Command Z Page 2
“Well, that was the whole point of this. Here, read this first log I wrote.” Keith slapped the notepad onto the table. Ann opened and read aloud.
“Now, we must not waste time,” Keith insisted. “We have much work to do.”
They all walked slowly and intensely towards the machine. Keith looked slowly back at his “Z Team” and watched as they slowly nodded in approval. Keith pushed the button, and a spiral of black light, with bluish stars swirling about like the midnight sky doing a full turn around itself several times. They appreciated upon its glory for few seconds and then without thinking, one by one, they stepped into the spiral portal. And into the space-time continuum.
Chapter 7
The Void
None of them could feel their limbs, for it was like everything in the universe was numb and asleep. They were all seeing the void of the starry continuum, but could not locate each other. Everything was there, they knew, and could see. They felt themselves rotating, turning, spinning, and orbiting, like they were flat parade paper streamers being celebrated with.
Suddenly, their limbs awoke. They no longer felt numb, and they were no longer spinning or turning. And in a flash a wooden door, painted white appeared in the middle of what was now a purple, neverending outer space. The door floated in the middle of nothing with a golden, brass doorknob. They all floated up to the door, opened it, and were greeted by what appeared to be regular London. As they looked back inside the door before closing it, they realized that it was not a purple, outer space anymore. It was Keith’s lab. The machine was there, everything was there. As if nothing had ever happened. Not yet.
“Incredible,” Scott finally realized. “The time machine worked. It actually worked!”
“I didn’t doubt it for a second,” Keith boasted.
“I did,”
“Same here,”
“Me too,”
“Not the point,” Keith moved on. “We have to get to work.”
“Work?” Brock asked loudly. “I thought you said we had two days!”
“Yes, so we had better get going,” Keith answered. “To the auditorium!”
When they got to the auditorium’s front door, Keith pulled out a ring of keys, sorted through them a bit, then put one into the keyhole and open it was.
“You have keys to the auditorium?” Ann asked.
“Well yes,” Keith said. “They gave them to me so I could prepare for my presentation. Now go, all of you, take a look at my machine: The Lifolectrum.”
Chapter 8
The Repair Crew
Day 67: * Day -2:
I am excited to announce that my time machine was successful. Dr. Ann Kesler, Dr. Scott Edler, Brock Hansen, and myself are currently in London, England just 2 days before the Lifolectrum went bizzurke and changed the world. We are in the auditorium where I presented will be presenting the Lifolectrum. Though Brock is not entirely smart, he was the guy in school with the cool car and the greasy tools. He knew everything about repairing cars, and with the proper information, my partners and I … “The Z Team” … will fix everything.
4/20/1989 2/10/1989 ~ Dr. Keith Leaf
Keith tucked his notepad and pencil into his lab coat pocket and went over to see if and what the Z Team had started anything yet.
“Are you impressed?” Keith desperately asked.
“Impressed?” Ann questioned. “This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen!”
“Besides the time machine, of course,” Scott added.
“Well, yes. But Keith, you must be the most brilliant scientist, nay, person in the entire world!” Ann exclaimed.
“Hah!” Keith prided himself with a laugh and a wide-as-a-mountain-range smile. “I don’t know about the smartest person. In the world.”
“Yes, I’m actually onboard with Keith on that one,” Scott joked.
Brock was busy in the back of the Lifolectrum playing with the control panels and smacking the keys down. “This is impossible! How in the world am I supposed to fix this?!”
“Well, you were a wizz at fixing cars back in the day,” Keith said.
It was now Brock’s turn to freeze in the stupidity. “.......CARS!!!!!!” he screamed. “I FIXED …..... CARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” This scared all of them very much. Keith did not want to say anything more that could anger this giant oaf. “I am sorry.”
“Is this the whole reason I’m a part of this?” Brock asked, emotionally. “You thought you could just trick me into fixing your machine then you’d kick me on the road, to be stuck months in the past forever?!”
“No, Brock, no,” argued Keith. “You are the brawn above the brain. You were more of a bodyguard, a tough guy, bad-guy-beater-upper for the team.”
“So I’m just a stone wall?” Brock inferenced.
“No,” Keith said, simply. “No, you are not.”
“Well, lucky for you, you spent forever on that log. Yeah, I did know what to do. Yeah, Ann and Scott did help me. I’m done here. Goodbye!” Brock left angrily.
“Brock, you have no choice but to stay. One: because I’m forcing you to, and two: you have absolutely no idea how to work the time machine. I’m afraid you’re stuck here.” Keith explained.
“Ahhhhhh!” yelled Brock.
Chapter 9
The Flash of Oblivion
A white, blank flash sparked for a few seconds, then everything went back to normal. No one said anything at first. Then with some staring and looking around, they all started...greeting each other. “Hello, hello, hello.” They all started catching up like they hadn’t seen each other in ten to twenty years.
