The Case of the Missing Minute

by Sarah Morell

  “Hey, it’s my turn to tell the story,” Ivy said as she grew tired of Lily’s interpretation of events.

  “But we are getting to the good part, about how we opened the device,” Lily replied.

  “It’s still my turn,” Ivy argued feverishly. She wore her best, ten year old pouting face.

  “Fine, but I am going to jump in to correct you when it’s needed,” Lily said loudly.

  “Dad! She isn’t letting me tell the story the way I want to.”

  “Lily, let her take a turn,” Benjamin Stolidmeyer said.

  Ok, so my name is Ivy Summer Stolidmeyer and I am 10 years old. I am the second lead detective for the 4DDA. My favorite color is blue. I like to play with Webkinz whenever my Mom and Dad let me. I have 7 Webkinz…

  “Ivy, just tell the story. They don’t need to know everything about you,” Lily said as she shook her head, as only a 12 year old sister could.

  Ok, so where were we? Oh yeah, we were like, still at least a few weeks away from our first case. The device was in the pole barn, and Abacus had just found the six weird buttons that apparently only she could see. Dad came up with the super simple solution. When the buttons were sticking out, he took a permanent marker and colored in the top of each button. When we pressed them in, we could still see the colors. Now anyone could press a button, not just Abacus.

  He used a different color on each of the buttons, which ended up being a really smart thing to do. At the time, we all thought he was silly, but it turned out to be genius. Without the color coding, we wouldn’t have found a way into the device. Oh, and one other thing; the device isn’t really gold. Dad says it just looks that way on the outside. It is a weird metal that doesn’t really reflect light very well. It looks shiny, but then it doesn’t all at the same time.

  We spent hours messing with the buttons. They didn’t pull out any further than a millimeter. We even tried using monkey wrenches and pliers. The only thing the buttons did was push in or out.

  So, we each took a spot next to a color. Dad had two colors since he could reach two with his arms stretched out. We all pushed them in together, but nothing happened. We then tried the opposite; we pushed them at the same time so they would pop out again. Nothing happened.

  We could still see the line, which sure looked like the starting of a door, but we still had no clue how to open it. Dad didn’t want to ruin it, so we couldn’t just start banging on the device with hammers. Lily wanted to use a crow bar or screwdriver, but Dad wouldn’t let her. He said that the crack in the door wasn’t big enough to get a good hold with a pry bar.

  After a couple hours, we were not any further ahead. It took forever, because we had to keep chasing down Abacus, who had a very short attention span. Dad even took Abacus up on a ladder to look for any more buttons, but she didn’t see anything. Finally, he came up with an idea that seemed really farfetched. We all went into the house and he sat at his computer. He wrote a program that would go through every mutant of the buttons.

  Benjamin spoke up upon hearing the telling by Ivy, “Permutation, in this case meaning we tried every combination of button presses to see if it would have any effect on the machine.”

  Ok, so we went through every pre-mutant of the buttons. It really just meant we kept pressing when he told us to press our color. My button was blue, by the way. We were at this for hours with no result at all. We had only gotten through the first half of the pre-mutants when Mom called us in for bed.

  That night I think we all dreamt of the clang, click, and snap sound the buttons made each time we pressed them. The next day was another Monday. We had school, and Dad had work, but that didn’t stop us from thinking about it all day. We even made up songs; well, Abacus made up the songs about the clang, click, and snap. We humored her though, which made the day go faster.

  Dad came home and didn’t even bother to bring in his stuff from the car. He headed straight out to the pole barn. Of course we were right there behind him, anxious to try the rest of the button combinations. After only 30 minutes, we struck gold, pardon the pun.

  The colors had nearly worn off the buttons from the repeated pressing, but by this point we could have pressed them in the dark. Anyway, the combination that finally produced a result was pink, blue, black, green, red, and then purple. Dad had almost started to tell us the next sequence when we each heard the sound.

  It was similar to the clang, but it lasted longer and came from high up on the device. This was followed by a really soft whirring noise that almost sounded like one of Dad’s drills. Then there was the familiar snap, but louder than the other buttons.

  Up near the top of the device, two more buttons popped out. These stuck out more like handle bars. Dad got up on a ladder and tried to twist them one at a time like the handle of a motorcycle, but nothing happened. He pushed one in, but then couldn’t see it any longer. He pushed in the second one, and that one disappeared back into the device as well.

  We started over with pink, blue, black, green, red, and then purple. Sure enough the two handles popped out again. This time he pulled the tractor over to the device and lifted the front end loader bucket so that he would have a better place to stand. There he was, standing in the bucket, when Mom walked in to get us for bed time. We hadn’t even eaten dinner yet.

  When she saw what Dad was about to do, she suggested that he turn it like it was a giant screw. He tried. He put his hands on both handles and twisted them like he was trying to turn the whole device. Nothing moved up near the top, but all at once the crack around the door appeared more clearly. It wasn’t like it opened, but judging from the line that ran all the way around in a rectangle it must have been a door. He struggled with it for a few more minutes, but nothing else happened.

