Future Findings
12

We parked a few blocks down yet again, so as to not raise suspicion. But before we got out, Eddie insisted that we put on our masks-- he said that the smog was especially bad today. Nobody questioned him, and we all obeyed his orders. We walked as a group, and tried to look casual. I’d like to say that we did a pretty good job. The sky was especially dirty this day. The clouds of pollution seemed to hover not more than a few hundred feet above the ground. Nearly everyone here had a mask on.

We arrived at the Baker complex, and stood around for a while. Eddie said we had to wait to make sure there were no guards heading back to our entrance point, but I think he was just nervous. We all were. I waited for Eddie to give the go ahead, but it ended up being Donnie.

“Can we get this done? I’m ready,” he said. Eddie smiled, and started walking across the lawn. It was dark out, but the lights from inside the building gave us a small amount of illumination with which we could make our way. Light seemed to pervade the glass wall. Thankfully, human eyes couldn’t. It would seem extremely suspicious to find a tall man dressed in overalls and a blazer leading a giant black man, a tiny woman, a completely average man, and a teenager that seemed to be going through quite a phase. It was something straight out of a movie.

It took a while to make it to our infiltration point, and we almost walked right past it. I was the one to stop everyone before we continued on in search of something that had already passed by us. It looked the exact same as it had when we first found it, but it somehow seemed different. It wasn’t just the change in lighting. It was something in all of us. Again, it was that sense of finality. I hadn’t told Eddie about what The Elders had showed Matt and I, and I didn’t plan to. He would see it on his own one day. Even though it made me sad to think that Eddie would die someday, I smiled at the thought of him being able to see what I had seen.

Beck reminded us that that Angus wouldn’t fit through the window. Shit, I thought. I’m sure we all collectively thought something along those lines.

“Beck, you can just stay with him and head back to the car once us three get in. We’ll meet you there after we make it out. If we make it out. Don’t radio us, we’ll contact you,” Eddie said. He was quite the leader. I’m glad he added in the part about the radio, as it had cost us quite a bit last time she had used it. I was the first one on Angus’s shoulders, and I just hoped that there was nobody in the bathroom stall. Once I made sure that it was empty, I slid through. The Flags of the World book was still lodged in the window. It forced a smile onto my lips. I hit the ground feet first, and wasted no time in gesturing for the next person to climb up.

It was Eddie, and I offered a hand out to him. He gratefully took it, and crawled inside. Next was Donnie. I stood against the stall door, and let Eddie help him up. This was his responsibility.

Donnie didn’t want to take his hand at first. He held all ten fingers clinging to the AC, but soon discovered that he didn’t have the strength to get up on his own. Even with Angus pushing on his feet as he had done with me, Donnie was having some trouble. Reluctantly, he took Eddie’s hand and hauled himself up. He was blushing, though it was hard to see in the dimness of the night. Eddie gave a small wave to the ground outside, and the two still down there made their way to the car. I had forgotten to lock the stall door.

Somebody walked in on us carrying a newspaper and a phone. He was halfway in when he discovered us.

“Oh my!” he exclaimed and backed out quickly. “My apologies!” he said as he entered a stall a few down from us. Eddie and Donnie laughed, but I was just glad that this was the Men’s bathroom instead of the Women’s. That would have been a completely different story. We waited for the man to finish his business-- which took upwards of five minutes, and left the stall. As we had expected, the bathroom was empty. We slowly made our way to the door. I was about to open it and head out when Eddie stopped me.

“Wait,” he said. He ushered me away from the door, and set his bag on top of the countertop. He rummaged around, and eventually came out with a large piece of paper. It seemed to be a map, and I soon realized that it was a map of the Baker building-- the one we were in.

“Where the hell did you get that?” Donnie asked. Eddie only responded with a smile. He pulled it out to it’s full size, and set about examining it. Donnie and I had no idea what he was looking for, so we simply pretended to look at it too. Soon enough, Eddie looked pleased. He folded it back up, and put it in his bag.

