Calling it a time machine would have been too cliché, too limited. Sure, that was one way of referring to _that damned thing_ — as they had (jokingly) come to call their experiment, their anchor — but it didn't encompass what one experienced when it was activated… no, activated isn't correct either. An understanding — when one reached an understanding with _that damned thing_. It felt like an inside joke, with a dash of psilocybin. You wanted to add "anti-" to every word you at first thought described it perfectly: anti-consciousness; anti-enlightenment; anti-experience. Anti-time-machine. It wasn't something spiritual, but you could fool yourself into thinking that, feeling that. But you knew it wasn't. The oddest thing was how damned _normal_ it felt. So familiar. Anti-familiar. And that may just explain why she, for lack of a better explanation, hated _that damned thing_. Can one hate a blueprint? http://ficlets.com/feed/story/30241