Suddenly, an older man walked in and surprised all of them.
“Professor Hughes!” shouted Keith and Ann. Brock was not his star student and Scott did not know him, but they would both have to change that.
After minutes of catching up, Keith had to ask, “What are you doing here?!”
“I heard you were all in town, and I had to visit!” Professor Hogarth said happily. “What are you doing here?” he then asked.
“I...” Keith started to say. “I don’t remember.” he said, his face scared and confused.
Hogarth peered down at Keith’s lab coat pocket, greeted by the notepad, and rudely, he knew, grabbed and flipped through. Taking a solid ten minutes to read through the whole ten logs written in it, enlightening them on what they had just forgotten.
Hogarth, now fully informed, told them all... “You built a time machine to go back in time to stop a horrible event from happening. You fixed what caused this event, therefore, never happening in the present. This not only means it never happened, but since it never happened, you never had to build the time machine. The time machine is not yet built, you must rebuild it, you know how, you can build it quicker. And I will help you” This shocked everyone, but they knew what to do.
Chapter 10
The Solution
Keith and the Z Team jogged back to the lab to lab to see if the time machine was still there. When they opened the door to the lab and walked in, it was the same as when Keith had just claimed the empty building as his own. Everything was there. The table, the sofa, the swivel-chair. But no time machine. Luckily, Keith had always wondered about time travel and already had wanted to build a time machine since he was just a boy. He just now put them on the wall, he just now used them to actually build one. They were not on the wall. All he had to do was find them.
“Found them!” Brock interrupted, waving them in his hands next to a filing cabinet. Keith looked at him with a puzzled and skeptical look.
“I opened the cabinet, I looked at the tabs in alphabetical order, I found T section, I found ‘Time Travel,’ I pulled everything out! Not hard.” Brock continued.
“Alright, let’s get to work then,” Keith said.
They got to work right away. Tools, and blueprints, and scraps of metal and iron, metal tubes and plate, its circumference the length of a grown man. All the things they neede
d to rebuild the time machine. They were dirty and greasy right away. Keith took an unscheduled break and picked up his notepad and pencil.
Day 67: * Day -2: * CONTINUED
The Z Team and I are currently working on rebuilding the time machine. Why? Because when we fixed the Lifolectrum from creating this horrible event from happening, none of it happened, which means that there was never a reason to build the time machine to stop the event. So the time machine disappeared, and is most likely floating mindlessly in the void of the space-time continuum forever. All of this was explained to me by the missing link, Professor Hogarth Hughes who heard we were in town. If it were not for him, we would all be lost. Since the event did not happen, we never built the time machine, we never knew anything that happened over the past 67 and -2 days, and we would snap back to reality and just continue living our lives normally like nothing had ever happened. But we would then be stuck in the past forever. I thank Hogarth’s rudeness for taking this notepad out of my lab coat pocket. I
Brock interrupted Keith’s writing. “Hey, we’re just about done here.”
“Okay,” Keith replied. “Just give me one more second.”
believe that this just might have been the most amazing and exciting adventure, ever been on. And I am glad that for me
(I don’t know about the others), it’s not over.
4/20/1989 2/10/1989 ~ Dr. Keith Leaf
Keith got up from the swivel-chair and watched as Hogarth, Scott, and Ann were putting the finishing touches on the time machine. Keith was beaming with smiles and so were the others. When everyone stepped away from the machine for a few seconds implying that they were done, Keith slowly walked up to it, slowly looked back at his team and when they nodded once again, he nodded and smiled back, turned around, and pushed the button. The portal opened up, and once again, they took a step where they were the only ones. And into the space-time continuum.
Epilogue
Day 1,039:
It is I, Dr. Keith Leaf. I am here with what we call ourselves, The Z Team. This team consists of Dr. Ann Kesler, Professor Hogarth Hughes, Brock Hansen, Dr. Scott Edler, and myself. We are currently riding our own separate Tyrannosaurus-Rexes in the Mesozoic Era. We have traveled from the Big Bang, to the Big Bang that put us all out of business (that’s a whole different story). In fact, we just leaped off our dinosaurs and we are now in the time machine heading 1,000 days after the accident that never happened.
Date: Unknown ~ Dr. Keith Leaf
When they opened the door to their future date, Keith simply said, “Let’s only stay for a literal second.” He handed his notepad to Brock and winked. Brock through it out the door as fast and as high as possible, lost for only another soul to read. They stepped back into the space-time continuum to bet back to their present date. They got out of the time machine, seeing nothing peculiar. Then, they all walked in separate directions to live their real lives. Keith stayed at the lab, and got back to work, for his presentation went well, and he was now very successful.
The End
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