Leo was actually a completely normal tenth-grade student. His biggest problems were usually the question of why pizza in the school cafeteria tasted like cardboard, and the fact that his homework had an uncanny tendency to delete itself. But this Tuesday was different. This Tuesday was going to completely throw the space-time fabric of his school off its hinges.
It happened in the seventh period. The physics room smelled as always of old linoleum and chalk dust. At the front at the board stood Mr. Dr. Kringel, a man whose hairstyle strongly resembled an exploded dandelion. Mr. Kringel was not only a teacher but also a passionate hobby inventor. On his teacher's desk today stood a box that looked like a mixture of a toaster, a microwave, and an old Gameboy.
“This, my dear students,” Mr. Kringel called out with shining eyes, waving a laser pointer around, “is the Q-Fluctuator 3000! A prototype that is theoretically capable of shifting the molecular structure of inanimate matter back in time by a few seconds!”
In the back rows, there was quiet snoring. Leo sat next to his best friend Zoe, who was currently trying to balance a highlighter on her nose. “If he can shift my grades back with that, I’m interested,” she whispered. Leo grinned and rummaged in his backpack for his thermos flask. He urgently needed coffee.
At exactly that moment, the accident happened. Mr. Kringel, completely in full swing, made an overdramatic hand gesture to emphasize the genius of his machine. In doing so, he accidentally bumped against the edge of the table. The heavy box wobbled.
“Watch out!” Leo shouted, jumped up, and wanted to catch the machine. But instead of the machine, he hit his open coffee cup with his elbow. A splash of hot, extremely sweet coffee flew in a perfect parabola across the room – and splashed right into the open wiring of the Q-Fluctuator.
It flashed blue. A sound that resembled an offended “Bzzzt-Wupp” echoed through the room. A small cloud of smoke in the shape of a question mark rose up. And then… nothing happened at first.
Mr. Kringel stared speechlessly at his device. The class held its breath. Zoe had swallowed her highlighter out of shock (or at least almost).
“Leo…,” Mr. Kringel whispered in a dangerously quiet voice. “You have just drowned my life's work prototype with a double espresso.”
“It was a latte macchiato, Mr. Dr. Kringel…,” Leo piped up apologetically.
“Never mind! That means detention. Today. After school. You will clean this machine, and thoroughly!” thundered the teacher.
What Mr. Kringel and Leo did not yet suspect at that moment: The coffee had triggered a chemical-quantum-physical chain reaction inside the machine. When the school bell rang for dismissal, the casing of the toaster-Gameboy vibrated very quietly in time with the school anthem. The adventure had officially begun.