Chapter 4

Miranda was a genius. She was a cyborg so it went without saying.

However, when she found out that the master plan was to build a time machine to undo the past, she was stunned speechless. She had never felt that she was so slow to catch on in her life.

It was not that the idea didn't cross her mind, but the probability of success was so low it might as well be zero. Even on the small chance that they succeeded, a teeny tiny small chance, the portal would more than likely lead to an alternate universe.

That was more probabilities and assumptions than she would like to work with.

Her time ability would not be of much use. She could barely stop the flow of time in a small isolated area. Her power was akin to slamming an impromptu dam along the river of time. The larger the area of effect, the bigger the river. The dam made of mental energy could only be so big.

Miranda remained sceptical up until she met the time user, Rachel. A memory from her past surfaced in her mind, and she could vividly recall her being there when she had first accidentally teleported as a child.

She had come to warn her back then to keep her teleportation ability hidden. Miranda was speechless once again.

She looked exactly the same as in her memories, but when your lifespan is a couple of centuries long, that didn't mean much. She thought of a few possibilities but she narrowed down to two most probable ones; Rachel could indeed travel through time or they had an ability user that could alter memories.

It was pointless to overthink it now. She had long decided to join them. She had thought about what the future held, not her own future but their timeline's future.

The human race's development had happened too fast and the price that had to be paid for it... she didn't know whether it would ultimately be worth it.

What kind of world would the future generations wake up to? It would be cold, dark and hopeless. All humans would be emotionless cyborgs in the short term. Chances of ever making it out of the galaxy were actually nil this time.

Only two millenia had passed since cyborgs.  All habitable celestial bodies would be quickly occupied as humans never died. There were only so many resources in the universe, and the manobots knew only to stop at Gaia.

Maybe doomsday had always been inevitable but they didn't need to take the wormhole right to it.

Mana rocks were being consumed faster than they could grow. Mana would then run out. The manobots would seize to function, the zombie space enforcers would die for real this time and mana devices would become useless.

It would be a slow and painful death for the defenseless humans on artificial planets. That was eons away in future though.

The manozores could be blamed for it all, but they were only an exact reflection of humans. The manobots were probably programmed a little too perfectly. The hive-mind effect was just a bow on top.

But maybe she was wrong, and manozores were just what humanity needed to make the impossible possible. They might just hold on long enough for the universe to send a gigantic mana rock their way. It did happen in 2020 AD with aether.

Hell, even that future might yet be inevitable no matter how much they meddled with the past. At least then, the human race might survive long enough to evolve and develop mana circuits. As long as they didn't ask her to blatantly murder the manozores, she would cooperate.

It took over twenty years to build a time machine that barely met requirements. It was clearly a fool's errand but it was decisions like these that reminded you that you were still a living human.

Miranda had the honor of powering up the machine for the first time for testing. She set the coordinates to 1st January, 2020 AD and set the destination on Gaia.

The plan for trio of lab rats jumping through this time was to secure the mana rock meteorite immediately after it lands Gaia and hide it there. Then distribute the aether as smart watches.

If that failed, they would infiltrate Axel White's mana nanobot research facility and ensure the manobots are programmed to permanently shut down upon the host's death. The three chosen cyborgs should be smarter and more powerful than humans on that timeline.

If that also failed, they would use all means possible to hoard as many mana rocks and crystals as possible. They knew where all mana rock deposits had been found in the galaxy and had the equipment to avoid the manobots' radar.

It was a crude plan to ensure that mana would last indefinitely. It would give humans the billions of years needed to evolve and adapt to mana. Maybe then, the future wouldn't be so bleak.

Miranda went to pull the dramatic lever that was a basic feature of all time machines, and the portal came alive. As far as she was concerned, it was proof enough that it was a failure just by the fact that they were currently still living the same reality.

She looked on as the huge mana rock that could probably buy Mars rapidly decreased to the size of a fist to feed the portal. She was supposed to be unfeeling but she still couldn't help but flinch. Too extravagant!

Perhaps this foolish venture would lead to the extinction of their race within the next decade instead. The rational side of her, maybe it was just the mana AI, screamed that they were making a big mistake. But even so, what's the worst that could happen?

Even if it was a mistake and the galaxy went FUBAR, at least she'd done her part before retiring to her dimension for the few peaceful centuries she had left.

She couldn't tell whether she would be a villain or hero in the history books. It had to be a matter of perspective. At the very least, it felt like this was the last glimpse of hope she could see to create a future she wanted.

The three time travelers held their breaths as they shrunk to quantum level in a modified space shuttle and dived into the portal. On the bright side, they would probably be sent to an alternate reality, which may as well be a win for that parallel universe.

Alarms suddenly blared loudly but the explosions that followed quickly drowned them out. Rachel suddenly appeared before the time machine and jumped through the portal before a laser beam fell from the sky and blasted it to pieces.

Miranda flew out in the explosion and instantly teleported miles away. She appeared right in an encirclement of thousands of battle spaceships, laser beams were already firing down on her.

She didn't have to be clairvoyant to know that the manozores had showed up to kill her this time. Speaking of clairvoyants, Liam was nowhere to be found.

She blinked into her personal dimension and quickly froze time but it was a second too late. Her body was riddled with holes and torn to pieces. It was something even manozores wouldn't be able to walk away from.

She was submerged in the ocean within the dimension. The new planet had stabilised it's temperatore and it's entire surface ended up being completely covered by water.

She swore that if she survived she would only live a slow and quiet life in the future, only minding her own business. Her last thought before she died was that the place really needed more yellow mana rocks.