Alice of the 23 Century

December 23rd, 2311, Vivid Labs, San Dimas, Republic of Southern California

Alice wasn't your average woman, She's a powerful combination of smart and beautiful, and tall. On top of this, a mix of powder blue eyes and straight jet black hair give her an intoxicating look. Her skin is a little pale, but that probably comes more from spending just a little too much time indoors. Her body was probably the thing that most of the other women in the lab were most jealous of. The ideal woman in the 23rd century has curves; They have hips, they have asses, and they have breasts, and Alice has them all. If the career as a research scientist hadn't worked out, she could have always gone into modeling or entertainment. To put it simply, she has a look that other women would kill for.

Today was a pretty good day. Alice had been at work in the lab for the last few hours working on her latest project. A few weeks ago competitors at Penetrobe Labs had built a teleportation machine, and some agents working for Vivd Labs had managed to steal the plans for the teleportation machine. The higher ups immediately gave the plans to Alice for her to decipher and if possible copy. It was a great project to work on, because of its high profile. Any request she made was immediately granted. They were throwing so much money at this it was almost crazy.

While studying the plans, Alice had discovered how the machine worked, and quickly realized that with some modifications, the principles used to make matter jump from one place to another, could also make the matter jump from one time to another. It also seemed likely Penetrobe had any idea it could do this, and she hadn't yet told anyone. It was quite possible that she was the only person in the world to know the secret to time travel.

At first she didn't know what to do, should she tell someone? She had always been a history buff. In fact she had minored in world history when she was an undergraduate in college, and the idea of visiting all those times and places she had studied, but until now that had been just a fantasy. The rub was that if she told anyone, there would be no way they would let her use it. Someone else would be operating the machine. She would be too important, and they wouldn't risk her disappearing into time. If she wanted to time travel, this would have to be a secret. She could complete the design working under the teleportation project, and when its done, she could simply leave.

Its a brilliantly designed solid state system. Simply by varying the voltage and polarity of the current into the time unit it could easily go backward and forward. In fact the most complicated component of the machine was the fusion reactor she had borrowed from her colleague Robert from the energy lab. He was pretty pissed of that she had stolen his project, but she had easily convinced Sarah the lab manager that the success of the project required a working portable self-sustaining power source.

"Well that's it", Alice said to herself letting her lab coat slide off her shoulders and then hanging it up on peg in near the door. She had just finished building the test model of what is expected to be her very own time machine. She had sacrificed a lot for this project. She couldn't talk about her work and she never seemed to have time to socialize anyway. To top things off her boyfriend had finally gotten tired of all her late nights at the lab and dumped her. She had basically poured the last five years of her life into this company and had gotten little in return. She folded her arms across her chest and looked over her work feeling pleased. The only thing left to do is to test it. Her mind wandered over the questions of the past that could be answered, and what amazing wonders the future might bring.

With a bit of hacking on the computer and some quick work wiring up some controls Alice could have the guidance system done in another hour or two. But its already 7:00 PM. Most of her coworkers have left and her stomach started to grumble.