“I know where to go,” he said.

“And where’s that?” I inquired.

“The basement.” That made sense-- all the wiring and power would be controlled in the basement. Yet I had thought we would head upstairs, to the top floor. A tad anticlimactic, I thought. He headed over to the bathroom door, and slowly opened it. Once there, he took a left.

“Aren’t the elevators the other way?” I asked.

“We won’t be using those ones,” Eddie mystically replied. I looked at Donnie, but he shrugged. We walked down numerous hallways for quite a while. It seemed as though Eddie was just walking in circles, and I was beginning to worry that someone who suspected that we shouldn’t be here would stop us and ask about our business. Finally, just as I was going to say something, a few elevators appeared from behind a glass corner. I smiled, and we rushed over to it. Eddie smacked the down button.

The elevators seemed busy, all three that were situated in front of us. After a solid minute, the one on the far right dinged and opened. It was empty. Eddie breathed a sigh of relief, and we boarded. He pressed the button that indicated the bottom floor. It was more than 15 below where we currently were. It was going to be quite a stressful ride. Miraculously, nobody else got on. Once the elevator stopped, we stood there and watched the door open. Not one person made a move to leave. Eventually, I looked over at Eddie.

“You gonna go?” I asked.

“What? Oh-” he said as he started moving. He had forgotten that he was supposed to be leading the mission. It was nothing more than wires, pipes, and the occasional storage locker down on this level. It seemed entirely deserted-- all the power and water was run electronically-- yet we still moved quietly. The last thing we needed was to get caught by somebody, especially when we were so close to our goal. Eddie made us stop after a few minutes. He had forgotten where to go, I suppose. But after reexamining the map for a little while, we got ourselves back on track.

Down here, the walls were no longer glass. It seemed that the building needed something stronger as a base, so they resorted to old fashion steel. It was unfinished down here, so all the metal beams and girders were visible and open to accidentally knock your head on. Eddie did so at least twice. The whole floor consisted of the metal as a shell of the hallways and walls to the outside, but the majority was wiring. Hundreds of cords and various lengths ran across the aluminum flooring, hung from the ceiling, and was even taped to the walls and pipes that supplied water to the building. The electricity that ran through those wires was so strong and pervasive that it seemed to charge the air and leave an odd smell of singed hair.

The lighting down here was exceedingly minimal. It was so dim that it reminded me of the AMO base, with it’s torches and lanterns. We navigated through the place silently but steadily, moving closer and closer to some unseen center of technology that was stored within the heart of the Baker building.

There was little to no visual stimuli in here, so my mind wandered to other things. It dawned on me that we had only seen one other living soul in this place since we entered. Nobody in the hallways. Nobody in the elevator. And nobody down here. We should’ve seen someone by now, right? I wanted to ask Eddie and Donnie, but I feared that it would put them on guard and slow the mission down. We continued on in silence and near complete darkness for what seemed like forever. I contemplated asking Eddie if he really knew where we were going when I saw it. Though it was far away, it illuminated the hallway with it’s heavy laser-like glow. We had finally reached it-- the center of the whole building. The heart.

It was massive. At least a thousand black, tentacle-like wires leading up to what looked like a supercomputer. It had no monitor, yet an odd-looking lightbulb glowed atop the metal and wiring. It stood at least 7 feet tall, and was utterly intimidating. The room was humming with the sound of charged air. But there was something else, too. The drum and hustle of boots pushing onto a hard surface. Somebody knew we were here.

“Eddie?” I asked.

“I know. I hear them too,” he replied.

“What do we do?” Donnie asked with a panicked voice.

“Hurry up and finish this,” Eddie said. So Donnie made his way over to the supercomputer. He knowingly pulled a screwdriver out of his bag and began removing a metal plate on the side. So that’s his purpose. To destroy the machine. The boots were getting closer, and I could now hear the sound of distant voices, yelling to one another.

