The Coffee Spill That Changed Time

Dr. Viraj Mehta had always known that Mondays were cursed.

But this? This was next-level.

It all started with a bad cup of coffee and a questionable government experiment—which, in hindsight, should have been a warning sign.

The Lab, The Cat, And The Disaster Waiting To Happen

Viraj was a brilliant physicist, which, in practical terms, meant he spent most of his days sleep-deprived, over-caffeinated, and buried under equations that made his head hurt.

For the past two years, he had been part of a classified government project aimed at understanding the nature of time itself. The goal? Controlled time travel—or, at the very least, preventing time from breaking if someone accidentally figured it out.

The lab was filled with high-tech equipment, whiteboards covered in quantum gibberish, and exactly zero safety measures. In the center of it all was the Quantum Temporal Stabilizer, the one-of-a-kind device designed to prevent paradoxes and stabilize temporal distortions.

It was also very, very expensive.

And Viraj was about to break it in the dumbest way possible.

As he leaned over his desk, squinting at an impossibly complex equation, his faithful (and mildly evil) cat, Schrödinger, decided it was the perfect moment to jump onto his keyboard.

Viraj yelped. His coffee cup wobbled.

And then, in one of those slow-motion horror moments, the entire cup tipped over—straight into the stabilizer’s exposed circuitry.

SPLASH.

"Oh no," Viraj whispered.

The machine hummed ominously. Its screen flickered, then blared a series of warnings in red text—which, in any lab, was never a good sign.

Viraj barely had time to shout, "Oh, this is bad—" before the entire room exploded in white light.

Rule #1: If You Accidentally Time Travel, You Don’t Get a Choice in Where You Land

Viraj woke up face-down in dirt.

For a few seconds, he just lay there, groaning in pain and trying to process what just happened.

The last thing he remembered was his coffee betraying him. And now, somehow, he was outside, feeling the sun beating down on his back.

Which was weird, because his lab was underground.

"Ugh," he muttered, pushing himself up. His glasses, miraculously still intact, slid down his nose as he blinked against the blinding light.

Something big and very loud stomped past him.

Viraj turned his head and nearly choked.

It was an elephant.

A fully armored war elephant, with a man on its back shouting commands in a language that sounded suspiciously like Latin.

"...Oh, hell no."

Viraj scrambled to his feet just in time to see hundreds of soldiers—dressed in ancient armor, carrying swords and spears—charging across a battlefield.

His scientific brain tried to process the situation logically:

This was not the lab.

This was not the 21st century.

He had somehow traveled back in time.

And worst of all—

That very angry man running toward him with a sword probably wasn’t looking to shake hands.

Rule #2: Don’t Look Like a Suspicious Time Traveler

"Who are you?!" the heavily armored soldier demanded, pointing his sword directly at Viraj’s chest.

Viraj swallowed hard.

The man’s armor, the war elephants, the chaos around him—it all clicked into place.

He wasn’t just anywhere in history.

He was in 218 BCE, standing in the middle of the Second Punic War.

And judging by the war banners and the commanding figure in the distance, he was now face-to-face with Hannibal Barca’s army.

Viraj let out a long, exhausted sigh.

Of course.

He had spilled coffee and landed in one of the most dangerous wars in history.

Mondays really were the worst.

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