May 25th, 2026, the day everything changed.
The sun had risen over a beautiful golden sand beach in California. The waves were crashing into the shore and gently pulling back as the seagull's squawk, hunting for their next meal. Ivan Earnheart had just woken up, tumbling out of bed and peeling the blinds on his window to shine light into his immensely large bedroom.
His room is a mess. There are empty bottles of Jack Daniels laying around the floor, carpet stains from all the whiskey he spilled, bags of trash he's yet to throw out and dirty clothes he hasn't put to wash for at least a week. He gets out of the bedroom and puts on filthy old clothes laying on his living room couch. He looks around, enjoying the view of his wonderful house. And sure, he lives in a nice bungalow overlooking the Pacific Ocean, but what does it all matter if he is living alone?
The trauma and flashbacks start to hit Ivan's mind. Two years ago.
He starts remembering the uncovering of his wife Ellen's leukaemia and all that excruciating pain she went through trying to treat her disease. No matter how hard he tried nothing worked and she died only six months after the diagnosis. All he had left now were his daughters Ellie and Emma, both named by their father to have similiar names like their mother.
Ivan loved both more than anything in the world and now he swore to protect them with everything he had. He took great care of his girls and almost never left their side, but on one faithful night his world would crumble to its core and never revive itself again. He finally let his daughters go out somwhere, just to the neighbour's house so their children could spend time together. Ivan thought nothing of it and went to sleep, knowing his responsible daughters would come back on time. Only hours later he woke up to horrifyingly loud screams coming from the street, and it sounded like his daughters. He bolted out of the bedroom in just his shorts and ran onto the street.
What he saw was heart crushing. His two daughters were laying on the street. They had been hit by a speeding car by a drunk man who promptly drove off, not wanting to accept responsibility for his actions. Ivan called an ambulance and sat next to his daughter's bodies, which had little left in them as he listened to their last words.
"Dad, I love you so much, please don't cry, we'll see each other soon, I hope." Ellie said calmly, accepting her fate.
"Daddy, I do not want to die. Please hold me." Emma said, while clutching to Ivan's arms, slowly fading away.
Ivan wakes up from his traumatic memory and immediately breaks down on the floor. He keeps replaying those gut-wrenching sounds of his daughters crying and barely clinging onto life in his head. He yanks the fridge open and poures himself another whiskey... Anything to numb the pain. Finally. He decides to get some work done and enters his basement, which he has turned into a fully functional scientific lab equipped with any necessary gear for his carious experiments.
He climbs down the stairs and jumps straight into his rotating work chair, nearly breaking his spine in the process. Booting up his computer, he plugs in 2 huge flash drives and starts going through all the documents. He opens PDF file and in it is a blueprint document, curiously named: THE WHITE ECHO. In it are sketches and drawings of a weird looking machine. He opens more files and all those blueprints turn out to be for a time travel machine. It might sound crazy or even psychotic, but Ivan Earnheart was once a world-renowed physicist and had a PhD in astrophysics, biology and chemistry not to mention an IQ of 199 making him one of the most intelligent people to ever live.
He has a plan to pair a black and white hole using his machine and use the gravitational time dilation plan to pair the black hole to slingshot through time and emerge from the white hole in the past. An ambitious plan, yes but it's the only thing holding him together. He does not plan on quitting until he achieves his goal.
Ivan starts working by reading research papers on black and white holes. Even though his prototype for the machine is finished, he still needs to research exactly what he's getting himself into and if it is even possible to do. He continues working and turns on his prototype machine for the first time. It works as it draws electrical power from a generator and attempts to draw itself to any nearby black and white hole through a complicated navigational system.
He had finally done it. His machine had finally worked. Maybe it had not been built fully to scale and maybe it had not been evaluated in outer space, but it worked. His machine had finally worked. He fell out of his chair, crying on the ground and realising that there could be chance to see his family once again.
By the morning of the next day, he had already contacted a group or rich investors who would be willing to fund his project. He promised the investors that he would document his entire trip and that he would give the machine and all research to NASA, allowing them to further develop the project in future. He struck a deal with investors and NASA and with the funding provided he hired some of the world's top engineers to start creating a full-scale version of his machine. The process took a couple of excruciating weeks filled with near 17-hour workdays but when it was finally done, it was perfect.
It was a rocket build for one person, with the machine built into it and all the necessary safety gear to protect Ivan in case the machine didn't work. The rocket also had an emergency escape pod that Ivan truly hoped he would not have to use. The rocket was aptly named "The White Echo".
The day had finally come where Ivan would have a chance to go back to his family, to write all the wrongs and live in peace again. He said goodbye to everyone who had helped him achieve this great feat in science and human history. A man's determination to see his family once again, turned into one of the biggest achievments all the time, and now it was time to see if his plan would work. He boarded the rocket, nervous but excited as he strapped in and waved to everyone. The rocket boosted off from the NASA space station as it torpedoed into outer space.
The view of Earth was beautiful, the stars even prettier and everything looking so crisp and wonderful. Once floating in space, he activated the GPS system on his rocket and synced it with the machine. The time was now. The rocket boosted northeast, locking on to the nearest black hole. The rocket achieved the speed of light, something never though possible, another groundbreaking breakthrough for science. The whole Earth stood still watching Ivan's live recordings, as he seperated himself further from Earth, not knowing when he would come back and how much the entire world would change.
But right now, he was only focused on his world, his family. As the rocket approached the black hole and aptly slowed down, Ivan was in a pool of sweat, anxiously thinking about everything that led him to this point. The machine located the distance of the nearest white hole and using super advanced technology, started to pull the two holes towards each other.
