Smith's Monthly #7

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  All of us smiled at that.

  “I’ve been feeling that same way,” Samantha whispered to Patty.

  “So what did you do?” Tech asked the unseen Harry.

  A moment later Tech said, “Oh, shit.”

  None of us smiled at that.

  Screamer almost whispered to us, “Harry said he was the one that caused this all to happen, and he’s very sorry.”

  “You’re kidding?” Tech said. “You know how much pain and worry and fear you’ve caused.”

  A long pause followed that.

  “So any idea exactly how many people are in here?” Tech asked.

  Pause.

  “So what’s going to reverse this?”

  Nothing for a moment. Screamer seemed to be listening and had stopped reporting to us the other side of the conversation.

  “If it’s that easy, how come you haven’t done it before now?” Tech asked.

  A very long pause that seemed to make the silence of the warehouse grow in intensity and power.

  “Oh,” Tech said.

  “Oh, shit,” Screamer said. He looked like he was about to be very sick.

  “Impossible,” Johnny said, shaking his head, the look of worry and fear very strong in his face.

  “I’ll be back,” Tech said, then pulled his arm away from Screamer and staggered a few paces away.

  Screamer let go of Johnny and turned to walk a few paces away.

  Johnny just slumped to the concrete floor and put his head in his hands.

  I glanced at the very worried look on Patty’s face, then stepped forward toward Tech. “What happened. What was that all about?”

  “No problem reversing the process Harry started,” Tech said, staring at the floor without looking up at me. “Harry got sucked into these ghost slots while scrounging in here for parts. He figured he could reconfigure the machines from the inside to spit him back out, but he missed a setting, reversed a few things, and got the machines taking more people on jackpots.”

  “So he’s the reason this has all happened?” I asked.

  “Yeah, Harry trying to save himself caused all this,” Screamer said, turning back to face me. “No wonder no one could figure out what was going on, or who was behind it.”

  Tech nodded. “He’s feeling damn bad about it, too. And he has since figured out how to solve the problem and set the machines from in there to spit out everyone.”

  “So why hasn’t he done that?” Samantha asked, moving up beside me. “Why hasn’t he let my Ben out of there?”

  “One chair,” Patty said.

  I turned and glanced at her, then at the one old wooden chair attached to the front of the Saturn slot machine that held everyone. She was right. Where would the people go?

  “One chair,” Screamer said, agreeing. “There are one hundred and three people in that machine right now counting Geneva and Harry. They would all appear in that chair, reformed in their bodies, like coins dropping out of a pay-out chute. About three per second.”

  “Not possible,” Samantha said.

  “That’s right,” Johnny said from where he sat on the floor. “They would all be killed, their bodies materialized together in a massive pile of flesh and bones.”

  “And there’s no way to slow it down?” Samantha demanded.

  “There is no setting in the machine that regulates the rate of payout,” Tech said. “Just the amount.”

  “So get Harry to set the payout at one,” I said.

  Again Tech shook his head. “That’s what Harry has been working on, but again, there are no single unit payouts on this machine, and nothing goes that low in any setting he can find. And if he can’t find it from in there, it doesn’t exist.

  “How many is the minimum?” Patty asked.

  “Three,” Tech said.

  “Three, two, one-hundred,” Tech said. “It’s not going to matter.

  I stared at the single chair in front of the old slot machine and tried to imagine three human bodies appearing there in one second. Tech was right. Three or one hundred. They would all die.

  And die horribly.

  Chapter Seventeen

  TWO SUPERHEROES, NO SOAP

  THE SILENCE in the big warehouse became intense as we all were lost in our own thoughts. It was as if we were sitting in a big, neon-lit tomb, the gray and dust of the place pushed back and barely held at bay by the bright colors of the enemy machines.

  The pull from the ghost slots was still strong, but I had put the feeling off to one side and was ignoring it, and it seemed the rest were dealing with it as well, although none of us got within four paces of the things.

  Over one hundred people were trapped in that one ghost slot machine, and there was no way to get them out safely. That fact was enough to depress just about anyone. And I couldn’t even imagine how Johnny was feeling. He shared his mind with Geneva, and she was going to die with him inside her head. More than likely it would kill him as well, or do so much damage as to never let him function normally again.

  I couldn’t let that happen. There had to be a way to save them. There had to be.

  We just had to find it.

  I glanced around at the team. Johnny was sitting on the concrete floor. He was the closest to the machine, staring at it, clearly in contact with Geneva.

  Samantha sat cross-legged a few feet behind him, her back against a tarp-covered machine.

  Screamer was pacing up and down and up and down the aisle, his steps silent on the concrete floor.

  Tech had walked twenty feet away and now stood with his back to everyone, not moving.

  Patty stood beside me, her beautiful head tipped back as if she were studying something up near the roof of the big warehouse.

  I moved over beside Johnny and knelt down. “How long does Geneva think they have in there?”

  “Harry’s been in there the longest and he’s very weak,” Johnny said. “There are a few others like him.”

