The Didymus Contingency

by Jeremy Robinson

Jake entered George’s bland office through the door to the secret lab, holding his gun straight out toward Tom. He stared at Tom’s chest, locked on target, trying to judge which way Tom might jump. He saw Tom look to his left and wink. What is he winking—ack!

  A massive hand reached out and took Jake by the throat. A second hand snatched the wrist of the hand holding the gun. Tom had instructed Lazarus on the dangers of guns and Lazarus already knew how to disarm a man. Lazarus squeezed Jake’s hand until he heard a crack. Jake would have screamed if he could breathe, but Lazarus’s monster hand held tightly to Jake’s throat.

  The gun landed on the firm industrial rug. Lazarus took Jake by the shirt, picked him off the floor and heaved him into the air. Jake soared across the office, slid across George’s desk and into the black leather chair, which rolled across the floor and crashed into the wall. Jake’s body sagged in the chair and then toppled onto the floor.

  Tom smiled as wide as the sun; Lazarus was amazing. Tom quickly checked Jake for a pulse. “He’s alive,” Tom said in Aramaic.

  “Good,” Lazarus said. “I feared I had killed the man.”

  Tom entered the lab followed by Lazarus, whose eyes sucked in the strange technologies surrounding him. David greeted them at the door.

  “That was close,” David said. He looked up at Lazarus. “You all right?”

  Lazarus looked stunned by the technology around him. “Yes... I think... What is all this?”

  “We’ll try to explain later,” Tom said. “Right now we have to decide what to do next.”

  “I’ll tell you what we’re gonna do,” Sally said, as she stood to her feet, supporting her weight on the countertop. “We’re gonna make sure no one from LightTech ever goes back in time again.”

  David smiled. Sally was back.

  * * * * *

  David felt like a child again, sneaking around, trying not to get caught. Only now if he was found he might get a bullet in his chest instead of tagged, and there was no safety zone. He was sweating, afraid, excited—and he really had to use the bathroom! As a child, whenever David played hide and seek, his nerves would send his bowel system into overdrive and he would have to run inside to relieve himself during the first game. But being in the bathroom for several minutes of the first game also gave him an unfair advantage and a reputation as being a master hide and seek player. Who thinks to check the bathroom during an outdoor game of hide and seek?

  “Uh, I realize this might not be the best time, but I’ve got to use the bathroom,” David said with a whisper, as they shuffled down the dimly lit hallway.

  “Are you serious?” Sally asked, as she eyed David with one eyebrow arched high on her forehead.

  “Yes,” David said. He squirmed like a little boy who was about to wet himself. “I won’t be long.”

  Sally led David, Tom and Lazarus down an adjacent hallway to the left. They stopped in front of a blue door. David looked at the door and the white symbol of a woman. He paused at the women’s room symbol and opened his mouth to say something that never escaped his lungs.

  “David, get in there now,” Sally said.

  David flung open the door and entered the bathroom.

  Tom smiled. Life or death circumstances aside, this was pretty funny.

  “We need to augment the watches to transport the entire contents of the receiving area. Do you or David know how to do that?” Sally asked Tom.

  “Assuming that’s how our future selves transferred the material originally, any watches that haven’t been tampered with should still be configured to transfer large amounts of material. It should be a piece of cake.” Tom explained.

  “I can hear you,” David shouted from inside the bathroom.

  Sally looked at Tom quizzically.

  “He can’t go if he thinks people can hear him,” Tom explained.

  Sally rolled her eyes, spread her lips in a smile and began to walk away. Tom cracked open the bathroom door. “We’ll be down the hall,” he said with a chuckle. “But hurry up, LightTech is going to be crawling with people soon and we’re going to stick out like Gentiles in the Temple.”

  “I know, I know,” said David from within a stall. “Now shoo!”

  Tom and Lazarus caught up with Sally, who was watching Lazarus’s confused face taking in mirrors, framed aerial photos and elaborate paintings. “We should send your friend back.”

