The Tachyon Fates

Another yawn slips from Kat as she leans back from the wall of data glowing on her monitor. Above her, the fluorescent lights flicker in their usual uneven rhythm, but Kat barely notices anymore. Nothing could keep her from the lab, broken lights and icy air-conditioning included.

Still wearing the blue nitrile gloves from recalibrating the sensor array earlier, she peels them off with a sharp snap, and tosses them in the bin. With a sigh, she reaches for her coffee mug, the one with a faded cartoon of Albert Einstein below an atrocious physics pun.

Steam curls against her glasses as she lifts the mug to her lips.

“Johnson.” A man’s voice drifts from across the room. “I’m heading out.”

Kat hums absently without looking up, but she can tell from the sound of his footsteps that he’s walking toward her.

“Want a ride home?”

She glances over. Her colleague Mark leans against the doorway, hopeful eyes beneath messy hair.

“Nah, thanks. I’m staying a little longer.”

“You sure?” His head tilts.

Kat nods. “Goodnight, Mark.”

He lingers for another ten seconds, one hand dragging through his hair before his shoulders slump.

Kat watches him leave. It’s probably the tenth time she’s turned him down. Not that she minds, it's flattering. Mark’s handsome and nice too, from what she could tell.

She honestly couldn’t remember the last time she’d been interested in anything outside physics. To Kat, romance simply isn’t worth the time.

Time. People waste so much of it, when in reality, no one ever knows when it'll run out. And when Kat’s time comes, she wants to have accomplished something the world would remember her for.

She has to believe fate has a place for her. And if it doesn’t, she will reweave the strands of probability herself.

The steel clock on the lab's far wall ticks along. The hands have just crept past 9 PM.

Kat removes her glasses and cleans them with the hem of her shirt. When she stands, the hem of her white lab coat brushes against her legs.

“Well,” she murmurs, “guess it’s you and me again, old friend.”

The particle accelerator stands at the center like a modern altar of steel and light. Her hand settles against the cool exterior.

That machine was the entire reason she’d accepted this internship over dozens of others. The commute’s miserable, and several prestigious institutions offered her newer equipment and larger budgets. After all, she is an outstanding PhD candidate in particle physics.

But none of them have this.

In the polished chrome casing, Kat catches her reflection—pale skin, dark circles beneath hazel eyes, brown hair twisted into a fraying bun, reminiscent of a bird’s nest.

Her gaze drifts across the accelerator’s frame, over the maze of cables and monitors glowing in a dimly lit lab. Somewhere inside all that machinery hides the impossible thing that has taken over her life.

Tachyons.

Particles that shouldn’t exist. Particles that move faster than light, backward through time itself. The mere idea of tachyons would mock every accepted law of physics.

Most scientists dismiss them as a theoretical physics fairytale. Kat doesn’t.

Three months ago, she had seen something. No proof, not yet. But enough to ruin her ability to sleep.

This is what will define her fate. She can feel it in every nerve, from the tips of her toes to the ends of her thinning hair. She’s so close—

Beep-beep-beep.

The microwave startles her so violently, she nearly drops her mug. Kat blinks.

At some point, she had crossed the room without realizing it. She’s standing directly in front of the kitchenette, tucked into the corner of the lab, one hand resting on the counter beside the microwave.

The digital timer flashes 00:00. She stares at it for a moment, trying to remember pressing the buttons.

A faint unease curls low in her stomach.

When she opens the microwave, the aromas of soy sauce and sesame oil spills out into air-conditioned air. Yesterday’s Chinese takeout sits inside a paperboard container, noodles clumped together with suspicious-looking orange chicken.

She stands there, frowning at the food.

It’s been happening more often lately. Moments where her mind simply… skips. She’d look up from her work and realize an hour had vanished. Once, she’d suddenly found herself standing in front of an empty whiteboard, the eraser in hand.

Kat refuses to dramatize it. There are rational explanations.

She knows sleep deprivation could affect memory retention, while anxiety is known to cause dissociation. Honestly, it would be stranger if her brain isn’t malfunctioning, at least a little.

