Fook (10 page)

TEN

“What are you doing!?” Derek gasped as he opened the
door and stepped into the dorm room to the sight of half his
wardrobe in a pile on the bathroom floor. The other half was
hanging from an impromptu clothes line made of telephone and
computer cables tied to the shower rod and haphazardly strung
across the bathroom to the light fixture above the sink before
crossing the room once again, ending in a knot on the other end of
the shower rod.

“I figured it out,” Jason laughed excitedly
as he picked up another Calvin Klein dress shirt and dunked it into
the watery, pale green concoction that currently filled their
bathtub.

Derek was sure that the white shirt would
reemerge from the foaming green sea with a similarly unappealing
hue, however when it did reappear, it was as white as when it had
gone into the tub.

“Figured what out?” Derek chose to ignore
his roommate’s utter disregard for boundaries in exchange for an
explanation.

“Huh?” Jason distractedly responded as he
draped the shirt over the indoor clothesline before grabbing a pair
of jeans and sentencing them to the same watery fate.

“What? What did you figure out?”

“Oh, the clothes issue,” he continued in the
same excited tone.

Derek just stared, expecting an explanation
as he again watched his assaulted garment reemerge from the opaque
liquid and get tossed across the same sagging wire.

“The electrical current wasn’t sufficiently
transmitted through our clothing so they didn’t go with us.”

“Yes, I know. I was there. Remember?” Derek
reminded him, still unsure what this had to do with his wardrobe’s
unscheduled bath.

“The machine focuses electricity through the
core, bending space and time around it, allowing for it and
anything attached to it, with sufficiently conductive properties
that is, to travel through time.

He didn’t need an explanation about how the
machine worked. He knew exactly how it worked. He’d built every
component that had gone into that briefcase. He knew exactly what
every chip, wire and tube in the thing did. The only components
that he didn’t fully understand were the red liquid and the
software used to run the amazing device.

“Don’t you get it?” Jason questioned as he
saw the still confused look on his roommate’s face. “Our clothes
couldn’t conduct a great enough charge to bind them to the
machine.”

“So we’re going to do it wet next time?”
Derek struggled to understand how his clothes taking an unneeded
bath had anything to do with Jason’s explanation.

“No,” Jason laughed as he tossed another of
his roommate’s shirts into the water. “This liquid contains ultra
high ion levels that I developed by using the school’s IDE plants,
otherwise known as Electrodionization plants.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know what Electrodionzation
plants are,” Derek interjected, feeling the need to remind his
friend that he wasn’t a complete idiot when it came to chemistry,
especially electrochemistry. “You're talking about pure water.”

“Exactly.”

“But you know that pure water simply means
water with a higher concentration of ions, hence a greater ability
to conduct an electrical current than standard, impure tap water.
It doesn’t change basic properties, namely the inevitable fact that
it will eventually evaporate. How do you plan on bonding the ions
to the fabric?”

“With this.”

While continuing to hold his latest victim
underwater with his right hand, Jason reached for what looked like
a large bottle of bleach sitting on the floor beside him. The
typical Clorox label had been replaced by a hand written label
displaying the unfamiliar and unpronounceable name,
“Perchlorododecahedrane”.

“As the water evaporates, the green stuff
you see will chemically bond the additional ions to the individual
fibers of our clothes, ensuring that they possess the conductivity
levels needed to bond with the machine, hence allowing them to
travel with us and ensuring that we arrive fully clothed at our
destination.

“Okay, but did you need to chemically alter
my entire wardrobe. I mean, I don’t think I’ll be wearing pajama
pants during our travels,” Derek motioned to the pair of cotton,
flannel pants dripping over the toilet.

Jason stared up at the flannel pants,
realizing that maybe he’d gone a bit overboard in his
excitement.

Sensing Jason’s waning enthusiasm, triggered
by his questioning, Derek rolled up his sleeves and grabbed a pair
of his underwear from the pile.

