sometimes, when she is alone, she gets a little scared and hence never prefers to stay away from people, specially Alex, for long.

She slowly walked towards the stairs right in front of the door, after taking a quick peep in the drawing room towards her right.

Alex, are you up there? She said after climbing a few stairs.

Yeah! I am up here. Just doing some important calculations. Do not come up here, I am not wearing anything. He replied to her which gave her a sense of relief and then another wave of excitement upon hearing the other part of the sentence. That won’t work… he continued … I am wearing too much clothes and it might upset your stomach, big time.

What are you saying dummy? she said upon reaching the second floor and then she turned towards the room on her left. It was supposed to be a second bedroom, however as of now it was serving as Alex’s lab ever since they moved in.

Tell me something, why didn’t you go for your evening walk today? she asked after opening the door. Alex was sitting on his chair, with his desk in front of him, in the middle of the room. A Van de Graff generator was on his right and a miniature particle accelerator was on his left. He had a lot of papers on his desk, kept in an unorderly fashion.

I was doing some important work. He replied upon seeing Hope.

What kind of work? If you tell me it is some other stupid kinky toy that you have made by yourself, I swear to God, that I’ll rip it into two pieces, shove one in the toilet and throw another in the garbage.

It was one time, and no I have not created anything, extraordinary. He said while making air quotes with his fingers in order to put emphasis on extraordinary. Rather it is something really small.

What is it?

Aaaa…… It is… one… two… three…

I know how the numbers work. Is it supposed to explain what are you hiding?

A stone. It is a stone. A very normal looking stone. Which will shine too much, and can potentially hurt your eyes if you are not careful enough.

Can I carefully look at it?

No. It is pure carbon and can really be dangerous. Just imagine, what if it’s radioactive?

Can carbon be radioactive? I though it is supposed to be uranium or something in order to be radioactive. Also, if it can be, ‘radioactive’, then please get rid of it safely so that no one starts having radioactive sickness. Hope replied and then turned towards the door taking off her brown leather jacket. I am going to take a shower, and really don’t want to deal with all this nerd talk.

I’ll be joining you, it’s been 3 days since I had taken a bath.

Quite some incentive for you it is then? she asked flirtatiously while looking back towards him.

What can I say, to men of science like myself all these mundane activities are useless unless I get something out of it. Be there in 5 min

Don’t make me wait, hero. She said while walking out of the room.

Man, am I glad she hasn’t seen Chernobyl. Alex said to himself. Then he turned towards his desk and looked at the pile of papers that he was working on. He slowly moved