One Minute to Midnight (28 page)

"We can rebuild together! I'll help, and with
my leadership as king we can rule that planet as well!" Goran
said.

Romio glared at him with eyes like daggers,
and shook his head slowly from side to side.

A tall blond man with a red beard appeared
from behind Romio, a frown contorted his face as his eyes traveled
the length of Goran's body, up and down. Goran knew that this man
was a hybrid of Nebulon and Tiamat, a child of the new
age.

"You don't look like much." The man said.
Before Goran could say one more word, the man pulled a gun out and
shot Goran in the left eye, dropping the false king of Nebulon to
the ground with a
thump
.
Goran's reign was over, and with their talent for innovating high
technology and their new understanding of each other, the people of
the moon would move their colony to earth and begin constructing
the great pyramids in a pact of peace for another eleven thousand
years.

let's do the time warp!

A twenty-three-year-old thief and hacker
finds his way into a secret underground lab and steals a device
that can do things he never thought were possible.

Jason ran down the hallway, sweat
beading on his forehead and rolling down his cheeks in tiny rivers,
as masked guards in black uniforms gave furious chase. He laughed
as he ran, cackling at the ceiling. He had finally done it. He was
deep underground, in a facility so secret that only a handful of
those—on a need to know basis—knew of it. His ability to hack into
an unsecure server and access the badge ID of every officer in the
installation allowed him to create a computer chipped ID card
resembling the official badges the guards carried.

In the palm of his hand,
Jason held a device that was the stuff of dreams, and so highly
classified, that if he were to be captured, a certain and rapid
demise would follow. Close footsteps behind him made Jason run even
faster. The tiny machine in his hand resembled a can of soda, and
there were three buttons on the outside near the top. One of them
was labeled
Time Slip
, another had been marked
Time
Warp
, and the final button was
labeled
Home
.
Jason pressed
Time Slip
as he ran and dodged around a corner. The men in
black uniforms ran by as if he were not there. He saw them as a
blur in his current state.
"its true time travel does exist! Hah! I did it." Jason
said.

He checked the time on his
watch and it read twelve-thirty. Then, still in the time-slip, he
walked back toward the lab where he stole the device, because he
knew there was an analog clock on the wall and he needed to see if
his slip had created any change outside of his personal
time-position. He saw no one around, so he pressed the button again
and reappeared. Lab tables were filled with various tubes and
bubbling mixtures, waiting for future experiments. The lab also
carried a medicinal odor, reminiscent of hospitals. White lab coats
hung on hooks along the wall, and various genetically modified
animals moved back and forth inside their cages. Jason thought they
more closely resembled monsters from his childhood nightmares than
animals though. Dogs with the heads of cats, ducks that were half
chicken, and more extraordinary horrors than he could imagine,
sitting on shelves behind a thick glass window. The cages stretched
from floor to ceiling, and some of the monstrosities eyed him with
curiosity, as if they were interested in what he was doing. He
looked up, amazed to see the clock read six-fifteen, but his
wristwatch hands had moved only two minutes. For almost seven hours
he had been standing between the hands of time, waiting in the
hidden space between moments as the men in black suits searched for
him. A motion sensor-equipped security camera moved in the corner
of the room and his position was compromised. Soon the footsteps
would be back, and he would be once again trapped. Jason waved at
the camera and smiled.
"Hiya boys! I'll be seeing you." Jason said. He pressed the button
that read
Time Warp
and an instant later, a large translucent orb appeared in the
room. Inside were clouds swirling around as if the sky had been
trapped within the sphere.

"Whoa. Ok. What now?" Jason looked
into the orb with trepidation. "Just go." He said to himself.
As he heard the soldiers tromping back up the hallway, Jason ran at
the orb, and jumped into it head first. When he touched the bubble,
the sensation was like that of hitting a giant rubber ball, with
the exception that this ball was dragging him in, guiding his
passage like a million little hands pulling him forward. Jason
tumbled through the portal, landing on a hard floor, and for a
moment he thought he might still be in the laboratory far
underground in New Mexico. But when he stood, Jason saw that he was
no longer anywhere he had ever seen. The floor upon which he stood
was not really a floor, but a plane that stretched far and wide in
every direction. Above him, and all around were distant stars, and
he could see planets orbiting in their celestial precession through
the galaxy.

"I'm definitely not in Kansas
anymore." Jason whispered.

He turned back the way he
had come in, and could see soldiers pointing rifles at the bubble.
Jason pressed the
Time Warp
button once more and the soldiers vanished as the
bubble closed. Jason began to walk forward in an effort to find his
way out.

"There's air in here." He said to
himself. "Warm, but not too warm, and comfortable. Where am I?" The
last question echoed like when someone yells into the Grand Canyon.
"Don't question it, find a door."

A moment later, Jason stood in what
appeared to be a train station with six pane glass doors on each
wall, but he could not see out the windows. The ticket counter
behind him was a cinder block wall that held train schedules and
post boxes. Jason surmised, from the look of it, that this train
station must have been over a hundred years old. The musty smell of
ancient wood plank floors wafted into his nostrils, causing a
familiar sense of nostalgia. Benches where passengers could wait
for their departing trains sat unused in the center of the room.
Jason felt a sensation that he had been there before, in this very
train station, but he knew that he had never actually been on a
train in his life. Still, quiet, and peaceful, he relaxed and sat
on one of the benches for a moment to collect his thoughts, and
just as he did he noticed that there were now people in the
station, sitting all around him clothed in period dress from the
late eighteen hundreds. Two men in suits chuffed on tobacco pipes,
reading newspapers while their wives stood talking to one another,
stopping conversation to chase the occasional small child who had
wandered off. Then he saw himself on the other side of the station.
The other Jason stood across from him, wearing a conductor's
uniform, and sporting a handlebar mustache. He was helping a young
lady with her bags and opening the door for her. She curtsied as he
smiled and nodded, and just before he exited the building with her,
she stood on her toes and kissed him on the cheek. Jason felt a
desperate need to make contact with this man who looked so much
like him.

