Chapter 1: The Historical Field Trip
Mia and her class were on a field trip in Sydney, visiting the historic Rocks area. They were equipped with new, advanced augmented reality (AR) goggles that overlaid digital versions of 19th-century buildings and people onto the modern streets. It was like walking through a live museum.
Mia, distracted by an AR horse-drawn carriage, stumbled. When she looked up, the world shifted. The digital overlay had vanished, but the real world was suddenly out of sync. The modern-day ferry on the harbour was moving, but the people walking on the footpath were standing still, frozen mid-step.
Chapter 2: Caught in the Freeze
Mia was trapped in a local time anomaly—a ‘temporal stutter.’ The world was moving for her, but for everyone else on the pavement, time had stopped. She saw a seagull frozen in the air and a tourist paused while taking a photo. It was utterly silent.
She checked her AR goggles, but they were dark. Her watch showed the correct time, but her phone had only static. She tried to call out, but the sound seemed to dissipate instantly. She felt a wave of dizzying panic, but she had to focus. She knew the time glitch couldn’t last forever.
Chapter 3: The Distorted Signal
Mia cautiously walked toward the Harbour Bridge. She realised that the centre of the glitch must be near where she stumbled. As she passed a lamppost, her phone suddenly crackled back to life. It didn’t have service, but it was receiving a strange, rhythmic electronic signal: dot-dash-dot-dot.
Mia recognised the pattern instantly. It was Morse code, and it was spelling out a single, repeating word: ‘REVERSE.’ The signal was coming from a small, decommissioned maritime research buoy floating about fifty metres offshore.
Chapter 4: Finding the Anchor
Mia ran to the nearby wharf, finding a set of old metal steps that descended to the water line. The water was only moving slightly—the ripples were slow and heavy. She managed to use an old fishing net pole to hook the buoy and pull it closer.
Attached to the buoy was a small, experimental temporal generator—it looked like a metallic pineapple. It had been left there by a university research team and was clearly malfunctioning. The ‘REVERSE’ signal was an automated warning. Mia needed to shut it off. The small device had one button labelled ‘ANCHOR’ and a larger, flashing red button labelled ‘RESET.’
Chapter 5: Restarting the Clock
Mia knew the ‘ANCHOR’ button might lock the freeze permanently. She had to hit ‘RESET.’ She pressed the big red button. The world around her warped, and a loud WHOOSH sound filled her ears. Then, the sound of the seagull squawking and the roar of the ferry instantly returned.
The tourist snapped his photo, the people walked on, and the AR goggles flickered back on, showing the horse-drawn carriage. Mia fell against the railing, breathing hard. No one had noticed a thing. She told her teacher she just had a dizzy spell. She had experienced the fragility of time and learned that even the smallest, overlooked piece of experimental technology could disrupt the entire world.
Exercise: Sequencing and Vocabulary
- Sequencing: Which event happened immediately after the time glitch started?
- Define a Term: What does it mean for a structure to be decommissioned?
- Analysing the Clue: Why was the word ‘REVERSE’ sent in Morse code?