Kat pinches the bridge of her nose with a tired sigh.

“I should cook tomorrow,” she mutters. “Like an actual adult.”

She grabs a pair of chopsticks from the drawer and leans against the counter, eating mechanically while her eyes drift back to the accelerator. The steady ticking of the clock mingles with the low electronic hum of the machine, filling the lab with hypnotic rhythm.

Kat chews slowly, gaze narrowing. She remembers that fateful day as if it were yesterday, even though three months have passed. It was the moment she knew all those failed simulations and endless hours of data analysis hadn't been in vain, that she wasn’t irrational for pursuing this path. The path toward proving tachyons exist—and unraveling the secrets hidden within time.

During a calibration run, the sensors had recorded the impossible—a particle signature appearing 0.004 seconds before the collision that created it.

At first, she assumed it was corrupted data or faulty equipment. Then it happened again—effects preceding causes. Like something was moving backward through time.

Kat hadn't been able to reproduce the same result since, despite identical conditions. Not even the accelerator logs show any trace of that day. Fortunately, she didn't report the phenomenon yet. She would have been dismissed, ridiculed. Still, her resolve has only deepened.

Perhaps the environment needs further stabilization. Perhaps tachyons are fragile, like a loose thread in an ancient tapestry—tug too hard and the entire pattern might unravel.

Outside the narrow windows, the world beyond campus has dissolved into darkness.

Kat swallows her last bite of noodles, before suppressing a yawn.

Then, all monitors flicker. The accelerator emits a noise that vibrates through the floor. Kat tosses her chopsticks and runs to the nearest screen, where lines of data begin scrolling rapidly downward.

Her stomach drops.

“Wait, the collision chamber isn’t scheduled to fire for...” She glances at the microwave clock. “... another ten minutes.”

The readings say otherwise. Her fingers fly across the keyboard and a collision chamber schedule appears. The automated firing sequence had been manually altered. It had been changed from 10:00PM to 9:45PM, exactly fifty-eight minutes ago.

A cold prickling crawls up the back of her neck.

She stares at the authorization log displaying her workstation ID. Scientifically speaking, there's nothing mysterious about it. Someone changed the schedule, and all evidence points to that someone being her. Only she has absolutely no recollection of doing it.

Kat swallows hard and forces herself to focus on the data instead, because something far stranger is happening. The detector readouts spike violently across the screen.

The detector signals are arriving before the collision timestamp, 0.004 seconds before.

Her pulse quickens. This happened before. Only bigger, far bigger. The energy readings across the monitor are ten times stronger.

“Oh my God.”

Adrenaline burns away every trace of exhaustion. She rapidly verifies if the system logs are recording. They are.

A grin flashes across Kat’s face. Snatching a marker from the desk, she pivots toward the whiteboard. The marker squeaks as it drags across the surface.

“If the tachyon field is interacting with the—”

She stops mid-sentence, when a metallic noise echoes from outside the door. Kat frowns toward the darkened hallway. She was sure she was the last one here tonight.

“Mark?”

No response. The silence feels oddly heavy.

Then the accelerator screams. Kat whirls back around just as the energy output spikes off the chart.

“Oh, shit—”

A blinding blue-white flash erupts from the collision chamber.

Heat slams into her. The air itself seems to unravel. Kat sees strands suspended all around—loose glowing threads drifting through the laboratory like dissolving fibers of silk. Some shimmer gold, others silver-blue, weaving in intricate patterns that vanish the moment she tries to reach them.

Then, darkness.

Drip. Drip.

Kat jerks upright with a gasp. Cold water runs over her hands. Her eyes dart around, disoriented. The women’s bathroom.

Her reflection stares back at her. The unforgiving lighting illuminates pale skin, damp hair clinging to her forehead, wide eyes rimmed red.

The faucet is still running.

Her stomach twists, sharper than the fleeting unease from before. Kat shuts off the water with trembling fingers and braces herself against the sink.