"You look just like me." Jason
whispered to himself. "Hey, man! You look familiar!" Jason
yelled.
The man did not appear to hear him, and as Jason stepped forward to
get closer the spell was broken. One by one, the people in the
train station began to fade away, back into the recesses of his
ancient memories. His past life was receding like a wave on the
beach. For the first time since entering the time bubble he felt
alone, and decided to look for a way out. The sensation that he was
lost in time crept over him like dread from the grave. With a
sudden jolt of surprise Jason hit the floor as his tiny train
station world began to rock and sway, and then he saw one of the
doors at the end of the station glowing, as if he sun were trying
to burst through into his room. He got to his feet and started to
run toward the door, and the closer he got the less brilliant the
light became, until he could clearly see a small park outside his
window. Jason took hold of the door handle, slowly turned the knob,
and opened the door.

Fresh, cool air rushed in and he
instantly felt like he was back home again as a kid in the
mountains of Pennsylvania. It reminded him of lazy fall days when
the trees danced with wild color, shedding their summer coat of
leaves, falling asleep until spring. The park was empty, but as a
gust of wind picked up he saw a merry-go-round turn in a slow,
counterclockwise motion. He checked the cargo pocket of his pants
to make sure he still had the time travel device, and then he
stepped through the door. When he turned around, the bubble and his
door were gone and he was alone in a strange place again.
"Ok, where the heck are you?" Jason said. He turned in a circle to
see if he could recognized any landmarks or familiar sights, but it
was all new to him.

Houses lining the perimeter of the
park were large, old, Victorian two-story homes, with gaslights
standing in front each home. They were painted black, and as Jason
walked closer to one he could see metal skulls designed to look
like some kind of monstrous toothy creature welded to them. When he
reached out to touch one, he heard the faint sound of a child's
laughter. He turned sharply, and saw a little girl running up the
street kicking a ball. This child seemed happy, but as she drew
closer, there was something not quite right. Part of her face was
missing, and the little white dress she wore was partially stained
a dark burgundy. She was ten feet from him now as Jason stood with
his mouth open, and his head cocked a bit to the side in
disbelief.
"Hello." She said. The little deformed girl giggled a little at the
stunned stranger watching her.

"Oh uh, hello. What's your name?"
Jason asked. He couldn't think of anything clever to say.
"I'm Felicia, what's yours?" Part of her mouth smiled at him, but
the other half exposed rotting flesh and broken teeth.

"Jason. Where am I? What, um planet is
this?" Jason asked.

"Don’t you know, silly?
You're in the town of Haven, on the planet Erthe. I'm five years
old and
I
know
that." Her speech was somewhat slurred due to the massive injuries
on her face.

"Oh yeah, I forgot." Jason said. He
was grinning sheepishly.

"What's wrong with your face? What
happened to it, you know? It's so… pale, and all together." She
asked.

"I don't know. I guess I…" Jason
began.
"Felicia!" A woman yelled. "Felicia, where are you?"

"Here momma! Talking to a strange
man." Felicia answered.

"I think I better get moving. Thanks
for the conversation, little… Felicia." Jason forced a smile.
"Who is that? Who are you? Tell me this instant!" Felicia's mother
yelled. The woman moving toward him was wearing a maroon Victorian
ball gown with a French bustle. Pretty dark ruffles crossed her
chest, and she reminded him of wealthy women he had seen in
pictures from the late eighteen hundreds. "You there, what are you
doing to my child?"
She was coming closer and he could now see that she was grey,
emaciated, and withered, a walking corpse. As the child's mother
yelled at him, Jason could see that many of her teeth had fallen
out, and that her eyes were sunken deep in dark sockets. She had no
nose, and that terrified Jason the most. He began to feel a chill
in the air as the sun set, and leaves blew around the street
carrying on tiny gusts of wind. The gaslights flickered to life and
he could see Jack O' Lanterns glowing in the flames. Jason felt as
if he were trapped in some sort of strange Halloween world, a
nightmare where every monster he feared as a child came to life. A
wolf howled in the distance and Jason felt his blood chill. He had
put the time device in his pocket, and now stuck his hand in,
feeling reassurance from the cold metallic cylinder. His thumb
played with the buttons, and for a moment he thought about pressing
one of them.
"Don't run off!" The woman yelled. She approached Jason with
curiosity. "Come inside with us. It's safe." She finished. With
increasing jitters, Jason considered his options.

"What are you going to do to
me?"

"What are you, some kind of alien?"
She asked.
"Let's have him for dinner mommy!" Felicia squealed.
"Shhhhh, be calm child." Her mother said, smiling at Jason. "Yes,
why don't you come inside for dinner?"

Jason realized that while he had been
chatting with the two undead ladies, the street had become busy
with more ghouls. Jason saw there were many more of them coming
toward him in a horde.

"Hey earth man! Get over here if you
want to live through the night!" A female voice screamed.
The undead stopped and looked back to see a that there was a pretty
girl, who was no more than nineteen, with a dirty mop of hair,
wearing a torn leather jacket, holding the door of a small shoe
shop open. Jason could see dirty streaks on her face and the tired
look in her eyes of one who has been hunted. He turned and ran
toward her. Felicia's mother was screaming for the army of zombies
to get him, but he was too fast. Jason ducked inside with the girl
and she slammed the door shut, sliding a board across two iron
u-shaped brackets, temporarily locking the dead inhabitants of
Haven out.