by Anthology
Aaron pushed himself into a squat, feet wide and arms out. The floor was soft and slick and, in the darkness, the lack of true up and down played with his balance. He worked to steady his footing and three wavering attempts later, he succeeded. The floor firmed beneath his feet, less slippery and more like a big magnet repelling smaller magnets in his shoes. Uncertain but navigable. The impression of blowing air was wrong too. His skin felt tingly, lit up with static electricity causing every hair on his body to stand on end. Even under his clothes. Like touching a Van de Graaf generator.
The machine.
A quick pat down confirmed that he still wore the survey rig across his chest and the headset that went with it.
It worked. It really worked.
“Why can’t I see, Brad?” His own voice sounded muted, dampened by the headset or the surrounding emptiness. Without waiting for the reply, he took the Maglite from his belt loop and twisted the cap one way, then the other.
Nothing. He hadn’t taken time to test it before leaving. Crap.
“Uh . . . not sure. I don’t see that here,” said Brad. The crinkle of papers shuffling prevented squelch from kicking in. “This stuff reads like DVR instructions—here we go. On the rig, upper right side, is a big round indentation. It’s a touchscreen key, so just stick your finger in the hole and it should switch on . . . says you should close your eyes for sixty seconds, then reopen.”
Aaron felt the soft plastic give slightly under his fingertip, followed by an artificial click. He quickly squeezed his eyes shut.
Shifting his weight, he tested his balance. “How long was I out?”
“Ten—twelve minutes, maybe. Seemed like forever. Power blinked out a couple of times. I don’t know if that’s because of us or not, but I heard you cry out both times.”
Aaron realized he was nodding in agreement and stopped. “What’s happening in the news?”
“Same only worse. People are losing it bad . . . everywhere.”
“What if this doesn’t work? Or what if it works and then undoes itself? We could be trapped—”
“I know, I know.” Brad was silent for long seconds. “That machine works by playing hell with causality, so . . . honesty, I just don’t know. If we don’t do anything, though, the world falls apart—that we do know. We’ve got to make this work.”
Aaron sighed and tugged at the straps holding the rig on his chest. “Harry said he’d already tried earlier tonight, twice.”
“That’s what he said, but maybe he’d lost it already. Maybe he just thought he did.”
“Way to encourage the blind time-traveler, buddy.”
Brad’s chuckle across the tinny connection sounded forced. “Yeah. I got your back. In a few seconds we’ll see where you came through and you can find Doctor Heller and end this.”
“I know the plan. My idea, remember?”
“This may be the only chance we get and power coming and going is not a good thing. Besides, taking more than one trip may be what finally did Harry in.”
“Has it been a minute yet?”
“Close enough.”
Aaron eased his eyes open. An icy blue light filled the room, dim but even, leaving no shadows. He was in a relatively small space full of boxes, chairs and an unused metal desk. The extra office being used as a storage room. Everything in the room appeared wispy, unfocused. Edges shimmered and flat surfaces rippled like grassy meadows in a windstorm.
At first the effort to move strained his muscles, but once in motion, walking became easier, reminding him of pushing along chest deep in a swimming pool. Stopping required effort and forethought as well. He felt like a baby learning to walk all over again.
“I’m in the office storeroom. Pretty weird.”
He pressed his hip against the fire exit-style safety bar on the door. It wouldn’t budge. Grabbing the bar tightly with both hands, he pushed with all the strength and weight he could muster. The bar inched downward until bottoming out, where it stayed without a hint of recoil. He felt exhausted already. Anticipating the resistance now, he shouldered the door and forced it to swing open bit by bit until he had just enough room to squeeze through.
He took in a lungful of air and leaned against the door frame. “Nothing wants to move.”
“That’s what Harry said. He called it the static past. It doesn’t want to change.”
“I believe it.”
Static past. Unmoving. Like walking around in an old, overexposed photograph.
Aaron’s stomach twisted severely and he doubled, somehow managing to remain standing despite a hammering in his skull. Within seconds the pain subsided, leaving only a dull ache behind his forehead.
“Are you okay?” Brad asked. “Power just dipped again.”
“Fine. Hurt like hell, though. Can we not do that?”
Wiping his mouth and straightening up, he looked around the lab beyond the door. The same blue light that illuminated the office shone everywhere, across the tables and workstations, the machine in the pit. And most disturbing of all, over the motionless statues of people scattered about. Friends and coworkers he’d seen only minutes ago in this very room.
Of course, those he’d seen earlier lay dead in growing pools of blood or ran out screaming into the burning streets. Three or four had even been sitting together near the corner power feeds mumbling crazily to each other, painting something on the floor in their own blood.
But here they were. Still going about their business. Clipboards and hand tools. Frozen in this moment before the machine came online.
In a day you’ll be lunatics.
Turning to his left, he shifted his weight to catch a large falling figure.
Only the figure was not falling. Harry, Mister Poorly-Trimmed-Goatee himself, stood precariously frozen in mid-step, eyes half-closed and mouth stretched oddly. Probably chewing his ever-present pistachios.
