Sitting in the waiting room of a dentist is the most boring thing imaginable, especially in one belonging to Dr. Gabel. The only objects he had in there were nearly-broken wooden chairs which seemed to have come from Dr. Gabel’s kitchen. There were no magazines in there, and today was the unfortunate day Henry Bunt had forgotten his mobile phone at home. So he sat there, yawning and staring at the white neon tubes hanging from the ceiling.
As he nearly fell asleep, a man entered the waiting room. He seemed to be about thirty years old and wore dark clothing. “Morning” was the only thing he said to me before walking over to a chair near the wall opposite to me. As he sat down, he pulled out a mobile phone from his pocket and began staring at it, not looking up.
Crossing his arms, Henry leaned back in his chair and waited as several minutes passed by. Suddenly, the door flew open, and in came Dr. Gabel. Henry sat there quietly as he hoped that Dr. Gabel would take him to the treatment room, but he simply looked towards the man who had just entered.
“Mr. Delbone, could you follow me to the treatment room, please?”, he said, not acknowledging me. The man got up and made his way to the door as Henry threw a confused look to Dr. Gabel. But he ignored him, and as soon as the man had walked through the door, Dr. Gabel shut it again.
“For god’s sake…”, Henry mumbled, “seems like I’ll be here for another while…”
He leaned back further into his chair and sighed. At this point he was fairly certain that his butt had fallen asleep. So he got up, paced around the waiting room for a bit and returned to his chair.
Henry slumped back into his chair, and spread out his legs, but that’s when he saw a small sphere roll out from underneath his chair.
He frowned in confusion as it came to a halt in the middle of the waiting room. Not sure what to do, slowly, he got up, walked to the sphere and picked it up. He held it in his hand, and put it closer to his eyes, and noticed it was glowing faintly.
Fixating his look on the sphere, he walked back to his chair. It intrigued him very much, but he became bored again as he sat down in his chair. Out of sheer boredom, he threw it up into the air and caught it again.
After doing this for two times at least, Henry looked to his right, and saw the man from before, sitting in his chair and staring at his phone.
“Is Dr. Gabel already through with you, Sir?”, I asked.
The man looked up from his phone with a confused look on his face. “You just saw me enter the room, kid”, he said before going back to his phone.
Henry stared at the sphere again, observing it closely, and noticed that it glew a bit brighter than it had done before.
The door flew open, and Dr. Gabel walked in. Without even looking in Henry’s direction, he asked the man to follow him, and closed the door after he walked out. Henry looked back at the sphere, and threw it up in the air again.
The room was empty now, and the sphere glew even brighter.
At that moment, the door opened up, and the man from before walked in. He greeted Henry, walked over to his chair and began staring at his phone.
An exciting idea came to Henry’s head as he took a closer look at the sphere. It seemed to turn time back for a few minutes every time he threw it in the air. Could it actually be a time machine?
Blood pumped through his body at a faster rate as he thought of all the possibilities. He threw the sphere in the air again, and saw that the waiting room was empty once again. The only logical conclusion Henry came to was none other than the sphere being a time machine. “Well, you can travel through time now, so why are you waiting here in this boring waiting room?”, he thought to himself, “You’ve got all the time you could ever want now!”
And with that thought, he left the building and walked out into the busy street, keeping his eyes fixed on the sphere. He turned right on the pavement and headed towards the direction where he lived. Not looking up from the sphere, he walked onwards, before bumping into a man wearing a suit, holding a briefcase and drinking a coffee. The coffee splattered all over the man’s suit, and he fell to the floor, as sheets of paper lightly fell to the ground.
“No, kid!”, he screamed, “Do you know what you’ve done?”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”, Henry said as quickly as he could.
“I’ve got a job interview today, kiddo”, he said as he picked up the many papers and put them back into his suitcase, “And I can’t show up with a messy suit! You know how unprofessional that looks, kid?”
Henry’s gaze fell down to the sphere.
“And if I got to change into a different suit, it’ll make me arrive late to the interview!”
Henry threw the sphere up into the air.
“I won’t get this job… my wife will leave me for sure…”
And as he caught it, he looked up, and saw the busy man a few meters ahead of him. He backed out of the man’s way before looking back down at the sphere again.
“The possibilities are endless with this thing...”, he said to himself, as he put the sphere into one of his coat pockets and headed home. Sure, he didn’t know where the sphere came from in the first place, but that was a mystery to be solved later on.