Quarter Minutes

Rick's stomach clenched with sudden fear the moment he heard the clatter and thump in the garage. Jace had been working in there for a couple of hours, sorting though old boxes in an effort to de-clutter and make room for a long-coveted kayak he intended to buy that afternoon.

"Jace?" Rick rose from the bar where his Q-Slate and various scraps of paper were scattered, headed up the hall quickly, glanced into the garage - and then stopped short. His husband lay in the midst of spilled boxes and their contents. The step stool he'd been using to reach the top shelves was broken and canted to one side - it had collapsed under him, just the way Rick had feared. He'd known the step stool was rickety, had intended to warn Jace about it, and then - distracted by worries related to work, and to the overwhelmingly complex project he led - he forgot all about it.

Forgot, that is, until the sound of things falling, of Jace hitting the hard concrete floor...

Rick took in the entire scene, saw it all in finely etched detail, but what leapt out to him was the way Jace's head was twisted, his neck clearly broken.

Rick's body felt paralyzed, even as thoughts raced through his head in a chaotic flurry. Call 911? Administer CPR? What was first aid for a broken neck?

Rick felt himself trembling, felt something convulse deep inside his body and realized it was a scream. The shock of his own cry of panic and anguish shocked him and brought the world back into focus. Suddenly, Rick was completely calm, and completely conscious of time. He knew he had only minutes to act if he was going to save Jace's life. He glanced at the clock that hung over the deep freeze: It was quarter past ten in the morning.

Quarter past. Quarter minutes - that had always been Jace's oddball shorthand. Fifteen minutes. The number meant something...

Rick felt his body tighten with realization. The facility. The lab. The machine. Quarter minutes...

Then he was racing through the garage and out the open door like a shot, bounding up the driveway and making a hard right, a right turn that torqued his knee. He didn't slow down. He had no time to think about the old soccer injury or worry about aggravating the damaged meniscus. He could sort all that later... but for now... Rick dug in his pocket for his PCD, flipped open the cybersecurity lock-top, and checked the time. Less than a minute had passed.

Rick ran at top speed, covering the three blocks to the facility in just over a minute and a half. He slammed his hand against the RFID reader, and his image and credentials appeared on the security screen:

DR. RICARDO REMALES - TEMPORAL PHYSICS TEAM LEADER - SECURITY LEVEL 5 - Q CLEARANCE

The doors released with a heavy, ostentatious click and slid open. Rick pushed his way past the doors and threw a quick wave to Dexter, the guard on duty at the desk. It was Sunday; non-residents of the base might sometimes work Saturdays, but they never made the drive or tolerated the high security off-hours procedures to come in on a Sunday. Dexter was probably the only man in the building.

"Hey Dex!" Rick shouted, making a show of friendliness, trying not to betray how scared and desperate he was. What he was about to do was akin to high treason: The personal use of sensitive government property, a device so valuable that its existence was a closely kept secret.

"Gotta brain wave, doc?" Dexter shouted back.

"Yeah! I'd tell you all about it but - it's very technical!" Rick shouted the last words over his shoulder as he darted up across the lobby to the elevators. He slammed his hand against another RFID reader, which read the tiny biochip implanted in the meat between his thumb and palm and unlocked access to the lifts. Rick jabbed at the down button impatiently. He glanced at the time readout on his PCD every few seconds, getting more and more frustrated. By the time the door opened and he was inside the lift, worrying the button for the second sub-basement, almost six minutes had ticked by.

It took another couple of minutes to ride the lift down three stories, for the doors to open up and let him dart into the corridor, to sprint to the restricted access lab, slap yet another RFID reader and then get his retinas scanned, and step inside the one chamber in all the world that held any hope of saving Jace. With nine minutes gone, he wasn't sure he was going to pull it off.