  “Thanks,” I said, standing and letting Johnny and Geneva go back to being together in their minds.

  Not only was the town about to explode with the news of all the missing people, but if Harry died in there, drained of energy by the machine, there would be no chance at all of any rescue without sending Tech or someone else inside to set the machine.

  I moved back over beside Patty and tapped her shoulder. She looked at me with those big brown eyes of hers and I almost forgot that I wanted to talk to her. I indicated that she should follow me toward the warehouse door. She nodded and without a word to any of the others we moved away.

  I didn’t exactly know what I wanted to talk to her about. She was a superhero like I was, had been around a lot longer than I had been, and she kept me balanced. If I was going to think out loud about this project, it made sense to think out loud to her. And right now, I really needed to do some out-loud thinking.

  On really tough cases, like this one, I usually went back to my room, paced and talked to myself, trying to work out a solution. Granted, that wasn’t the way I did things on a poker table, where I solved problems silently, without even showing emotion on my face unless I wanted the emotion shown. But this was a lot more serious than a poker tournament. Lives were at stake and I didn’t need to keep my emotions hidden.

  From the light coming in the open door, it was clear that the sun was starting to set. I could feel that the heat outside was still pretty intense from the way it poured in the open door. More than likely the heat wouldn’t fade until closer to midnight.

  Patty and I stopped and faced each other near the door. At that moment, as if I were playing a hand I was unsure of and was suddenly convinced my play was right, I knew what to say.

  “Time,” I said. “Time is our problem.”

  Patty nodded. “Three people per second materializing into the same space. It doesn’t give us enough time to get each person out of the way before the next person starts to appear.”

  “Exactly,” I said, now seeing one possible solution. �
�So we stop time between each person.”

  Patty stared at me like I had said something really silly, then slowly smiled. “Can you do that?”

  I shrugged. “Stan told me I could do it when I needed to do it. But I have never needed to try, to be honest. And he can do it as well.”

  Patty sort of looked off into space for a second, then said, “I have the ability to stretch time for myself,” she said. “It doesn’t really stop, but it stretches for me so I can get a lot of paperwork done for customers and make it seem fast to them.”

  “Can you control that?”

  “Sort of,” she said. “Normally, it just sort of clicks-in, if you know what I mean.”

  “I do,” I said. “Most of my powers are the same way. Sometimes I can bring them on with really intense focus, but usually they are just there when I need them.”

  “Me too,” Patty said.

  “Well, we need them now,” I said. “Can you stretch time with me included?”

  She looked worried, the first time I had ever seen a worried look on her face. “I can try.”

  She reached out and took my hand. For a moment I thought I heard the Hallelujah Chorus sung by a one-hundred member choir with me singing the lead. Her skin was as soft, as firm, and wonderful as I had imagined it would be. The image of her holding my hand while we stood naked in a shower flashed over my mind and I let myself go with the image for a moment before I realized what I was doing.

  Somehow, I dropped the bar of raspberry soap, pushed the thoughts back, took a deep breath, and focused on the situation. Luckily I had that kind of control as a poker player, otherwise I might have pulled her into my arms and kissed her right there.

  But I had control.

  Control.

  Control.

  I repeated the word a few times more and was solidly back in the warehouse holding Patty’s hand as she tried to slow down time around us.

  “I think it’s working,” she said, smiling at me.

  I glanced around. Where we were at near the door there was no way of telling. Nothing was moving in the slot machine graveyard.

  “Can you hold it until we get back near the others?”

  “I think so,” she said. “Just don’t let go of my hand. You’re giving me energy I don’t normally feel.”

  I didn’t tell her what energy she was giving me. I figured that would be more appropriate later, after we rescued everyone.

  Hand-in-hand, like two school kids, we walked back to the aisle with the ghost slots and the rest of the team. No one there seemed to be moving, but they hadn’t been moving much before we left either.

  Then Patty pointed at Screamer and smiled.

  I could see what she was pointing at. He was in mid-stride, and as we watched his foot came slowly down. What would have taken less than a second now took a full five seconds.

  I could feel the hope for the people inside that machine flood back into me.

  Suddenly everyone moved around us.

  “Slipped,” Patty said, sighing.

  “What slipped?” Screamer asked, glancing at us.

  “How did you—?” Samantha was looking up at us clearly surprised that we had suddenly appeared in front of her without her new senses alerting her to us.

  All the hope I had felt a moment ago drained out like someone had pulled the plug. “Does it slip often?”

  She shrugged, looking very upset. “I don’t know.”

  She had the same type of control over her powers that I did over mine. They were there at times, at other times they didn’t show, and it often made no sense. Before now I was just happy when any of my weird powers showed up to help me out of a situation. It had never been an issue before to have a power be consistent and controlled completely. And clearly, that had been the same for Patty.

  Patty looked at me with an apologetic look on her face, as if she had let me down. She and I both knew we couldn’t depend on just her power to get those people out of there. Too much chance things would slip at the wrong moment and people would die. So we would use it only as a last resort.