“Move over. I’ll need these.”

ELEVEN

“So, explain to me why we’re driving all the way out
into the middle of nowhere this time. The basement seemed to work
fine last night,” Jason inquired from the passenger seat.

“If seeing your scrawny ass, squatting
behind a pile of moldy boxes suddenly jumps to the top of my to do
list, I’ll let you know.”

“All I’m saying is that it’s safe. That
building has been there for well over a hundred years. Other than a
few electrical and piping upgrades, the basement has hardly changed
in all that time. It’s the safest option I could find.”

“Safe yes, but it doesn’t contain the amount
of power we need for a real test. That fuse box can’t handle the
amount of power we need for a trip of any significance.”

“Based on my calculations, it was capable of
providing the device with enough power for a jump of nearly six
months.”

“Our first trip was supposed to take us
twenty minutes into the past but instead we only traveled a little
more than five. Your calculations were wrong.”

Jason didn’t argue. He’d spent the previous
night wide awake, contemplating not only the clothing issue but his
error in timing as well. Derek was right. There had been a serious
miscalculation between the time he’d expected them to arrive and
the brief step back that they’d actually taken.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Derek
assured his visibly bothered friend. “The miscalculation didn’t
come from your program, at least not your part of it. The power
estimates I gave you were embarrassingly inaccurate. I blame
myself.”

“Then so do I,” Jason agreed with a
smile.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

“There isn’t enough power in any typical
electrical panel for us to make any significant jump. We need a
larger source if we’re going to test this thing’s real potential,”
Derek motioned to the briefcase in the backseat.

Jason had insisted on strapping the device
in like it was their own little, scientific love child.

“Derek, the further back we go the greater
the risk of miscalculating the arrival point, not to mention the
countless unknown risks such as other people or objects occupying
the space. We could instantaneously become—”

“—Become fused to the other person or object
like Siamese twins,” Derek finished the familiar warning.

“All I’m saying, is that we need to run more
small scale tests before we risk too large a jump.”

Letting some of his frustration with his
straight laced roommate finally seep out, “you need to loosen up a
little, you know, let those balls of yours drop and take a risk
every now and then”.

Jason didn’t know how to respond. He knew
Derek was right. He
did
live his life by the rules. He never
made a move without contemplating every potential consequence or
calculating every possible outcome, but he didn’t like surprises.
He didn’t like the uncertainty of the unknown, so a change in this
behavior was unlikely.

“Sorry,” Derek, recognizing Jason's
contemplative pause, quickly recanted. “All I mean is that you need
to live life. You can’t always be concerned with what might happen.
Sometimes you need to just take a chance and see what comes of
it.”

“The last time I took a chance, what came of
it was a night, followed by the remainder of high school, filled
with ridicule as well as what I’m sure are dozens of photos of me
and a dildo.”

Derek remained silent. He and Jason had
never actually talked about the Jenna Bishop incident. He knew
about the events of that night. There probably wasn’t a kid in
their high school who didn't, past or present but the topic hadn’t
actually come up between them before; likely due to Jason’s
understandable embarrassment and
his
disinterest in causing
any unnecessary pain.

“There’s no need to worry. I’ve found the
perfect location,” Derek chose to change the subject instead of
continuing down the current, uncomfortable path. “It was actually a
place I looked into right after you’d come to me with what I, at
the time, thought was a crazy idea.”

Jason shot Derek a surprised look. Derek had
voiced his opinions regarding the likeliness of success before, but
never had he called the project crazy.

Aware of his roommate’s stare, but keeping
his eyes on the road ahead as they traveled further into the
densely wooded area, “I had actually run all of the calculations in
anticipation of maybe one day using the site to make a leap of
unbelievable distances, you know, like the Middle Ages or Victorian
times or something like that. I’d love to go back and pick
DaVinci’s brain a while, you know? Unfortunately there would be no
power source capable of allowing a safe return home, so I guess
that would be a one way trip,” he paused to contemplate how he
could have previously overlooked that bit of information. “Anyway,
based on last night’s little experiment and my latest calculations,
courtesy of a wasted hour in Professor Billcock’s class this
morning, I’ve determined that there’s no power source in the world
large enough to make possible a jump of that magnitude; not even a
nuclear power plant could provide us with enough juice.”