The machine stood there like an obelisk, its lumentic panels rippling with teal light. Rick stepped speedily to the control panel and lay his hand on still another RTF scanner, then spoke his access code aloud. The security AI verified his voiceprint and accepted his access code. Thankfully, the stress in his voice didn't affect his voiceprint.

Rick keyed the device, grateful for the unlikely chain of events that had taken place Friday afternoon when the originally scheduled test had been scrubbed at literally the last minute. All the preliminary preparation and diagnostics had been made; the twenty-minute process was behind Rick and his team, and the minute-long countdown was mere seconds from completion when a freeze order had come through the video link from the Pentagon. The general overseeing the project suddenly had concerns that the AI they were planning to subject to the test would prevent the temporal distortion field from crystallizing. His own calculations had suggested that transphasic technologies or even electronic devices would scatter the field. Growing more and more uneasy lest some sort of feedback result and fry the entire experiment, the general had ordered the test suspended with four seconds to go.

The delay was supposed to be minimal, but come 17:01 hours no word had come as to what the general had decided to use instead of the AI, and the freeze order remained in place. Rick allowed the rest of the staff to leave for the weekend but stayed in the lab himself, just in case. The freeze order being what it was, no change in the machine's status was authorized; Rick fretted over the idea of leaving the machine in its state of suspended readiness. Rick had lingered in the lab until nearly 8 pm that night, waiting to see if he'd hear something back, but the general must have gotten distracted because no further instructions were forthcoming. In a way, it didn't matter; nothing was going to happen until the freeze was rescinded and the machine instructed either to resume the countdown or cancel the test run. Besides, the lab was just about the most secure place in the world. Rick alone among the staff lived on the base, and security was stringent in the facility and at the base points of entry.

All the same, Rick had been on tenterhooks the previous day, half expecting his PCD to suddenly light up with the general's scowling face and barking voice, but that hadn't happened.

And now - as though all this had been the work of providence - the machine was sitting here primed and ready, and all Rick had to do was disobey his orders, resume the countdown, position himself on the platform, and... four seconds later...

And nothing.

"What the fuck!" he cried. He stepped off the platform, in an agony of indecision because he worried that the field would suddenly activate and he wouldn't be there to catch its temporally distorting waves. But that didn't happen; the countdown meter was still showing four seconds to activation. The machine seemed to be in a state of conflict, its coils at maximal energy but its initiators prevented from engaging.

Rick fussed over the machine, paced, and screamed once again.

Then Rick remembered his PCD. If the general were correct, the device's electronics would prevent the temporal distortion field from assuming the correct four-dimensional geometry. Rick glanced once more at the device, saw that nine minutes had elapsed, and chucked the PCD as hard as he could against the concrete wall.

The PCD's light went out. The countdown readout turned over to three, then two...

Rick leapt onto the platform, and there was a bright, harsh crackle of energy, Sparks fell around him. For a moment Rick thought the machine had shorted out, and felt a shock of despair - but then he looked at the spot where he'd thrown his PCD.

Not a trace of the device was there to be seen. Not a scrap; not a shard.

That was because the machine had worked as it was supposed to. Rick was now fifteen minutes in the past.

Quarter minutes.

Deducting the amount of time he'd lost getting the machine to work, he probably only had four or five minutes before Jace fell and died. Rick reached into his pocket for his PCD, thinking he'd call Jace and warn him... or at least distract him... Jace would think it was a prank call because Rick was right there in the house with him, but the call might be enough to make Jace take a closer look at the step stool... Or maybe Rick should phone himself, remind himself about the rickety stool, the warning he'd intended to communicate to his husband? Rick... the other Rick, at home... would catch on at once. After all, he'd been thinking for months now about time travel, about temporal paradoxes and matter-energy transfers through temporal folds and multi-dimensional domains. If anyone was going to believe his claim to be from a quarter hour in the future, it was himself.

But where the hell was his PCD?

