It was the only known device of its kind. It took them centuries, but they were determined to study it and learned that it could isolate slices of time. It seemed to be able to focus on specific particles in the quantum realm.
As they continued their study, they were amazed at what they saw. The device was constantly shifting and warping time in a way that they had never seen before. They could see moments from the past and future all at once, as if time was a fluid substance that it could manipulate at will.
Even in the last few days before the rapture, when it was already clear that their own perception of time was being distorted, the consensus was that the device simply was some sort of particle analyzer. However, the more they studied the object, the more they realized that its power was unstable. It was causing tiny ripples in time that were slowly spreading throughout their world.
They never really understood what happened to them.