  Since his arms were getting tired, Lily asked if she could help him up on the tractor bucket. Now both Dad and Lily were standing on the upraised bucket. By the way, he always tells us it isn’t safe to stand in the tractor bucket, even with the tractor turned off. Each one was holding onto a separate handle, pulling and twisting. At some point without them realizing it, the door silently glided right around to the opposite side of the teardrop-shaped machine. Really, it looked more like a minivan door opening than anything spectacular. I was waiting for flashing lights or sirens or something, but there wasn’t anything.

  They didn’t even notice that the door had opened. They were still up there pulling on the handles until I told them what happened.

  I tried to look into the device, but it was just too dark. My flashlight didn’t seem to percolate the interior.

  “Permeate,” Dad corrected.

  Fine! My flashlight didn’t seem to permeate the interior. It was like the light just got absorbed into the darkness and didn’t reflect back.

  Mom was insistent that Lily and I go in the house for dinner. It was already past our bedtime. She must have asked Dad like 4 times if he was coming in for dinner. Each time he mumbled something about being there soon, but it was obvious he was just ignoring her.

  I had envisioned some strange mist to come spiraling out of the device to curl around my feet. I was even ready to give it a name, like time dust, or minute mist. I imagined quiet mermaid singing would accompany the thick dreamy mist at our feet. At a minimum I thought it would have some kind of flashing lights. Instead, it was all pretty much just quiet and boring once the door opened. Now, I am not afraid of the dark. I mean, I do like a night light, but that is just so I don’t bump into something in the night. Really; I am not scared, but I wasn’t that eager to step into the dark interior of the golden contraption either.

  “Does anyone else want to take over? I am getting tired of telling the story,” Ivy said as she grew tired of telling the story. A 10 year old’s capacity for expressing themselves is not always in line with their expectations.

  Chapter 6 – Dad inside the machine

  Benjamin Stolidmeyer had not eaten since the small lunch that he had taken to work Monday. On any normal day he would ha
ve gone into the house straight away to ensure that the hunger didn’t endure throughout the evening. Tonight, however, he forgot all about the growling in his stomach. With the children in bed Benjamin experienced the next part of the story all on his own. He sat at the kitchen table the next night relaying his part of the story.

  My name is Benjamin Thomas Stolidmeyer. I guess I have to tell this part of the story since I was the only one there. I have been married to Melody Sophia Stolidmeyer for almost 20 years. She is older than me by… OUCH!

  “You didn’t have to tell them that I was older than you,” Melody said, as she released the pinching fingers that had found their mark under Benjamin’s left arm. “Just tell them the important parts,” she said.

  As you can tell, we spent a lot of time on the device so far just getting to the point where we could open the door. I sat there alone for several minutes, contemplating what to try next. I wanted to ensure some measure of safety. The first thing that I did was attach a bulky flashlight to a long stick. I then inserted the brightly shining stick into the open door of the device.

  Curiously, the bright light once inside was opaque, like it was shining through an alabaster jar. I couldn’t even make out the shadows. It was odd because the whole device lit up the same way, even the open doorway. After about 30 seconds of poking and swishing around I removed the 18 volt flashlight, realizing this was getting me nowhere. It was weird to see the flashlight emerge from the doorway. It was like pulling it out from underneath a bed sheet.

  I poked the stick mounted flashlight in and out a few times just to see what would happen. It had the same effect as covering the flashlight with my hand. Having exhausted everything I could learn from the flashlight, I figured it was time to see what happened if I pierced the opening with my own finger. I didn’t know what to expect, but the stick and flashlight didn’t look any worse for wear so it couldn’t be that bad.

  Now, if I had to do it again, I would have mounted my camera phone onto the stick and recorded what was inside before risking my person. I had no idea if this thing was safe. It could contain some wild animal or some long forgotten disease. It looked more advanced than anything else I had ever seen, but I knew it must be very old since it looked to have been buried in the yard for a very long time.

  I have to admit, impatience got the better of me. I stretched out my arm and held out my index finger. I stood back as far as I could, in case I needed to jump backwards out of the way. I half expected some kind of cold sensation, a shock, or something to jump out at me. I waited. Nothing happened. I put in two fingers. Nothing happened. Like Ivy, I thought it would be like putting my hand into a cool misty fog, but without the cool or the mist. The tips of my fingers became masked by the darkness inside of the device. It was like they crossed from bright light into a deep shadow.

  I was probably overtired and not thinking as clearly as I should have been. I had already worked a full day before spending all this time in the pole barn. I picked up the flashlight stick and unwrapped the fresh duct tape. The duct tape did not cooperate in my effort to remove it from the handle of the flashlight. There were the remains of an uncomfortable sticky residue clinging to the handle. After a short cleanup with tape goo remover, I was ready to take my first look inside.