  “Lazarus? We might still need his muscle,” Tom retorted.

  “Look at him. Being brought two thousand years into the future is too much for any man to handle.”

  Tom looked at Lazarus, who was looking closely at his reflection in a mirror. “Lazarus,” Tom said in Aramaic, “Are you all right?”

  Lazarus looked at Tom with wide eyes. “This place, this is where you’re from?”

  “Yes, this was where we worked. Just like Matthew was a tax collector, David and I worked here... But are you all right? Is this too much for you to handle?”

  Lazarus shot Tom a glance that said Tom better be joking.

  Tom looked at Sally, “He’s fine.”

  “But he’s—”

  “He’s fine, look at his—”

  “Hey!” shouted a voice from the other end of the hallway. “Who are you? What are you doing?”

  A young guard with bright blue eyes and a blond crew cut, walked swiftly toward them, hand on his holstered gun. There would be no surprise attacks to rescue them this time. They only had one chance.

  “Run!” Tom shouted in English and then repeated it in Aramaic for Lazarus, “Run!”

  The three bolted away from the guard who was already squawking into his radio and drawing his weapon. “This is Daniels. I’m in Delta Sector. In pursuit of three intruders.”

  Tom knew these hallways would be awash with trigger-happy hired guns in minutes. They had to get out of this sector, and fast. They approached a T-intersection at the end of the hallway. To the right were the elevators, to the left the stairs. “The elevators are guarded, let’s take the stairs,” Tom said as they neared the end of the hall.

  “No!” shouted Sally, “The elevator’s clear.”

  Tom glanced back at Sally. “How do you know?”

  “The elevator guard was one of the three that Jake killed. They were chasing me up the stairs just fifteen minutes ago.” With that, Sally turned right and Tom followed.

  Pang! A bullet ripped through and shattered a large framed painting at the end of the hallway, causing Lazarus to dive left. Daniels was running at full speed, gun raised and ready to shoot. Lazarus attempted to cross the hallway to the elevator, where Sally and Tom were waving him on, but a second bullet crashed into the wall, missing Lazarus by inches and stopping him in his tracks.

  Lazarus ducked and ran back toward the stairwell door. Tom shouted to him, “Lazarus, open that door and follow the stairs down five levels!”

  “What?” Lazarus shouted.

  “Five levels!” shouted Tom, pointing down with his finger as the elevator doors closed.

  Lazarus ran to the door and tried to push his way through it, but it held tight. He smashed up against the door and still it didn’t budge. Lazarus looked down, saw the doorknob and pulled on it. Still nothing. He could hear Daniels’s footsteps approaching quickly as he yelled something unintelligible. Lazarus turned the doorknob by accident as he looked back at the elevator doors, hoping they would open, and felt the door open slightly. He pulled the door and nearly ripped it off the hinges. He ran inside and headed down the stairs with a series of great strides.

  Daniels stopped at the crossroads and looked in either direction. He saw the light indicating that the elevator was going down. He looked to the left and saw the door to the stairwell close. He held the radio to his mouth. “Two suspects in elevator 4D, one in the stairwell. I’ll take the stairwell. Elevator has stopped on...” The guard looked at the elevator level indicator. “Level 2, over.”

  “Copy that Daniels, we are en route to Delta Sector, level 2, over and out.”

/>   This was the first security breach Daniels had been a part of and he loved every second of it. When he got the call earlier, it was for only one perp and he thought the action would be over by the time he arrived on the scene. But now there were three perps and he already got to fire his weapon...twice! Daniels secured his radio and raced into the stairwell.

  The hallway fell silent until the blue bathroom door creaked open. David peered out. It appeared his penchant for using the bathroom had paid off again. No one ever checks the bathroom—especially a women’s room. He had heard the shouting, the gunshots. He knew Lazarus was on his own and he knew where Sally and Tom would head. He would have to move quickly.

  A smile came to David’s face as he realized he could move more quickly than any other man on the planet.

