The Paradox Engine

Dr. Nathan Cole never believed in fate. To him, time was an equation—one that could be rewritten with the right variables. He had spent over a decade perfecting the Paradox Engine, a machine designed to send pulses of altered reality back through time. His goal was simple: undo the war that had doomed humanity.

The world of 2093 was a wasteland. The Titan Conflict, a brutal war between corporate nations, had left Earth in ruins. Cities were nothing but scorched rubble. The sky was a haze of permanent pollution. The last remnants of humanity lived underground, in fear of radiation storms and autonomous war machines still roaming the surface.

Nathan had calculated the exact moment history had gone wrong—August 14, 2067. It was the day Helios Corp launched the first quantum warhead, an event that spiraled into decades of devastation. If he could send a precise pulse back to that point, altering the decision that led to the launch, he could rewrite history.

But something was wrong.

As he stood before the Paradox Engine, its metallic core humming with unstable energy, he hesitated. It wasn’t fear—he had spent years preparing for this. It was something deeper, a whisper at the edge of his mind, warning him not to do this.

He ignored it.

With a deep breath, he activated the machine.

A pulse of blue energy rippled outward. The air fractured like shattered glass. Nathan felt a wave of nausea as reality wavered around him. He braced himself, expecting to see the world shift into the timeline he had designed.

But instead—

Nothing changed.

The underground bunker remained intact. The world outside was still a scorched wasteland. Confused, he checked the Paradox Engine’s readings.

The pulse had been sent. So why hadn’t history changed?

Then he noticed something. His lab assistant, Elliot Greene, was gone. The chair where Elliot had been sitting was empty. The coffee mug he had been drinking from was missing.

Nathan’s blood ran cold.

He checked the security feed. Where Elliot should have been, there was nothing—as if he had never existed.

Panic set in. He checked his own research logs. The files on Elliot were gone. No record of his hiring. No record of him ever being there.

Then the whisper returned, clearer this time.

"You are not supposed to do this."

Nathan spun around. The lab was empty. He was alone.

The Paradox Engine flickered, its core pulsing erratically. Reality itself wavered. The walls of the lab seemed to ripple, shifting between what was real and something else.

And then he saw them.

Figures, tall and featureless, standing at the edges of his vision. They did not move. They did not speak. But he knew—they were watching him.

Nathan staggered backward. "Who—what are you?"

No response.

The whisper returned, now a chorus of voices overlapping.

"You are breaking the cycle."

The Paradox Engine pulsed again, sending out another ripple. Nathan felt a sharp pain in his skull, like something was rewriting him. He clutched his head, gasping.

Memories shifted. He saw versions of himself that did not exist—a life where he never became a scientist, a life where he died in the war, a life where he never built the Paradox Engine at all.

The past was fighting back.

The figures took a step closer.

Nathan stumbled toward the control panel, desperately trying to reverse the pulse. If he could shut the machine down, maybe—just maybe—he could fix this.

His fingers raced over the interface. Error messages flooded the screen.

Reality Deviation Detected.

Correction in Progress.

Subject: Nathan Cole - Status: Pending Erasure.

"No… no, no, no!"

His own existence was collapsing.

He turned to the figures. "Please! I just wanted to fix the past! I wanted to save humanity!"

They did not answer.

The whisper became a roar, echoing inside his skull.

"Time does not wish to be changed."

Nathan screamed as the world fractured around him. His body felt like it was being pulled apart—scattered across infinite timelines, rewritten, erased.

And then—

Silence.

The Paradox Engine powered down.

The bunker remained still.

The world outside was still a wasteland.

The Titan Conflict had still happened.

But Nathan Cole?

Nathan Cole had never existed.