Part One - Joe does something he shouldn't.
Part Two - Joe realizes the enormity of what's happened because he did something he shouldn't have.
Part Three - Joe learns that where he is might not have had anything to do with what he did at all.
Part Four - Joe finds out lots of stuff he can barely follow about what's happened.
And now...
***
Full Stop - Part Five
A Short Story by Dianna Zaragoza
Based on 'The Day Time Stopped Moving' by Bradner Buckner
Lana was right…it was a solid two hours’ walk back over to
the Foundation’s headquarters at White Rock Lake from the library.
Lana sometimes talked, and sometimes slept while he carried
her. He was used to regularly hoisting one and two 50-pound bags of flour at a time at the restaurant, so she
might as well have been a backpack for all she weighed on him. He gently woke her
every now and then for directions.
Major matched
their every step for the whole journey. He bounded and barked like he was a
puppy, clearly enjoying the adventure of it all. Joe, on the other hand,
couldn’t banish the thought that all three of them might be marching to their
deaths, and so didn’t feel quite as adventurous.
When they got there, the glass doors of the building
were closed, and so barred them from entry, but Lana led them around the side
of the building to an open service door.
“From here we’ve got to take the stairs up to the workshop,”
Lana said.
When they got up the stairs, they saw two workman moving a
long cabinet through the supply door. In order to get past, they had to climb
up the back of one workman, walk the length of the cabinet on their hands and
knees, and then climb over and down the back of the second man. Joe had to assist
Lana, who winced with back pain the entire way, and Major, who whined a little,
but mostly wagged and panted.
From there, they took another staircase to the fifteenth
floor, and then had to crawl through an airshaft. Major didn’t want to go into
the narrow crawlspace, until he saw that they were leaving them behind, and
they he barked and barked until Joe came back and hoisted him in.
When they got through the air conditioning vent on the other
side, they were in a waiting room, with a receptionist nodding off behind the
desk.
“Wake up, kid.” Joe slapped her a little on her granite
cheek as Lana pointed out the next air conditioning vent they needed to go
through. They and the dog all crawled forward until they came to the window
that showed Lana’s Foundation workshop.
It was well-lit considering the sunset; light came in
through the glass brick wall as well as the skylight. In the middle of the room
sat what Lana called ‘the time impulsor’. She’d tried to explain its functions
to Joe on the way over, probably to just kill time and release some nervous
energy. Joe didn’t complain. Truly, he’d tried to follow along, but when they
got there, all it looked like to him was an enormous rocket-shaped obelisk of
some kind, covered with wires and buttons and monitors of all sorts. The entire
assemblage connected to a brass globe that hung from the ceiling by several
wires.
“That’s it – the death goddess Shiva herself.” Lana said
ruefully as they hopped down from the ventilator shaft. “Too strong for
approval, and not strong enough to do the job right. Have a look!”
Joe circled the apparatus, his arms folded. Major ran up and
sniffed it.
“All right – I’m looking at it.”
Lana preoccupied herself with some adjustments on the side,
while Joe took in the rest of the room. There were several men in lab coats,
frozen in place behind a barrier to the right, peering out at the impulsor.
“I see the problem, Joe!”
Joe turned and looked back. “What is it?”
“The problem is…I was right. I tried networking the impulsor
to the computer, and one of the arrays came loose, probably just at that moment
the power connected. There wasn’t enough juice for full power.”
“Why can’t we turn it back on and run power to it again?”
“I’ve already reconnected the loose array, but the problem
is energy. Nothing moves here. Nothing flows, not even energy molecules. I
don’t know, Joe.” Larry rubbed his hands through his thinning hair. “The
machine’s still working, but without a power source to connect to,
it’s dead.”
“…and so are we.”
“We can’t so much as wrestle a light switch on in here.”
Joe felt a moist sensation on his fingers, and looked down
into Major’s warm brown eyes. He scratched the dog on his head, and Major
panted happily. Joe wished he could be as contented as Major at the moment.