"This news was a bit deflating," Jason
thought. He too had dreamt of one day using the device to travel
back to a time when dinosaurs had roamed the earth. His bedroom
walls had been lined with posters of the magnificent beasts; hung
in chronological order of each species' existence from the Triassic
Period all the way to the moment of their extinction at the end of
the Cretaceous Period. He’d spent countless nights staring at the
prehistoric animals lining his walls, wondering if scientific
investigation had recreated the magnificent creatures accurately or
if humanity’s need for exaggeration and grandeur had somehow skewed
the reality of these grand giants. He wanted nothing more than to
go back and see for himself but if what Derek was saying was
accurate, and he was sure that it was, he would never get the
chance to witness those long dreamt about creatures, thriving in
their natural environment.

“By my calculations, I estimate that the
largest jump we could possibly make would be approximately
twenty-five years, give or take a month or two,” Derek continued,
unaware of his passenger’s roaming thoughts.

Jason, still lost in thought, showed no
reaction to the significantly shortened timeline.

“Did you hear what I said. The machine is
only capable of a twenty-five year window.”

Reemerging from childhood memories to the
reality of his suddenly shattered dreams, “Twenty five years?”
Contemplating the shortened window, “We also have to take into
account the factor of space and time,” he fully reengaged himself
in the conversation. “Just because the device is capable of going
back that far doesn’t mean that a landing spot is possible. If we
max out the machine’s capabilities without taking all three planes
of space into consideration, we could end up arriving in the middle
of deep space and ultimately to our deaths.

“Always the optimist,” Derek joked at
Jason’s consistent need to point out the worst of possible
scenarios. “Don’t worry, I ran your space time calculation as well
and I’ve determined that the furthest back we can go, based on
available power sources and the earth’s orbital location, is May
22nd, 1991.”

“A few days after my birthday,” Jason
added.

“That’s right.”

“How did you run my program from class this
morning?” Jason questioned curiously. You didn’t take the device
with you? Did you?”

“No. Of course not,” Derek laughed,
surprised that Jason would even suggest such a thing.

“So how did you come up with 1991?”

“I...I sort of uploaded your program to my
phone,” Derek admitted as he held his iPhone up, the simple looking
program filling the screen.

“I didn’t realize we’d made it available on
iTunes,” Jason joked.

“Yeah, I was just as surprised as you when I
saw it advertised beside the 'Porntube' app."

“Well nothing beats good product
placement.”

Smiling at his roommate’s uncharacteristic
quick wit, Derek’s excitement at the pending trip grew.

“So, you still haven’t told me where we’re
going yet,” Jason reminded him.

“I told you. The year of our birth, 1991,”
Derek answered as he slowed the car, turning off of the paved road,
onto a narrow dirt road that wandered even further into the dense
woods.

“You’re not going to kill me are you,”
Jason, taking a page from Derek's book of humor, commented on the
remote nature of their destination.

“Kill you?” Derek laughed. “No, I’m not
going to kill you, but that might if you’re not careful,” he
motioned to their destination as the remote transformer yard came
into view just ahead.

“You’re going to tap into that?” Jason
questioned, concern evident in his tone.

“Tap into? No, I’m going to harness the shit
out of it,” Derek replied with a grin, knowing that his plan would
likely knock out the power to nearly every home and business within
a fifteen mile radius.

Jason looked at his friend’s wide grin with
concern as Derek slowed the car, coming to a complete stop only ten
feet from the large fenced facility.

“And how exactly do you propose we get in?
I’m sure there’s security.”