A Single Moment in Time, Part I.

     This is the first part of a three-part story.  It deals with time travel, and the power to redo the past.  I won't say more, but please enjoy the first part of the story.
  
     In some respects, people are selfish at heart.  At least that's what Jordan saw.  No matter what happened to them, the people around them, they seemed to be able to adapt.  To adjust to their environment, to live without her.  Her friends had made the adjustment, her family, even her parents.  But somehow, Jordan couldn't make the adjustment to life without her.
      He continued to focus on those thoughts, the what-ifs, as he checked the last few lines of code, the last few bolts.  Jordan Hale was a professor at the local university.  Tall and skinny, with his black hair buzzed down to a half inch, intense brown eyes, his white lab coat and blue jeans coated in grease and dirt - he didn't look like the academic type, but his theories on time and space had brought him the respect of his colleagues, a following all his own, and success.  However, they hadn't stopped him from feeling that life without Kayla was meaningless and empty.
     These were not new feelings.  They had been building up for the past three and half years.  At first, they had distracted him from his work on string theory and it's effect on timelines.  But then, he became obsessed with new timelines.  Alternate timelines, alternate worlds.  His colleagues had slowly seen him withdraw from the rest of the university - only coming out to teach classes, locked in his lab the rest of the time.  They couldn't understand.  They didn't have the brilliance to understand.
     Jordan finished ratcheting the final bolt and took a moment to look at the finished product.  He had spent the better part of three years developing this machine.  Building it had been surprisingly simple enough, considering.  It didn't look like much - a computer tied into a small radio dish in what looked like a large, fancy refrigerator with buttons and and digital display, and headphones on the inside.  But with this, Jordan knew he could do it.  He could save Kayla.
     He checked his watch.  10:47 PM, August 29th, 2014.  Then he got to work inputting the temporal coordinates.  Ten minutes before would give him plenty of time.  He climbed inside the unit, closed the door, and put the headphones on.
     As his hand wandered towards the red button, one memory went through his head - Kayla, just after the accident, lying on the floor of her lab, the smell of smoke in the room.  "I'm sorry.  Looks like it's my time to go."
     Jordan hit the button.  For what could have been a split second or an eternity the world was a blur of numbers.  Then he passed out.

     "Jordan?  Jordan, are you OK?"
      His head flew up from the table, his eyes wide open.  He stared at his watch in disbelief.  1:32 PM, February 11th, 2011.
     "Jordan, are you OK?".  Kayla's concerned face brought him back to the present.  Or rather, the past.

     To be continued in Part II.