  David tapped the buttons on his watch and then waited for the bright flash and loud noise. But nothing happened. He looked at the watch and carefully pushed the final button again. He waited...nothing. David wasted little time self-debating why his watch had ceased to work. His friends were in trouble and it was time to take action. After deactivating his watch so it wouldn’t suddenly transport him if it decided to work again, he ran to the T-intersection at the end of the hallway and took a left into the stairwell.

  * * * * *

  The supply closet was small, but it made for the perfect hiding place and it was strategically down the hall from the entrance to the control center. Some scientists had shown up for work, but had been promptly sent home by two armed guards who stood watch in front of the control center doors.

  Tom and Sally were crouched on the floor amid brooms, buckets and boxes of detergent and deodorizer. The smell was a noxious mix of bleach and dirt, but it beat being shot at.

  “So what made you come around?” Tom asked in a hushed voice.

  Sally looked at him. “What do you mean?” she whispered.

  “I’d almost call you a nice person.”

  “Funny.”

  “I thought so.”

  Sally sat silently for a moment, but then looked at Tom and said, “People change.”

  “Overnight?”

  “My guess is that changing overnight is easier to do than not changing at all over three years.”

  “What’s that supposed to—?”

  “You’re still arrogant. You still don’t know when to keep your mouth shut. And you still have my respect.”

  Tom’s eyes softened, his forehead smoothed and his muscles relaxed.

  Sally continued. “Over the years I watched you and David do things I had only dreamed of and I had to be content to sit on the sidelines and watch. The most I could do to feel useful was to nag. Otherwise, I had no reason to be here.”

  Tom smiled. Sally had changed and he decided he’d better too, lest he get the old Sally back. He extended his hand. “Friends?”

  Sally reached around a hanging mop and took his hand. “Friends. But don’t push it.”

  “Done.”

  A loud squawking noise from around the corner caught their attention. Shouting voices were blaring from the two guards’ radios. They couldn’t make out what was being said, but they knew it must be urgent and probably to do with David or Lazarus. The two guards ran past, keys jingling, leaving the control center unguarded.

  Tom looked at Sally, whose face had become distorted with concern. “David will be okay. We survived much worse in the past, trust me.”

  Sally looked at Tom trying to squelch any worried look. “Let’s go.”

  The pair squeaked open the closet door and glanced down the hallway. The path was clear. Tom knew they must have locked the facility down tight. They didn’t want anyone going in or out. Tom smiled and looked down at his watch. They had an automatic exit no one could block.

  Tom and Sally made their way into the control center and found the lights already on and computers twitching with activity. Every computer console in the room was alive, processing equations, searching for information and solving problems.

  “What’s all this?” Tom asked.

  Sally looked perplexed. “I don’t know. None of this was on when I left.”

  Tom kept moving. “All the information in the world won’t matter if they don’t have that.” Tom was pointing at the receiving area, which was lit from the inside.

  Tom and Sally quickly took stock of everything in the room. Tom froze on the table that had held the original ten watches. “How many watches do we have in activity right now?”

  “Yours, mine, David’s... Your friend Lazarus is wearing Captain Roberts’s. Only four, why?”

  “Damn. We’ve got two more missing.”

  “Can we get rid of all this with only the four?”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem. Though I’d really like to know where the other watches are,” Tom said as he situated the watches in four separate parts of the room. “When and where do we want this stuff to go?”

  “Return to sender.” Sally said. “I can’t think of anyone better equipped to take care of all this than you and David. If it came from your future selves, let’s send it back.”

  Tom worked the buttons on each watch. “Good idea. Our future selves would have lived through all this, so they should be expecting it.”

  Tom finished prepping the final watch. “Okay, I’ve got them on a timer. We have thirty seconds.”

  Tom and Sally quickly exited the receiving area and watched from the safety of the control center. “Fifteen seconds,” Tom said.

  Tom’s eyes squinted. “I just realized something. If all this equipment was sent to us from our future selves, then David and I must make it out of this okay.”