  I stuck my hand with the flashlight in first, then pushed my head through the open doorway. I still expected some kind of resistance, but it was more like walking through an ordinary doorway. It was bright and clean inside. It wasn’t at all what I had been expecting. There were 3 seats that all looked like they were made of the same metallic material as the rest of the device. On one of the seats was a set of old handwritten papers that looked like a rough hand bound journal.

  I could breathe just fine, so air must be passing through the opening. Again, it only occurred to me later that I could have been infected with some long forgotten germ that had remained active. Thankfully, when I stepped all the way into the device I was not greeted by such a disaster. The outside noise sounded different from the inside. It was quiet. Not as quiet as the missing minutes, where you can only hear your heartbeat and breathing. The sounds were dull, as if the outside couldn’t find a way in properly. Similar to the view from outside, I could almost see through the walls of the device to the cows standing only feet away. It wasn’t clear like a window, but I could make out the shadow of the animals if I really focused on them.

  I sat in one of the two rear seats and pulled open the old journal that had been sitting on the front seat. I half expected a plume of dust to fill the air when I lifted the papers, but nothing resembling dust appeared. I made one of the biggest mistakes ever, but I will get to the heart of that part shortly. I truly wasn’t thinking properly.

  The journal showed drawings of the device and the six buttons that we had already found. It even showed the handles on the top. The caption read, ‘manual fail safe, in case of door entry system failure’. There was a crude drawing of two right hands swiping away from each other. The palms were firmly pressed against the door. It read, ‘to open door place two hands of driver and occupant onto door and gently pull in opposite directions’. It was a good thing to remember for later, since we wouldn’t need to press all the buttons again. There must be some sensor built into the door that detected the pressure of two hands.

  There were a lot of other drawings of the inside of the device. I only remember a few of them vividly. I am still kicking myself for not using the camera phone to snap pictures of each page. The valuable information we lost is incalculable.

  After flipping through several pages, I made it past all the drawings to the actual journal. I am going to have to paraphrase what it said. The first thing it mentioned was how the driver was identified. There as an interface inside of the machine to insert the DNA profile of a primary driver. When a new driver was to be selected the sample would be inserted into a small pin sized hole. It could be as simple as a hair follicle or a drop of blood. A DNA profile and genetic compatibility matrix would be formed to allow for inconsistencies in DNA over the lifetime of the driver. Long exposures in the machine were detrimental to health, and could cause DNA corruption. Short durations were apparently fine.

  The DNA profile sometimes allowed for very close relatives, like sons and daughters, or even parents to work the device. That cleared one thing up for me. When I cut my foot on the top of the device some blood must have worked itself inside with all the rain. It must have been just enough of a sample to activate the driver interface.

  The pages were fascinating. I must have read for at least 30 minutes. There was a particular page that I probably read 3 times to make sure I understood. It was a simple diagram, but I knew it was important. It said something like time inside this machine operates different than time outside. The failsafe for long distance travel cannot be disabled. It is hard coded into the hardware of the device itself. The six detection cameras, as it called them, must be calibrated each time to ensure safe travel and return, but it didn’t say how to calibrate them. The warnings looked ominous. DO NOT get caught too far away from device. If it has to return to the entry time stream, you may get left behind. DO NOT use this apparatus for monetary manipulation. The examples were pretty clear stating that lotteries, stock markets and monetary speculation could result in unexpected and dire consequences.

  Some of the other pages were a bit sketchier. I simply can’t remember most of what I read. There was one note about the year 2124, but I didn’t take it seriously. Could this device really be from that far in the future? It all seemed too fanciful to me and I wouldn’t have believed any of it if we hadn’t experienced the missing minutes already.

  I am sure there was probably something in there about the previous owners. I was so focused on how the thing worked that I didn’t pay attention to the names, places, or dates listed in the journal.

  The last thing I did was memorize the controls. They were pretty simple, but you really needed to know your stuff. It required exact latitude and longitud
e coordinates as well as exact precision of time. Touching the surface in front of the lead chair activated screens that wrapped the entire surface of the interior. The device could go anywhere back in time, but would only allow staying in a static location for 1 minute. There was a big warning that going either forward or backwards too far had serious consequences. For example, if you accidentally appeared over the top of an active volcano you might still burn up in the moment of appearing or disappearing from the static time stream.

  If I understood the meaning fully, the theory was that by limiting interactions to 1 minute the likelihood of affecting the timeline was reduced to insignificance. It wasn’t even really a minute. It was only a minute from the perspective of the driver and passengers. To the people outside of the device, only a few milliseconds would pass. The occupants could move around, but no one would know they were there. Well, we know that theory wasn’t true based on the peanut butter fiasco. The outside observer might see a flash of metal and then it would be gone from their perspective. This device was apparently meant only as a way to see a static image of the events that happened either in the future or in the past.