  “Can your power back-up my power?” she asked, still holding my hand.

  “Never hurts to try,” I said.

  Keeping a firm grip on Patty’s hand, I took a deep breath of the musty-smelling warehouse air, then focused on slipping between two upcoming seconds. That’s what it had felt like when Stan had taken me between time, and I tried to bring that feeling back.

  “It worked,” Patty said, laughing.

  I glanced around. Screamer had his mouth open, about to ask a question. Tech had started walking back toward the group, and was now in mid-stride.

  I felt immediately proud. I had actually managed to stop time around me. What a cool superpower this one was.

  Then just as quickly I realized this wasn’t really that useful in this situation unless I could do it with split-second timing. None of my superpowers had ever been that on-demand and in my control, and I had no doubt this one was either.

  Patty pulled me to a place on the other side of Screamer. “Take us back into normal time.”

  “Done,” I said.

  And low and behold Screamer started into his question and stopped since to him we had vanished.

  “What the—” Screamer said, turning around to stare at us. “You two can really get on a person’s nerves.”

  “Again,” Patty said softly to me, squeezing my hand and giving me balance.”

  I focused on between seconds and again time stopped around us.

  She pulled us around behind Screamer again. “Let it go, then do it again as quickly as you can.”

  “Practice?” I asked, seeing what she was doing.

  “Practice,” she said. “We’ll work on your power for a few times, then on mine, then see if we can combine them in some fashion to get some safety margins.”

  Now I saw what she was intending. Her power wasn’t safe enough to use alone. And mine wasn’t quick enough, but between the two of us, we might get the chances down to acceptable risks for the people coming out of the machine.

  I started to feel hope again.

  “Here goes,” I said. “In and out a few times as quickly as I can make it work.”

  “Ready,” she said, squeezing my hand softly.

  I took a deep breath, pushing back the wonderful feeling of having her holding my hand, and focused on what I was about to try. I was going to flick on-and-off a superpower like it was a light switch. I had never tried that before.

  I dropped us back into normal time.

  “Back here,” Patty said to Screamer’s back.

  I switched us back between seconds.

  We moved down the aisle to a position behind where Tech was walking, then I dropped us out again.

  Screamer wasn’t halfway through his turn when we appeared.

  “Sorry, Tech,” Patty said. “Just practicing.”

  Tech jerked and started to whirl around as I took us back between seconds.

  This would have been a great party trick if the situation wasn’t so serious and so many lives were at stake.

  I took us in and out five more times, then stopped with us standing in the middle of a very confused group.

  “Stay put for one second,” Screamer said.

  “That was very weird,” Samantha said.

  “How did you do that?” Tech asked.

  Johnny just sat on the floor and shook his head in amazement.

  “Sorry guys,” I said, smiling at Patty. “We are just practicing a little to see if we can come up with a way to slow down time enough to get Geneva and Ben and the rest out of there.”

  “You actually think you can do it?” Johnny asked, climbing to his feet.

  “That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Patty said. “Poker Boy here can stop time. But so far, the best was four seconds apart. I can slow down time, but I can’t always hold it.”

  “So pardon us while we practice a little more,” I said. Then I took Patty and
me between time, stopping the questions from the others for a moment.

  She smiled at me with that wonderful smile of hers, then squeezed my hand. “You’re getting pretty good at this.”

  “But not good enough,” I said. “Do you see any way we can combine our two powers to make this safe enough for people coming out? I clearly can’t stop and start time three times in one second.”

  “I think there’s a way,” Patty said. “But I need to practice my slowing of time, try to figure out if I can sense when my power is about to slip.”

  I nodded, seeing where she was heading. “If you can tell when your power is about to slip, you can signal me and I can stop time until you can get reset.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s practice.”

  I dropped us back into real time, letting Johnny complete his last step toward the group.

  “Who has a measured step?” I asked before anyone could react to Patty and me being in different positions. “We need someone walking a timed pace down the aisle so we can do some tests.”

  “I’ll walk,” Screamer said, moving back into a position like he was a racer at a starting line.

  “I’ve got a stop-watch function on my watch,” Johnny said. “Will that help?”

  “It will,” Patty said.

  “Five seconds and stop,” I said.

  A moment later Johnny clicked his watch and said “Go.”

  Screamer paced out like he was a businessman in a hurry to get to a meeting. About eight paces away from the group Johnny said, “Stop.”

  Screamer stopped and turned around.

  “Good,” I said. “Repeat that when I say go. Johnny, time him again.”

  I glanced at Patty and she nodded that she was ready.

  “Go.”

  Patty slowed time just as Screamer lifted his leg to take his first step and a fraction of a second after Johnny clicked his watch. We moved carefully away from Johnny and Samantha and Tech and off to one side of the aisle.

  Slowly Screamer walked back toward us, very slowly. Patty seemed focused inward and I said nothing as Screamer finished his first step.

  Then what seemed like an eternity later his second. His third. His fourth. His fifth. He was on his sixth step when Patty squeezed my hand. “It’s slipping.”