Life at the Cost of Drinking a Cup of Time: The Simulated Dream

Part Four: Next Experiment: Time Trap

The next experiment lasts two hours and is considered the final stage before the main experiment. However, things don’t go as expected in this trial. Alex suddenly falls into a time loop and is sent back to his childhood. Professor Darcy, noticing the changes with concern, says to his team in a voice filled with anxiety: "He’s trapped at a point far from his past, in a trap of his childhood trauma."

He instructs his team: "Adjust the signals so that specific memories are triggered for him, and prevent his mind from deciding where it wants to go. We must ensure this doesn’t get out of our control."

Despite the team’s efforts to prevent Alex from returning to his childhood, Alex unintentionally goes back to age five, sitting in his room, drawing. But suddenly, his stepmother, Monica, enters the room and harshly says, "Why haven’t you cleaned your room?"

Alex, shocked by the harshness and crying, leaves his drawing unfinished to obey Monica. As he cleans his room, his focus seems scattered due to his distress and anxiety. After tidying up, he returns to complete his drawing. The drawing depicts a strange, unknown place—an unfamiliar location that he’s never seen before. The drawing seems like it’s from a future time, but not a future he recognizes.

As night falls, Alex, tearfully, shows his drawing to his father. However, his father, with a saddened and upset expression, tells him, "You need to listen to Monica, Alex." This statement deeply affects Alex, and he goes to bed, crying himself to sleep.

Meanwhile, Professor Darcy and his team are doing everything they can to pull Alex out of this state. They try to modify the signals to wake him up and bring him out of this nightmarish state. But when Alex finally wakes up, his cries echo in the air, and he shouts that, in the last moment, he heard Sarah screaming. Professor Darcy, with concern, tells his team: "This is getting out of control. This situation is far more complicated than we thought."

That night, Rosalyn, who is reviewing the recorded tape of the experiment, tells Alex that, at the beginning of the tape, she heard a childish voice from Alex asking for help. The voice came from a time full of emotions, pain, and trauma. But when they listened to the tape again, there was no new voice. This occurrence deeply worries Rosalind, raising the question of what might happen to Alex in the future and whether these signals are affecting Alex's mind in an unpredictable way.

This experiment and its complexities have trapped Alex in an unknown world from his past. The question arises whether he will be able to break free from this time trap and his childhood trauma, or if this is just the beginning of the nightmares that will emerge for him in the future. And most importantly, will Alex change the past, or will the past change him?