Aaron sighed and continued moving. The surreal labscape had the same fuzzy look as the storeroom and except for a scattering of darker distortions, the washed-out lighting uniformly infected the entire room.
The offices circled a narrow elevated walkway with three metal steps leading down into the pit where the machine sat. A collection of modules and equipment banks radiated out web-like from the center of the pit, dwarfing the relatively small control console at its hub. Unlike the sleek molded casings that enclosed the peripheral units and guarded the super-cooled plumbing, the console itself was in disarray. All of the control cabinet’s lower covers lay at odd angles on the floor and large circuit boards hand been swung out from the interior on hinged connections.
It was a mess. It was also a time machine, according to its creator, Doctor Francine Heller, the alternative energy guru and project chief who preached free energy lay in the untapped entropy of the past.
She knelt in worship before her beast, her back to him, two of the shadowy distortions flanking her.
“I’m in the lab. The whole team’s here near as I can tell. Except for us. Must be right before she powered it up.”
He remembered her mad scientist grin as she pressed the enter key and the way the grin slackened when nothing happened. No one said a word. She tore into the cabinet, sliding out circuit boards and moving multicolored jumper wires, mumbling to herself about destiny.
She’d then dispatched the two of them to the reactor room with instructions to reset any breakers that tripped during the test. That may have been what saved them, shielded them from whatever ripped through nearly everyone else’s sanity and sucked the stars away.
Leaning into his step, Aaron walked toward the frozen Doctor Heller. He was getting better at balancing and moving here. The trick was to use the momentum to your advantage. A struggle at the beginning of a movement and then a sudden breakaway. He had to be careful but negotiating the three stairs down into the pit was surprisingly easy.
The console lights and screens, like all of the other equipment in the room, including the fluorescent lighting, appeared blank, as if shut off. An effect
of static time.
Aaron could picture an Old West snake oil salesman shouting to the gathered townsfolk, Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you can travel in time . . . but when you get there, it’ll be frozen solid. Lifeless.
The blurred shadows near her must be glitches in the headset or some other byproduct of static time. He peered intensely at the closest, the one to the doctor’s right as he approached. Like a thin floating column of oil in water hanging in the air, black and gray and brown as if ignoring the blue light from the survey rig.
Something solid in the middle . . .
He gasped.
“What’s wrong?” Brad asked.
Aaron didn’t know how to answer. Inside the cloud-like blur were dozens of tiny jet-black points clustered near the top of a thin twisting mass about two feet tall. He moved closer, crouching down for a better look. The object was bristly and covered with a short, coarse-looking pelt. Something oily coated legs that came together at the top in a jumble of twisted, half-exposed sinews, lacking any real body. Only clusters of black beads, eyes.
His pulse quickened in his ears and he shuddered. Every creepy eight-legged thing he’d ever seen was distilled into this abomination before him. The bodiless limbs were all feelers, pincers and smaller clawed appendages interwoven together to form the creature, like a taxidermist had used random parts to build his worst nightmare.
“Talk to me, Aaron.”
“There’s this . . . spider . . . thing beside the doc. It’s different too, not all blue like everything else.” He jerked his gaze around the room and swallowed loudly. “There’s a lot of them.”
The connection was silent for several seconds. “Did you say spiders?”
“Well, not spiders . . . exactly . . . I don’t know what they are, but they’ve got a cloud around them and—what could they be, Brad?”
“Don’t worry about it, buddy.” His voice was slow and calm. “Just leave Heller the package and I’ll bring you back.”
Brad was right. Just leave the package.
But . . . he moved his hand out to touch the thing beside the doctor. The haze around the creature extended several inches out from its body and as soon as his finger began to push through the hanging blur, his hand began to throb.
I must be losing it, he thought.
“Aaron?”
This might be the only chance they had to stop this doomed experiment. “Okay . . . okay. I’m moving.”
He edged around the creature, giving plenty of space to the thing he prayed was only in his imagination. He placed the package beside the console keyboard directly in front of the doctor where she couldn’t miss it when she stood. He steadied the package for several seconds until sure the repulsive force between the large envelope and the console wasn’t going to send it falling to the floor unnoticed. On the outside of the envelope, they’d written STOP in permanent marker and below that a few lines in a smaller script asking her to look at the contents of the envelope before continuing. Inside they described the immediate results of the experiment, the mass deaths and suicides, the burning cities, the plague of madness, and the winking out of the stars. Brad had even thought to tear some articles from the morning paper, including one from one scientist claiming that the earth was being pulled into an ever contracting null, a pocket in space and time.
Maybe. And maybe this was just hell.
They just had to hope she didn’t think it was a prank. Aaron’s initial suggestion was to damage the machine outright, stopping the experiment but now that he was in this static past, he wasn’t sure he could break anything.
He had been watching the blur, the monstrosity closest to him, looking into its multiple rat-like eyes. Several of the feelers along the upper sections of its legs had stretched outward.
“It’s moving, Brad! How could it be moving?” He scrambled backwards, lost his footing and fell. The same momentum effect that hounded his walking, initially slowed his fall only to smash him hard into the tile at the last instant.
He rolled onto his back.