Two screws were out of the plate. Two left. Eddie was antsy; shifting his weight from foot to foot. I turned to examine the hallway that we had entered through. It was still empty. We hadn’t been found, yet. I estimated that we had a full minute until the guards were upon us.

“Hurry up, Donnie,” Eddie said. Donnie didn’t reply. The last two screws were finally out, and the panel slid down to the floor with a dull thud. Inside, it looked like a mess of wires and mechanical gadgets. But to Donnie, it was no more complicated than an old cellphone. He knew exactly what to do, and wasted no time doing it. The boots were even closer now, and the yelling had turned into audible words.

“Get to the center!”

“We’ve got to stop them before they shut down the grid!”

“Yes sir!”

Donnie now had wire cutters in his hand, and was cutting and splicing with the speed a cook uses when chopping vegetables. The lights flickered, and with one more snip, went completely out. It was pitch black-- no outside light could make it’s way this far below ground.

“Done,” Donnie quietly said. But then the guards were upon us, with flashlights and guns raised at our faces. The three of us willingly put our hands in the air. We knew our fate now. Prison.

We were cuffed and marched to the elevators. But we knew that they wouldn’t work. Instead of trying the elevators, the guards made us walk down to the stair entrance. It would be 15 flights to the ground floor. But it seemed as though the guards had other plans for me. We all made our way up the stairs. But once we got 5 floors up, the guard in charge of me stopped. My friends kept walking, but I wasn’t allowed to follow them.

“Wait! He has to come with us!” Eddie exclaimed. But the guards would not hear him. They pulled him forward, and continued on their way. Once they were out of sight, I was forced out of the stairwell. The guard took my handcuffs off, and handed me a spare flashlight.

“Walk,” he instructed. So I walked. Every once in a while he would shout out directions for me to head in, but never where he was taking me. After calling out lefts and rights for a while, he told me to stop. I was standing in front of a metal door with no nameplate on it. All the others were made of wood and had the name of some electrician or scientist on it. But this one was blank.

“Open it.” So I pushed on the door, and was met with dazzling lights and the sound of power. What? How was their power in this part of the building, but nowhere else? Then I saw her. Laura. She stood in the corner of the room, and was holding a black piece of metal in her hand. A gun. The guard shut the door behind me, and I was alone in the room with her.

She was silent as she walked into the center of the metal encased room. I stood there, not knowing what to do. I already knew what she was going to ask, and I already knew my answer.

“You know what I want you to do,” she said.

“What’s the gun for? And how is there power in here? I shut the whole grid down...” I asked, avoiding her statement.

“Just in case you try and pull my throat out of my neck. A precaution, you can call. I hope I don’t have to use it… and do you really think I’m stupid enough to allow the main power supply as fuel? It’s got it’s own generator, and own miniature grid. You wouldn’t believe the amount of energy this thing takes.” She held the gun down and away from her body, as if it were foul smelling or poisonous in nature. She clearly didn’t know how to use it.

“It’s here, Abid. The time travel device is here,” she gestured over to the far corner of the room, behind me and to the left. A glowing hunk of metal, very similar to the coffin sat there. And just off to the side of it was a monitor, showing a series of numbers that indicated a place and time in this world.

“Go fuck yourself,” I said. There was no way in hell I’d be using it. After all that I’d been through, AMO was my home now. I couldn’t just leave them. I thought I would take her up on the offer. I thought I was weaker than I really was.

“Listen, Abid. We’ve got your friends now, and I’m willing to bet that you’d do just about anything to keep them safe.”

“What are you saying?” I bellowed.

“I can make them feel pain. I can even, heaven forbid, kill them. If I wanted to, of course,” she said with a grimace that was eerily close to a grin.

“You can’t do that! That’s illegal!” I screamed. I was suddenly filled with rage. How dare she threaten to hurt my friends.

“Illegal? Yes. But will I do it? Most definitely. Remember, Abid. I own this company. I own the police. I own the world.” She had her gun raised now, pointed just to the side of my head.