“So…I guess we slowly starve to death.”
“Not so easy. There is no death here. There’s no time here.
There won’t be another moment for us to get hungry. That would assume we are on
the flow of time again. We’re completely outside it now. Nothing changes. Not
even us.”
“You mean I’ll be hungover forever? Oh… “ Joe moaned and sat
in a nearby rolling chair that didn’t roll, and covered his face with his
hands.
Lana continued. “I don’t know how long we’ve been here, but
it feels like hours. I haven’t felt hungry myself. I’m only theorizing, but
we’re not likely to get hungry, or sick in a time-free zone.”
“So what’s left then?”
“No way out. We could try jumping off a building or a
bridge, I suppose, if we get desperate enough.”
Joe thought back to the window he kicked out at the restaurant
that didn’t break. “Something tells me that won’t work either. Look, I’ll stay
with you if you want.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Joe. This is the point where this
whole mess started, and who knows how many other folks are out there, wandering
around in this half-life, and it’s my fault. I’m going to fix it, if there’s a
way.”
Joe knew he probably should leave - he might have a better chance by himself than with a dog and an old lady with back problems. Still, he couldn't bring himself to it - the thought of being so alone again -
“I’ll help out. Actually, I don’t know how to help you, but
I’ll do what I can.”
Lana turned to Joe. She smiled and nodded. “Thanks, Joe. You’re good company, if
nothing else, and that counts for something here. If we ever do find a way back to the present and you’re not dead
when you get there, try not to drink anymore. Sobriety has its benefits, you know.”
Joe laughed. “Drinking’s out for me after this, either way.”
He walked over to the glass wall and looked out at the permanent sunset. “The sky doesn't look so scary from here.”
Lana looked out the skylight with him. “Such a good angle in
the sky…”
Joe leaned over and picked up a nearby magnifying glass
sitting on a desk. It was heavy, but he had enough strength to move it. He held
it up to the sun over a nearby desk until the glass focused in on a tiny
pinprick. The pinprick of light started smoldering.
“What’s that you’re doing?” Lana leaned over the desk with
him.
“Just being bored. Imagine it – a life with no
responsibility, all the time in the world, and no way to enjoy it. Could be
hell, after all – if we’re handing out theories.”
“Would you look at that! Joe, do you know what this means?”
Joe put the glass down. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“No, Joe – you’re not getting it.” She picked up the magnifying
glass again and focused in again on the remnants of sunlight that remained.
Again, the surface of the desk started to smolder. “The smoke is moving.”
“Yes, and?”
“When in this existence have you seen smoke move?”
Joe thought back to the coffeepot in the truck stop, hot,
but the steam was caught between two moments of time. “The sunlight’s energy –
“
“It’s moving. Part of it’s here with us, somehow.” She
grinned. “That means we can hack into the existing SBSP system to gather the
solar energy that we need to activate the time impulsor!”
“Hack? We can? What is SBSP?”
“Space-based solar power – China and Japan established a
system of satellites in 2015 to collect solar power, and we can draw that into
the battery. Well, I can – give me a minute here.” Lana ran over to a nearby
laptop.
A few moments later, she smacked the desk with her hands. “Frozen – what else? What else? There’s some emergency solar
panels in the top of the impulsor, but the angle of light to the machine is
wrong. Can you help me pull this over to the window?”
Joe and Lana wrapped their arms around the impulsor and
lifted with all they had, but nothing moved. Lana let out a scream and fell to
the floor. Joe moved over by her side.
“Lana?”
“My…my back again. I can’t move!” She gasped through the
pain.
“Well, so much for your theory that we can’t get hurt
here…we are changing. And I’m definitely hungry now, and there’s no food to be
had.”
“New theory. We’re in some hellacious trouble.”
***
Oh yes, oh yes! There's a Part Six coming tomorrow, and then we're through! :-) Make sure to check in for the end.
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