This is the story of a wild adventure through time and space of 4 daring third culture kids living in Nepal. These four high school students are attending an international school in Kathmandu, and they call themselves third culture kids because they neither identify fully with the native culture of their parents, nor with the culture of the place where they are living. They are truly world citizens, third culture kids--not the old culture, nor the new culture, but the hybrid culture. Let me introduce you to them.
The Senior class student is from a mixed Arab and old Zoroastrian Persian family. His name is Sulayman Malik.
The Junior class student is from a mixed Irish-American and Chinese family. Her name is Claire Hunter.
The Sophomore class student is from a mixed Russian and Spanish family. Her name is Milagros Morales.
The Freshman class student is pure French, but while his father was from Paris, his mother is from Montreal. His name is Philippe Blanc.
One day this unlikely cohort of 4 high schoolers, sneak into the private lab of a Buddhist Physicist who teaches at their school who some administrators have been accusing lately of being a quack quantum mystic who has been stretching the idea of entanglement in quantum mechanics theory too far by suggest to the students that time travel is possible. Sulayman and Milagros believe him, but Claire and Philippe agree with the administrators that this is all ridiculous junk science that they should ever waste any class time discussing anymore. Over lunch Claire and Philippe got into a heated debate with Sulayman and Milagros over their devotion to the Monk Professor and his ideas, so to try to settle their argument they decided to sneak into the professor's lab to see what evidence they could add to one side of the debate or the other.
There they found a strange wheel-like gadget with four handles and a cell phone like devise with special pocket in the center. Above it they saw a note that read:
"When containing the precise elements or mixtures there of with X and Y half-lives, and when four souls of the primary elemental types of Airy Sanguine, Firey Choleric, Earthy Melancholic, and Watery Phlegmatic take hold of this wheel, they will be transported back in time to the precise previous sets of half-lives to the totem gate keepers ancient pyramid at the portal of X and Y wormhole."
"See that proves it!" Declared Claire angrily. There in black and white is the most ridiculous load of junk science anyone has ever come up with. "Indeed," parroted Philippe. Then, with his characteristic sarcasm, he added, "the only thing it's missing is that it should ask us to add Z piece of coprolite to the mixture of elements X and Y to complete the potion. After all, fossilized animal dung would fuel our journey backwards much faster, wouldn't it?" Claire liked that and laughed.
"Hold on just a minute you skeptics," Sulayman insisted. This is an interesting coincidence. I remember the ancient personality archetypes from Greek Philosophy elective last semester, and those four descriptions fit the four of us to a T. Let's just see what happens if the four of us take hold of the four handles of the wheel. There already appears to be a concoction in the center."
"Really," added Milagros, "It's not fair to ridicule the poor dear professor without even testing his instructions." "How will we ever know if his ideas mean anything if we don't even try?" she asked.
"This feels incredibly stupid," insisted Claire, "but just so you dreamy wishful thinkers finally snap out of all this irrational useless fantasizing, so we can get back to real work, let's grab hold and get this over with."
Following Claire's lead, they all grabbed hold of one of the four handles on the wheel and instantly they found themselves racing through a tunnel of light and streams of color. Before they to say or do anything other than opening their eyes wide in awe and amazement, the light was gone and they found themselves staring at each other around the wheel in the center of a little stone hut lit by torch light and a strange diluted natural ambient light as well. And thus their adventure began.
Outline: Start underwater at 0, 0 degrees at the intersection of the equator and the prime meridian at 1000 A.D. Progress year by year and space by space across the map through 1000 steps until reaching the year 2000 where Claire will finally discover how to fast-forward back to the present.
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