Shit. “What do I have to do to make you let them go?” I asked.

“You know what. The time machine. Use it, and I’ll let them go.” I had no other choice, and she knew that.

I said, and responded. “Okay, but on one condition.”

“And what’s that?” she asked.

“You let me chose the time.” She seemed to ponder this for a while, then eventually shook her head in affirmation.

“So long as you go back to the same year-- the year you were frozen. ” She gestured over to the monitor with her gun, and I made my way over to it. It had the current time, date, and place on it.

“Use the controls, change the date and place,” she ordered me. And so I did. I changed it to the year 2020, and made the month June-- right after I had been frozen alive in my coffin. And for the place, I put in the coordinates of my home town.

“Done,” I said. It was time to head back, there was nothing left for me to do here. If I wanted Donnie and Eddie to be safe, I had to leave. I had to let them go.

“There’s a button on the screen, it’s a 30 second time. Once you’re ready, click it and get into the machine. I’ll keep the gun on you, in case you try any funny business,” she told me.

“Understood,” I said in the formal and bland tone of a soldier. I looked down at the monitor, and examined every button and tool on it. It seemed relatively basic-- I had used over half the buttons just to change the date, time, and place.

I looked over at Laura, wondering if I could stall and somehow talk my way out of here. Of course it would be useless if I couldn’t get Eddie and Donnie out too. She was shaking visibly, even from the distance I stood from her. I could see beads of sweat standing out on her neck and forehead. Any sound or quick movement would startle her, and hopefully stun her for a second or two. But it could also scare her, and have her deliver swift and brutal death. Worth a shot, I figured.

I raised my hand up to my nose, and heaved a loud Achoo! Laura jumped, and dropped her gun to the floor. I turned back over to the monitor, and played around with it while she fumbled to pick the gun back up. There was nothing. Only the screen that allowed me to change the settings on the time machine. Reluctantly, I pressed a few buttons and backed away from it just as Laura was standing back up, gun in hand.

She gave me a dirty look, but didn’t question the legitimacy of my sneeze.

“Now press the button,” she instructed me. So I did. A countdown began playing on the screen. It flashed red every time a second had passed. I stepped away from it, and intended to walk into the machine. It did have a striking resemblance to the cryogenic chamber-- the coffin. Black, heavy fear rose up in my gut, but I fought it back down. I stepped inside, and the door seemed to close behind me automatically. “You’ve got ten seconds,” she told me. Trying to keep the fear away, I looked around my new surroundings. Wires, pulsing with power hung around the bottom of the machine, which was a series of interlacing steel rods. The black walls came together to form a kind of dome at the top, which was open to the air. I felt like a small child stuck at the bottom of a well.

I had kept a silent count in my head. 3… 2… 1. The machine started to hum, and it felt like a needle had been quickly inserted into the top of my head, then pulled out. That same feeling came again, but this time it was my temples and forehead. It came yet again in my eyes and the tip of my ears. It repeated over and over, forcing me to involuntarily flinch. It wasn’t so bad-- it just was a sensation I had never felt before. The whole procedure, from head to toe, couldn’t have taken more than ten seconds. Once the last set of needles pricked my toes and heels, the machine seemed to power off. The hum was gone, and any static that hung in the air before was instantly gone. It didn’t work. I was both relieved and upset.

What happened?” I called out to Laura. She looked right at me, but didn’t say a word. Soon enough, she was gone. And so was the room I was just in. And the machine. I was standing on a hard surface, and I was completely surrounded by other people. In front of me, stretching for nearly twenty floors, stood a leviathan of a building. It was ominous in size, yet reassuring in color. Every floor was a different tone, so it gave off the vibe of a sort of urban rainbow.

The first floor was sandstone; the second slate gray; the third brick brown. All the different colors were typical of such a building, but having them all combined was immensely interesting to look at. The Bryar Building must have been an amazing place to work in.

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