Then, remembering how he'd pegged it at the wall... or rather, would peg it, in fourteen minutes and change... Rick cursed himself for a fool. He sprinted out of the lab, up the corridor, and to the lift. The RFID reader registered his ID, but the lift car was three stories above. Of course it was. Rick hadn't yet entered the building and brought the lift down.

Finally, the lift arrived. Rick rode it up, calculating how much time he had. He estimated that twelve minutes of subjective time had elapsed. He was losing about two minutes to this goddamned lift. One minute -- one goddamned minute from now, his husband would die.

There just wasn't enough time. God damn it! If only he'd been able to bing his PCD back with him...

for some reason Dexter's words came back to him just then Gotta brainwave, doc?

Rick smiled. A brainwave? He sure as hell did! He'd just use Dexter's phone, Rick decided, even as the lift doors were opening on the main level. He threw himself full tilt toward Dexter's desk.

"Hey! Hey! Hey!" Dexter shouted, seeing Rick barreling toward him. He drew his gun. "What the hell, doc! Hold on, there!"

Rick came to a halt. "Dexter! I need to use your phone!"

"When did you enter the building?" Dexter asked sharply, glancing at the security monitor, a glossy wedge of black lumentic that rose from his desk, flickering with lights. "I don't show you as present. Got no record you reentered the facility after leaving last night."

"Goddamn it!" Rick cried. "Never mind that! You have to let me use your phone, Dex!"

"You better put your hand on top of your head," Dexter advised, taking a step toward him and reaching for his wrist.

Blindly, without thinking about it, Rick lashed out. Dexter went down in a heap, and Rick dove at him, grabbing for his gun. Dexter yanked his hand away and then brought the gun on the side of Rick's head in a hard, clumsy swat that felt like it tore his ear. Rick howled an expletive, and grabbed Dexter's wrist with both of his hands. The men rolled on the floor, Rick yelling for Dex to stop and Dex yelling for backup. There was no one else in the building, but the security AI could have summoned base MPs - if the natural language software had been capable of parsing the confusion of their voices.

Finally, breathless, Rick stepped away and raised his hands. He wasn't sure how long the struggle had lasted but he was sure that he'd run out of time. "Dex," he moaned, distraught.

"You just stand still," Dexter said, keeping the gun pointed at him.

Just then, another Rick burst into the lobby. The identical men stared at each other as Dexter looked from one to the other in confusion. Then Rick stepped forward and smashed his fist as hard as he could into Dex's jaw. The security guard went down again, and didn't move.

"Go," he told the other Rick. "And chuck your PCD! Or else you'll lose time figuring out it's stopping the countdown from resuming!"

***

Rick scrambled for the elevator, tossing his personal communications device at the duplicate of himself that, he realized, must have come from the future in an attempt to do what he was now trying to do, himself.

The lift had gone back into standby mode, but at least it was waiting for him at the main level. Rick rode down to the second sub-basement, emerged from the lift, and lost no time getting to the lab. He was already formulating a plan to get out of the facility without getting into a scrap with Dex.

The machine was as he had left it on Friday: Frozen in mid-countdown, four seconds from activation. With his phone not there to interfere with the temporal distortion field, it was a mere few seconds of work to resume the countdown. Rick scrambled onto the platform and held his breath, waiting. Suddenly, the machine shorted out in a flurry of sparks.

Or had it? Rick stepped off the platform and glanced at the status display. The machine was in countdown mode, but suspended at four seconds before activation. The shower of sparks wasn't a malfunction, but a result of the machine's huge, controlled energy expenditure. Rick had jumped back in time by the preset 15 minutes.

Quarter minutes, he thought grimly, thinking of Jace, even now going about his business in the garage, hefting boxes down from the shelves and anticipating his new kayak while Rick himself, sitting at the bar that divided the kitchen from the dining room, was bent over a Q-Slate, fingering virtual keys and working through complex functions in matrix algebra.

