"Open your eyes Felina." Oliver said as he removed his hands from covering his wife's face.

The slight creases by his eyes deepened and the corners of his mouth lifted upward. Felina's eyes bounced as they examined the pile of scraps before her.

"What is this?" She asked.

Oliver smiled wider and placed his hands on his wife's shoulders. "I'm getting the grant to finally build it!"

"Oliver," Felina bit her lip and glanced away. "I know how much you want this, and I truly believe you can build it, but I don't want you to become disappointed when it doesn't work."

Oliver cupped his wife's chin in his hand and gently turned her face back to him. "I will find you again and this time we can change the outcome. I won't let this be the end for us."

A few weeks later, Felina passed away in her sleep.

***

Friends and Family of Oliver Wesley would all very much agree that he was a man with bad luck. Like the time he managed to slip on some ice after having his braces removed, only to smash out his front teeth. Surprisingly though, his bad luck was what lead him to meeting his wife. He was set up on a blind date and arrived at the wrong restaurant but he met Felina instead.

As their romance grew, his bad luck seemed to dissipate and he even earned a scholarship to the California Institute of Technology, where he studied physics and explored the theories of his hero, Stephen Hawking. One of the theories that fascinated Oliver the most was that of black holes in the universe. This sparked him to design his own theory about time travel. At first it was just an essay he presented in front of a panel as part of a final exam but then Oliver's bad luck returned when Felina was diagnosed with terminal cancer. If it had been detected sooner, then the cancer could have been removed before spreading to her other organs. This made Oliver even more determined to make time travel real so that he could go back and change Felina's fate. He worked on it every chance he had, things like Napkins and receipts were always covered with some sort of mathematical formula written on them.

After Felina's death, he let himself sit in sorrow or drag his feet about with his robe trailing behind him and a bottle of bourbon in his grip. Then after a week he wiped the sleep from his eyes, rinsed his mouth with wash, tucked his unwashed hair behind his ears and went off to build his machine. He welded scraps of metal together, tightened nuts, bolts and screws and with every piece that came together, he saw Felina in them. Like in the shiny metal that glistened with his welding torch, he saw her bright smile that wasn't perfect, yet a beauty that made his heart dance. It made him miss hearing her laugh, especially at night when they used to lay in bed going over things that happened during their day. Except now he lay alone at night.

As Oliver caulked seams to make the time travel contraption air-tight, he could picture Felina's hands guiding his. Like when he used to get absorbed in a mathematical equation and she would wrap her arms around his torso and then place her hands over his as he slid his chalk over the blackboard. Her soft delicate hands with pink painted nails would undoubtedly wrap around his fingers if she saw how bloody and blistered they were now.

Moving onto building the computer which would generate the algorithm and send Oliver back in time, was easier. He built the computer inside the contraption so he could control it from there and preprogramed the algorithm in it so it would be easier to access and run. He then wired the computer to a generator that included a hand-crank, in case of emergencies, which was also built inside the time travel machine. He wanted nothing that was controlling his fate, to be left out of his reach. However, he did have a control panel outside on the machine, just in case he needed to destroy it.

When it was finished, he stood back and marveled at his work. It wasn't much to look at, just a tall hunk of welded metal that resembled an outhouse. Oliver then opened the door to the time travel contraption and let his eyes glide over the computer with its flickering lights that would send the algorithm in a message to the microwave lasers attached to the ceiling. Once the message was sent, the lasers would cast down on him, scanning his body and turning his biological construction into a mathematical formula. The formula would go back to the computer, signal the microwaves and then, hopefully, send his body in a billion pieces back in time. The anticipation was actually getting where he wanted to be, in one piece. Of course the only way of knowing for sure would be to step inside and press the button.

Oliver entered the time machine, closed the door behind him and breathed in deeply. He pressed his finger to the computer screen, selected Time Travel Sequence for February 2, 1992, before Felina began complaining about pain, which opened up a smaller window screen that read, Are you sure you want to begin squence? His hand hovered over the enter button which would select yes but Oliver found himself anxious, his palms gathered sweat, his throat felt dry and his heart was drumming so fast he could hear it in his ears. Then it all fell silent as Oliver realized, what was life without Felina? If time travel wasn't going to work, then what was the point of going on with life anyway? Oliver closed his eyes and slammed his palm down on the button.

His body felt warm as the lasers scanned over him but the heat increased as if he were burning from the inside out. He heard loud ringing in his ears, then a pop and then silence. All the while, Oliver kept his eyes closed but he could see light flashing behind his lids. He wrapped his arms around himself, crouched to the floor and screamed as tiny sharp, knife-like pain, pierced him at all angles. There was also a forceful pressure, like being on a rollercoaster and Oliver had no control of what was happening.

Like a heavy thud, Oliver's body slammed back on the floor, sprawling him out. He opened his eyes finally, his vision a bit blurry as he dragged himself into an upright position. His eyes focused on the computer screen where it said, Operation Complete. Oliver caught his breath, wiped the blood from his nose and then limped over to the door. He pushed it open and saw that the lab in his basement was more or less the same mess he left it in. He stumbled out thinking about how stupid he was to think that he could make time travel real. Disappointed in the machine's failure to work, Oliver walked over to the control panel, ready to destroy his creation.

"Oliver. Are you down there?"

He jerked his head in the direction of the voice and slowly walked toward the bottom of the stairs. There he saw Felina standing at the top with an apron on. She looked healthy with a full head of curls and a sunkissed glow to her cheeks.

"It's you." Oliver swallowed hard.

"Yes it is," Felina smiled, "Now come up for dinner. I made your brother's favorite, hope you don't mind."

"My brother," Oliver said as he climed the stairs, "He's coming over?"

"Coming over? You're so silly sometimes." Felina said over her shoulder as she lead the way to the kitchen.

As Oliver rounded the corner, he saw his brother sitting at the table typing into his laptop but he set it down as Felina wrapped her arms around him and rubbed her nose against his.Oliver drew his head back in confusion and ready to start scolding them, but then an unfamiliar woman poked her head out of the dinning room,

"There you are!" She said as she walked toward Oliver with her hands extended and brought him in for a kiss.

"Who are you, and what's going on here!" He demanded as he pushed away and backed up.

"Honey... are you feeling ok, you're all sweaty." The woman said as she tried to reach out for him.

"Don't call me that!"

"Oliver," His brother now walked to him, "Maybe you should lay down. You're upsetting your fiancé."

A hammering pain began pulsating in Oliver's head and he suddenly had a memory of being set up on a double blind date with his brother, except Felina was his brother's date and the strange woman was his. Then he had another memory of asking the strange woman to marry him right after catching Felina's bouquet at his brother's wedding.

"I think I understand what's going on here and I'm going to fix this!" Oliver said to himself.

"Where are you going?" His brother demanded as Oliver made his way back to the basement stairs.

However, Oliver rushed to the time machine, locked the door from the inside and ignored the shouting that was going on outside of it. He selected for the time travel sequence to return him to the day he met Felina, December 31, 1990. This time when the smaller window screen popped up asking if he wanted to proceed, Oliver didn't second guess it. He slammed his palm down on the enter button.

"I will find you again, I will," Oliver said to himself and continued to repeat it like a chant, "I will... I will find you again... I will."