Miraya Madhav

“Finally-fi-finally, y-you are h-here,” said Grandma, glitching into someone—or something—she was not.
Ava opened her eyes and took a sharp breath, relieved it had only been a dream.
Her body ached with exhaustion, but she pushed herself out of bed. Her eyelids felt like heavy dumbbells. She expected to see her familiar bedroom—but then it hit her: she was in the year 2085.
The room was dim. The sky outside flickered orange. Cracked digital screens blinked across the streets. Empty trains zoomed past with no passengers. Ava blinked again. There were dead animals lining the broken roads.
“Where… where am I?” she mumbled. “Oh. Wait… where’s Grandma?”
She was staying in a mansion that looked eerily similar to the White House—massive, silent, and high-tech. Too tired to search through a million rooms, Ava went straight to the loudspeaker.
Yes, the house had one.
She pressed the button.
“Grandma? I’m really hungry. Breakfast?”
No answer.
But a few minutes later, a breakfast tray appeared on a conveyor belt. Ava sat and waited. Maybe Grandma would join her.
Still, no one came.
She pressed the button again.
“Grandma? Let’s eat together.”
Still silence.
Ava sighed and picked at the food. Loneliness gnawed at her more than the hunger.
Eventually, she began searching—room by room, hall by endless hall.
She found Grandma at last—sitting in a cold, dark lab, right beside the time machine.
Her face was pale. Her eyes, worried.
“What’s wrong?” Ava asked.
Grandma didn’t move.
“The time machine… it’s not turning on.”
Ava’s heart dropped.
That machine was her only chance to stop the end of the world in 2085.
Without thinking, Ava lunged into Grandma’s arms and wept.
“I didn’t want this,” she sobbed.
“I didn’t mean to come here. I didn’t want to build a time machine. I just… wanted to have fun. I just wanted those dreams to stop.”
Then something snapped inside her.
A thought struck her like a bolt of lightning.
This wasn’t her fault.
It was Grandma’s.
Her guilt wavered for a second, then disappeared.
None of this would’ve happened if Grandma hadn’t started experimenting with time travel.
If she hadn’t shattered the barriers of space and dimension.
Ava pulled away, wiped her tears, and glared.
“This is all your fault,” she shouted.
“Why would you even build a time machine? Who told you it was okay to mess with time like this?!”
Grandma opened her mouth, but no words came out.
Ava turned and stormed away. She found the 34th guest room and collapsed onto the bed, crying harder than she ever had.
She pleaded with the universe for a miracle.
Anything. Just something that worked.
Most of the planet was abandoned, and working parts were rare.
How could she fix the time machine?
Even her tears wouldn’t help now.
Eventually, she stood up and looked around the room.
She scanned every surface, every cabinet, every blinking light.
She had to believe something in this house could help her.
She wandered the mansion for hours, but it was so big and endless that she almost gave up.
Something surged through her—an invisible force—to keep going.
She knew she’d made the right decision when she saw an empty room.
Ava looked around. Everywhere.
Then up.
A 3D projection hovered above her, glowing and humming faintly.
She scrambled and stumbled back to see what it said.
Three words, in bright turquoise, shimmered in the air—
glitching, pulsing, alive.
“It’s about time.”