It was a chilly March morning, and Jane had woken up in her childhood bedroom. The posters on the walls, the bedspread, the teddy bear on the shelf – everything was exactly as she remembered it. But as she sat up in bed, she noticed something strange. Her hands – they were small and delicate, just like they had been when she was a child.
Jane felt a jolt of panic shoot through her body. This couldn't be happening. She was a grown woman with a job, a mortgage, and responsibilities. But everything around her was telling her otherwise.
She got out of bed and looked out the window. The view was unfamiliar – the trees were smaller, the houses were all different. Jane pinched herself to make sure she wasn't dreaming, but the pinch only made her realize that she was very much awake.
She made her way downstairs to the kitchen, where her parents were cooking breakfast. They greeted her with hugs, but didn't seem to notice anything strange. It was as if they were completely oblivious to the fact that their daughter had somehow traveled back in time.
Jane tried to act normal over the next few days. She went to school, spent time with her childhood friends, and did her best to blend in. But she couldn't shake the feeling that something was very wrong. Every time she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she saw a younger version of herself staring back.
As the days turned into weeks, Jane began to feel lost. She spent hours poring over old photo albums, trying to figure out what had happened. But the more she looked, the more confused she became. She knew that she had to find a way back to the present, but she didn't know how.
Then, one day, something strange happened. As Jane was walking home from school, she saw a bright light in the sky. It seemed to be coming closer and closer, until it enveloped her entirely. And then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the light vanished.
Jane looked around, dazed. But then she realized that everything was different. The trees were bigger, the houses were newer, and her clothes were different. She looked down at her hands and saw that they were bigger, her fingers longer and stronger.
Jane knew that she had somehow made it back to the present. She breathed a sigh of relief, grateful to be back where she belonged. But as she walked home, she couldn't shake the feeling that something had changed inside her. She had traveled back in time and seen things that she never thought were possible. And in some way, she knew that she would never be the same again.
Days turned into weeks, and Jane tried to put the experience behind her. But she found that she couldn't stop thinking about it. She spent hours searching the internet, reading about time travel and parallel universes.
One day, as she was scrolling through an online forum, she saw a post that caught her eye. The author claimed to have traveled back in time to their childhood, just like Jane had. They said that they had been visited by a group of scientists who were conducting experiments with time travel technology.
Jane felt a glimmer of hope. Maybe there was a way to get back to her childhood and figure out what had happened. She replied to the post, and within minutes, she received a response.
It was from a scientist named Dr. Andrews. He claimed to have been part of the team that had sent her back in time, and he said that he could help her get back there again.
Jane was hesitant at first. She didn't know if she could trust this stranger on the internet. But then she thought about how much she wanted to know what had happened to her, and she decided to take.