Ivan typed in the date he wanted to go back to, February 14th, 2023, a Valentine's Day surprise for his wife in a much more relaxed time. The machine calculated the necessary power it needed to draw and the distance it had to create. Slowely, but surely, a blip on the navigation started getting closer as the rocket started to get slowly sucked in by the black hole. It was the white hole getting closer. Out of nowhere the two holes appeared very clearly in front of Ivan as they merged. The rocket was nearing the end of its power as it could really defend itself any more from the force of the two holes. He finally pressed a button on the machine, and he rocketed into the merged holes, using the gravitational time dilation from the black hole to slingshot into the past through the white hole.
It was like nothing he had ever seen, his live broadcast turned off, and everything shut down. He was in place, void of space and time, shooting through a sort of tunnel that had a distinct grey colour. After a few excruciating hours of constant buzzing and no electricity, he blasted through the void, crash landing into the Pacific Ocean. He knocked out for a few minutes but eventually regained consiousness. He was confused floating in the water and could see the golden California coast just miles away.
He went to check the time on his phone, but it would not turn on, and all the other gear was fried. Luckily, he turned everything back on using a backup generator and he quickly deployed an escape boat, took his wallet, and put on some fresh clothes. He accelerated towards the coast in the boat and made it in less then a minute. Urging to find out the time he asked a stranger what day and year was it.
"It is Valentine's Day, 2023, you idiot. Don't you have a girlfriend or wife to be with or something?" The woman said angrily and confused.
He thanked the lady and felt relieved, going to a corner to cry tears of happiness. He had really done it, and there was no way back, but he could not care less. All he had to do was reunite with his family and be happy forever. He hailed a cab and booked it to his house. He could see his old Rolls-Royce in the driveway, the one his daughters designed, glistening in front of the house he and his wife had designed together. Impatiently he ran to the giant double door, taking one last breath as he knocked on the door. The doors carefully creaked open. A weeping woman opening the doors. It was his wife. ELLEN. When she saw him, she immediately passed out. He ran into the house to hold her, and that is when he saw them. ELLIE and EMMA. They were also crying on the floor and themselves nearly passed out seeing him.
" IVAN? Daddy? How... How is this... How are YOU possible? We just saw you disappear into thin air and were about to call the police. How...?" Ellie said, clutching Emma in pure disbelief.
"Daddy what? I thought you died!" Emma said as she ran to hug her dad.
"Look girls, I can explain EVERYTHING! Please just now help me get your mother to the hospital. NOW!" Ivan uttered in a hurried voice.
Still in pure disbelief, his daughters stood up, hugged him tightly and helped him get their mother into the car, as they all speeded off to the hospital together. Around 6 hours had passed, and Ellen finally woke up. She took good look at the hospital room and saw her daughters and her husband by her side. She held his hand tightly, not letting go.
" Mom, we'll explain everything when we get home, but please, rest now.' The girls quietly whispered to their mom in unison.
They all came home that night and Ivan explained the brutal story of everything that happened in the present, and what he did to get his family back. Ellen, Ellie and Emma were in total shock and awe during the entire conversation, going through every mood change possible. But after seeing their dad dissapear after coming home from Valentine's Day shopping, they could not doubt anything. It took quite a long time, but the family eventually went back to normal. Ivan took Ellen to the doctor, and they discovered the leukaemia incredibly early early allowing the doctors to cure it in a matter of weeks. As for his daughters, he took the greatest care for them, and this time gave them a real promise that he would not leave their side again.
He seamlessly reintegrated back into past life, continuing to work as a scientist alongside his wife as they were determined to prove Ivan's theory and creations even earlier, as to clean up the cosmic mess Ivan made and so they could retire as the world's most succesful scientist ever. Everything was picture perfect again and Ivan cried damn near every night, thankink God for allowing him to complete this journey and alter his fate. Or so, that is what he thought. After a year had nearley passed, little cracks started to show up. Buildings, people and cars phasing through Earth and arriving in different pots than they already were, causing major accidents and problems for everyone. Then the ground started splitting, not just in places where it was normal, but in improbable places and at alarming rate.
Ivan could not believe it, and he quickly realised that this was all his problem, and that there was truly no going back, there was no time to go to the present and fix the consequence, the damage was already done, and fatal for every single person on the planet. Strange flashes in the sky, repeated and distorted sounds, huge weather disasters causing Earth trillions in damage. No one could figure out why it was happening and Ivan and his family were devistated, knowing their time was running low. And the disasters would hit California. One day as they were packing their things to leave on special NASA shuttle into space, everything changed.
A massive hole had suddenly appeared nearby, sucking all the nearby concrete, asphalt, and dirt into is as a shaken driver swerved into the Earnheart's driveway, tragically killing Ellie and Emma. Ivan and Ellen died that day, their souls completely gone. The past and present were merging, and it was only a matter of time before everyone would die. Two days passed and the grieving parents held a small funeral for their daughters. During the funeral, a fracture in the sky started to form with a storm of time anomalies taking everything in sight. Ivan and Ellen, with their final bit of time left, said a hurried and hurtful goodby to their two little girls, as they drove to the place where they first met, a little hill overlooking the now nearly destroyed city of Los Angeles.
"I will forever love you Ellen, in this life and in every other. I am sorry for destroying everything." Ivan said in a broken voice as he leaned onto Ellen's head.
"It is not your fault Ivan, you tried to save us, and I will be eternally grateful for that, but fate won." Ellen uttere in loving but a broken voice as she also leaned onto Ivan's head.'
They shared a final and passionate kiss as the storm engulfed them. Darkness. Silence. Everything turned to white. Fate had completed its course and wiped their universe from existence. However hard he tried, Ivan couldn't trick fate, beacuse fate tricked him.