  Sally raised an eyebrow and smirked with half her mouth. “That’s reassuring...for you.”

  Tom looked at the receiving area. “Five seconds...”

  Five seconds of silence passed between them and on the sixth second, Tom’s brow lowered and crushed together. “Nothing’s happening.”

  “Maybe you forgot to push a button?”

  “On all four of them? Not likely.”

  Tom was about to charge back into the receiving area when a voice stopped him in his tracks. “Quite the quandary, isn’t it, Dr. Greenbaum?”

  Tom looked up. Spencer was sitting on the other side of the room with his feet crossed on top of a desk.

  “Spencer?”

  “You remember my name? After all those years in the past? I’m flattered.”

  “How do you know—?”

  “It’s okay, Tom, Spencer’s working with us. He knew about you and David going back in time even before you went.”

  “How’s that possible?”

  “I’ve known for a very long time, Tom,” Spencer said with a grin as he brought his feet down to the floor.

  “Why aren’t the watches working?” Sally asked Spencer.

  Spencer shrugged with a smile, “Because I disabled them. Actually I’ve managed to disable all attempts at time travel within a square mile thanks to this brilliant mind.” Spencer tapped his head. “You really should have given Spencer a promotion. If only we had discovered his mind earlier.”

  “Spencer, are you feeling all right?” Sally asked.

  “Why, whatever do you mean?”

  “You’re talking about yourself in the third person,” Sally replied.

  “Were we? Sorry, force of habit.”

  “How and why did you disable the watches?” Tom asked as he moved toward Spencer, keeping a watchful eye on the little man.

  “We’re afraid we can’t tell you that,” Spencer said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because we said so.”

  Tom knew something was seriously wrong with Spencer. He had worked closely with Spencer for years. He wasn’t talkative. He wasn’t sarcastic. He wasn’t anything like the man sitting across the room from him.

  Spencer sat up straight. With every utterance, his voice was joined by another, and another, until he spoke with the combined voices of fifty separate men, all in uni
son. “You know what? What? You deserve to know. He does? He does! Tell him! We will! We went to the future. It’s really quite a wonderful place. Nice. Nice! War. Famine. Technology. We used this amazing mind to create a device that binds time and space into a solid, unbendable force. Rendering you...stuck. Like glue! Like bugs in honey! Stuck.”

  Tom’s mind began searching for an explanation...began working out the problem...began...remembering.

  Spencer stood confidently and held a small device in front of him. “Such magnificent power for such a small device. Tiny. Much like that watch of yours, which we find to be a wonderful new toy. So much fun! A wonderful new toy for us!”

  Tom’s mind flashed back two years. The same look in the eyes. The same voice. Tom knew it was impossible, but what other explanation was there? “I know who you are.”

  “Of course you do. We’re Spencer! Friendly, helpful, quiet, Spencer!”

  “The body might be different...the cuts on your arms are gone...”

  Spencer’s eyes widened and he smiled a toothy grin. “Bravo for you. He’s so smart. We don’t like him. Neither do we,” Spencer said, as he put the device down on the console next to him.

  Tom’s eyes glanced at the device. He knew it was the key to their escape.

  “You’re welcome to try, disciple,” Spencer said in Aramaic, “but you have felt our power twice before.” He switched back to English and continued, “You know what we will do to you. Crush you. Break you. Kill you. Yes! Yes...”

  Tom looked shocked, he knew who Tom was, is, and used to be. But twice before? Tom only remembered the one time, which ended with a herd of pigs committing watery suicide.

  Spencer laughed. “It’s been two years for you. It’s been two thousand for us, but Legion remembers you.”

  “Impossible.”

  “You still don’t believe that we’re real? Fascinating. Astounding. He’s so ignorant! We know!”

  Sally had stopped moving. She looked mortified. “Tom...”

  Tom felt bad about lying to Sally, but what other choice did he have? “Ignore him. He’s delusional. Could be a side effect of traveling into the future. Right now, we need to get that device. I’ll take care of him; you get that thing and smash it.”