What happened? Did I black out? Hallucinate? Was there an explosion?

There are no visible burns on her exposed skin. Hands shaking, she pulls her phone from her pocket.

11:11 PM.

That couldn’t be right. She clearly remembered checking the accelerator logs before ten.

Her breath turns shallow and unsteady, catching in her throat as if her lungs have forgotten how to work properly. Kat presses a hand to her chest, as though she can physically force the tightening sensation into submission.

Calm down. You need to figure this out.

Kat closes her eyes and inhales. Four seconds in. Hold. Then out. By the sixth breath, the panic recedes enough for logic to resurface.

Whatever happened, the accelerator logs would tell her. Data doesn’t lie.

Kat pushes through the bathroom door and moves down the hallway fast enough that her shoes squeak against the polished floor.

The flickering fluorescent lights overhead offer a strange kind of comfort, as she rounds the corner to the physics wing.

Then she sees it. A shadow slips out of sight at the far end of the corridor. Kat stops dead.

“Hey!” she screams into the darkness.

No answer.

What if someone accessed the lab after the incident? What if they copied my logs?

The thought triggers a realization—academia is full of grave robbers in lab coats. Supervisors take credit for graduate students’ discoveries all the time.

Kat exhales, grounding herself once more.

Relax, Kat.

There probably never was a shadow at all. Just bad lighting and an overclocked brain. Still, the knot in her stomach refuses to loosen.

Passing the biology department, her gaze settles on an abandoned stainless steel cart parked outside one of the labs. Half-covered specimen trays sit atop it beside neatly arranged surgical instruments.

Before she can fully think it through, Kat reaches down and grabs a scalpel, the metal handle feeling cold against her palm as she drops it in her pocket.

“Congratulations,” she mutters under her breath, continuing down the hall. “You’ve officially become the paranoid scientist from cheesy horror movies.”

The reinforced doors of the particle physics laboratory come into view. No scorch marks or shattered glass.

Kat presses her keycard against the scanner and the door unlocks. Inside, the space is exactly as she left it. Her pulse pounds in her ears as she rushes to the nearest monitor, almost tripping over her feet.

“Come on…”

The logging system opens. And—it’s empty.

No abnormal energy spikes. No premature particle signatures.

Nothing.

Kat stares blankly at the screen. According to the system logs, the accelerator had remained idle all evening.

“No.”

She checks the backup directories, but it proves to be futile. As though it never happened.

Something inside her snaps.

A strangled sound tears from her throat as she shoves back from the desk so hard the chair crashes onto its side. Her hands bury themselves in her hair, fingers clawing through the tight bun until strands rip painfully free from her scalp.

“No no no no—”

Her hair tumbles loose around her shoulders in frizzy disarray as panic crashes through her. Months of exhaustion, obsession, isolation—all of it detonating at once.

“I saw it! I’m not crazy!”

Kat grabs the nearest object she can find—a metal clipboard—and hurls it across the room. It slams against the far wall with a violent clang.

She stands there, chest heaving, eyes fixed on nothing. Slowly, the rational part of her brain drags itself back into control.

Think, Kat. Think.

She grabs a marker and moves towards the empty white board, already writing as she thinks out loud.

“Let’s assume I didn’t hallucinate the whole thing. The system probably failed to preserve unstable tachyon interactions. Because—”

Her hand pauses mid-stroke.

“Because the field instability had built gradually over time. The magnetic containment frequency must have fluctuated before overload. Which means—”

It can be replicated, but in a way the accelerator won’t overload. She just needs to stabilize the collision timing manually, instead of relying on the automated sequence.

Kat turns toward the machine again. The loose strands of hair around her face cast thin shadows. Her eyes burn with manic focus.

After half an hour of manipulating the controls, the sharp ticking of the clock counting down beside her like a metronome, Kat is ready to try again.

The accelerator hums louder and louder as the magnetic field stabilizes. She triggers the collision manually.

For one terrible second, nothing happens.

Then—The detector signals bloom across the screens.