That thing was moving!
The spindly legs shifted slowly, but there was no doubt in his mind. The spider was moving and it was coming after him. He pushed himself along the floor. The second one was moving too.
“Aaron, just stay calm. Did you put the package on the console?”
“Yes!” he shouted. He looked around the room. All of the blurs were in motion now, moving painfully slow in his direction. “Did you hear me? How could these things be here?”
He bumped a metal stair with his arm and realized he was still pushing himself away from the first one. He had plenty of time to get away. At this rate, the closest one was still a minute or more away.
But they were all coming for him.
Struggling to his feet, he stumbled once but managed to stay upright and survey the room. Several of the blurs were not moving toward him but to the doctor. The other ten—no, eleven—were coming his way.
“Aaron, I need you to be still for a couple of minutes to get a lock. Power’s getting really flaky.”
“Are you nuts? They’ll be all over me.” The spiders were still closing in from every direction. “Is everything back to normal yet?”
“Not yet.” Static popped in his ears. “But maybe we have to bring you back first. Just stand in one place long enough for me . . .”
“I can’t.” His heart raced, drowning out whatever Brad said next. His gaze darted around the room. The door to the hallway was clear. “How about outside. Can you get me if I go outside?”
“I don’t know the range of this thing, but go ahead. I’ll try.”
He moved toward the door, dodging around another of the atrocities, this one much larger than the first two. Arms and shoulders and legs straining, he forced the door open.
He didn’t want to abandon these people, his friends and coworkers, but he had to. He had to get away.
Stepping across the threshold he could see straight down the eerie blue corridor leading to the lobby. Inky smears shifted at the far end of the hallway, growing gradually larger.
Dozens.
He felt cold inside. Frozen like the blue stone faces around him. Sweat ran down his forehead, stinging his eyes.
He looked back into the lab.
What was that one doing? It had moved in front of the doctor and taken the package in a cluster of its filthy pincers.
He pushed back into the lab allowing the momentum shift to send him plowing through the two creatures now blocking the doorway. The impact was like slamming into a wall, but he managed to part them just enough to squeeze through. Instead of the magnetic resistance he felt when touching everything else in this living nightmare, or the ache he’d felt when he touched the field that surrounded the first one, these monsters felt hot and rough, scraping and tugging at him as he passed between them.
These things must be impossibly fast in real time, he thought.
As he reached the stairs again, his stomach wrenched and this time he threw up, each convulsion causing his head to erupt with blinding pain.
“Power again,” said Brad. “It’s getting worse. I need you to stand still before I lose the connection completely.”
Aaron’s eyes refocused and he tried to move but his legs didn’t want to move. Behind him, inches away was one of the creatures, a half dozen barbed talons extending in the direction of his thighs. The shadowy haze surrounding it oozed over his legs and he could feel a numbness creeping up the small of his back.
He thrust himself away, muscles screaming.
“What do I do, Brad?” He looked back at the advancing monsters. Doctor Heller kneeling before the machine. His temples throbbed and every muscle ached from the constant exertion of balance and movement. The creature with the package had moved two yards away toward the stairs, passing two more of the atrocities headed his way. “It took the package.”
Brad’s voice was quiet and measured. “Aaron, you have to leave the package for—”
“I
can’t leave the package,” Aaron yelled and then realized that he wasn’t yelling. He was laughing.
“Just calm down.”
Aaron felt a tingle across his skin and a hum building deep in his bones. He took a step backwards and bumped into a large multi-layered circuit board extending from the console. His eyes widened. “That’s it. I’ve got to destroy the control. They can stop me, but there’s no way they can fix the machine.”
He knelt beside Heller, leaning against her rock steadiness for support and pulled at the largest of the circuit boards. It didn’t even flex.
“You’re moving again,” said Brad. “Let me bring you back and I’ll give it a go.”
The icy blue light flickered and he doubled over, sharp stabs of pain in his gut. An icon in his visor blinked a warning. LOW POWER. He clutched his abdomen and forced himself upright.
Spiders surrounded him, the closest a yard away. More spilled in through the doors, slowly shifting blurs moving through people and equipment like arcane water flowing around rocks in a stream.
We’ve got to make this work. He wasn’t sure if Brad was speaking or he was remembering, but he was right.
He grabbed one of the corner posts of the control console and pulled himself up, using the extended electronics as footholds. His arms and shoulders protested, not even easing up as he began to climb with his legs as well. Resistance was impossible, growing, as if the universe was determined that he not ascend another inch. Something tore in his right calf and he drifted down toward the top of the enclosure, the last instant ripping by and knocking the breath from him.
He struggled into a standing position, wincing as he shifted his weight uneasily to spare his injured leg. Sweat dripped in slow motion from his face. A sea of blurs rippled outward across the floor beneath the icy blue light.
“Aaron, just stay put. I’ve got you.”
Two of the creatures were beginning to climb to cabinet, one to each side of him. “Sorry, buddy.”
He looked straight down. And stepped off.
He drifted downward for a long moment and then crested whatever rollercoaster-like delay the physics of this bizarre reality required and hurtled toward the floor.