A Time Traveller's Mistake

      The click of a mechanism ready to work. The dim burning of lamps on the dashboard. Seconds, running faster than thoughts, and time, counted down to the last minute.       He looked in the mirror — just a glance. Looking back from there were two brown eyes, sat pretty close to a large, slightly hooked nose. This did not ruin his appearance — in fact, it just made him more similar to the beautiful greek gods that can be seen on old paintings in museums and libraries. Long, black, slightly greasy hair framed the pretty face.       He finally stopped gazing in the mirror and instead looked at the machine again; fixed some of sensors and levers just a little, raised his hand above the big button.       And made a mistake.       One mistake destroyed all his carefully constructed plans. One mistake, made by sheer accident by the creator himself.       The creator of the time machine.       It was not a “cruel mistake in the cold, hard calculations” that get so dramatical in movies; vice versa, the mistake was as simple as it could ever be.       A movement of his hand, trying to make the course even more accurate, simply knocked down the needed year and replaced the “8” with “7”. It wouldn’t be as scary, if those were the last digits of the year, but the “8” stood in the hundreds.       But he didn’t know about this, and pressed the final button, making the process irreversible. Only when the room lit up in a white, flashbang-like light, did he look at the dashboard and realize what he had done. — Dammit!       He couldn’t say anything more. He was blinded, deafened, muted, and finally blacked out.       His name was Kirill. His surname, however, had to be improvised already on the spot. Or not. It’s not like they know him there, right?