Tachyons.

Kat lets out a breathless laugh.

“Oh my God. It worked.”

Euphoria crashes through her, her knees nearly buckling beneath the force of it.

The air around the accelerator shifts—an unseen current stirring the room.

The same luminous threads from before materialize. Hundreds of them. Loose glowing strands drifting weightlessly through the air as thin as spiderwebs. They weave around the accelerator, through the walls, stretching endlessly.

Kat stares in awe at the faintly pulsing strands.

“This is it,” she whispers. “This is my destiny.”

The word feels strangely natural in her mouth.

Then, from the corner of her eye, she catches movement near the doorway. Someone stands inside the lab. Kat hadn’t even heard the door open.

The figure is tall and draped in a dark coat, face obscured beneath the shadow of a scarf. The glowing threads curl around them without resistance.

Kat’s stomach twists, her pulse pounding in her ears.

“No,” she says immediately, backing toward the console.

The figure remains silent.

“You think you can steal my work?” Her voice sharpens with panic. “After everything I sacrificed?”

The steel clock’s ticking stops, leaving a hollow silence behind.

“This is mine,” she hisses. “And you won’t take this away from me.”

The figure takes a single step forward, triggering something primal inside Kat. Without thinking, she yanks the scalpel from her pocket and lunges.

But her foot catches the metal clipboard still lying on the floor.

Kat crashes forward violently. Pain explodes across her forehead. She gasps, hand flying instinctively to the cut above her left eyebrow. Warm blood slips between her fingers.

The figure slowly raises a hand to their own forehead, to the exact same spot as Kat’s.

Kat’s breath catches. A thin scar cuts across the stranger’s left eyebrow.

“No…” she whispers.

The figure finally lifts their head, the scarf undone.

Kat sees herself. Older, perhaps by twenty years, with the same hazel eyes. Exhaustion carved into sharper features. Grey threaded through brown hair. But unmistakably her.

Older Kat’s expression falters.

“I tried,” she says softly. “I tried so many times.”

The voice is hers too.

“I tried to stop you.” Her eyes drift toward the floating threads surrounding them. “I kept trying to redirect the weave back to its original pattern.”

Kat’s mind reels, thinking back to the missing logs, the blackouts she’s had.

“You were there?”

“I have always been there.”

Older Kat looks unbearably tired.

“Why did you interfere? Isn’t this what you—we—wanted?” the younger version asks, still on the ground.

“You sinned against the laws of the universe the moment you touched the tachyons. We were never meant to move through time. To manipulate fate. They won’t let us.” Her gaze hardens, as young Kat’s eyes widen further. “I wanted to at least spare this version of myself. But I know how stubborn we are.”

Kat shakes her head weakly. “Who are they? What are you talking about? Spare me from what?”

The strands begin tightening around the older woman’s wrists like puppet strings.

“Punishment.”

The glowing threads swirl around both of them.

“You tried to escape fate,” Older Kat whispers. “And now you become part of it.”

The strands pull tighter, making Kat wince. “Part of what?”

A single tear slips from her older self's eye, catching the glow of the strands. “The Fates.”

Images of entire human lives flood young Kat’s mind—first breaths, heartbreaks, deaths. But she also sees countless desperate people clawing backward through time, trying to defy destiny itself—escaping the irreversible consequences of their own choices.

And shadowed figures waiting for them at the end of those paths—the Fates, each one wearing Kat’s face.

“We preserve the weave of fate,” Older Kat says. “We cut the threads of those who seek to unravel it. Even our own.”

Her voice softens, breaking on the last word. “That is our punishment. Our purpose.”

The strands coil around Kat’s throat, stealing her voice. Pain lances through her body. Around her, the laboratory begins to dissolve—fluorescent lights stretching into rivers of white, monitors fragmenting into sparks.

Older Kat steps closer, placing fingers against her younger self’s forehead, beneath the bleeding cut above her brow.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

The lab vanishes, replaced by infinite dark. Somewhere in the vastness, scissors close with a sharp snip.