Rick paused briefly just inside the lab's door to yank the panic switch, an all-purpose alarm that could have signaled a fire or an intruder or a medical emergency. The switch alerted the security desk, where the guard on duty would respond using the intercom. Rick heard Dex's voice come on the com as he sped up the hall past the elevator and then crouched in a shadowy corner, waiting. No one was supposed to be in the building; when Dex didn't get a response he'd figure it was a false alarm, probably triggered by a power fluctuation or something. But, being OCD and ever thorough, Dex would come down to see for himself that all was well.

Probably.

For a long moment Rick heard only his own heartbeat and jagged, anxious breathing. He tried to estimate how much time he had left. After chucking his PCD he had no way to track the seconds as they slipped by, but in the back of his mind he'd kept counting. He was pretty good at it, but on the other hand that was a subjective way of keeping track of time. On his daily runs he'd jog in place while waiting at intersections and practice counting seconds as they flashed on the crosswalk lights. Sometimes he was dead on, but sometimes, revved up by exercise, he counted far faster than the lights did.

Was that the case now? Was time passing more slowly than he feared it was, thanks to his agitated state?

Then Rick heard the lift. Dex was on his way. Good old Dex.

Half a minute later the door opened and Dex stepped briskly out. He was taking the alert seriously; he stepped up the corridor quickly, his gun out and held at the ready. He disappeared around the corner.

The lift door was already closing. Dex hadn't thought to put a hold on it; Rick reached out and thrust his hand in front of the door's advancing edge, and the door stopped closing, then opened again. Rick stepped into the lift and jabbed at the button for the main level. The lift rose slowly - too slowly - but once the door opened on the main level Rick hit the hold button, stranding Dex in the sub basement until he figured out what had happened and summoned one of the other lifts. All of that would take time - plenty of time for Rick to get out of the facility and try to get home.

It was a solid plan and would have worked, except fifteen minutes just wasn't enough time. Rick realized the truth of it when, less than a block from home, he saw himself running up the sidewalk.

The two Ricks paused, sizing each other up. Rick was panting, dizzy with exertion. The other Rick - the one just starting to run to the facility - grew more agitated. "How are we going to make this work?" he asked, his voice rising with panic.

The solution had presented itself to Rick the moment he saw himself erupt from his garage. "First, you have to ditch your PCD," he told himself, speaking quickly and gulping for air. "Otherwise the machine won't work. Then... well, Dex isn't going to let you use the phone at the desk."

"Why not?"

"You'll be an unauthorized intruder at the lab when you emerge in the past."

The other Rick looked at him as though to argue, but then realized that he was speaking from experience. "Shit."

"Which leaves only one alternative," Rick said.

***

Rick flew up the street, his legs hammering the tarmac. He and the Rick from the future had only spoken for maybe nine or twelve seconds, but, irrationally, he felt a need to make up the lost time. He reached the facility, slapped his hand against the RFID reader, and then pushed in through the sliding doors as soon as he could fit.

"Hey Dex!" he called, feet pounding on the gleaming white floor of the lobby.

"Hey doc," Dexter laughed from the desk. "You gotta brainwave or something?"

"Or something!" Rick called over his shoulder, skidding to a stop and slapping his hand against the lift's RFID reader. "Had a problem plaguing me for I don't know how long. But I think I have it solved now!"

"Good on ya, doc!" Dex called back, as the lift door opened.

Rick made his way to the lab as quickly as he could. He'd tossed his PCD right after talking to the other Rick, so all he needed to do now was complete the ID scan and reinitialize the machine's countdown. He leapt onto the platform and waited, his heart thundering in his ears. It seemed to him to take longer than four seconds. Suddenly, there was a burst of light and an electric crackle; had the machine shorted out?

Rick stepped of the platform and looked at the status readout: The machine was in countdown mode, paused at four seconds before activation. That could only be possible if the device had worked as intended and sent Rick back in time.

Quarter minutes. Even now, blocks away, Jace was hefting boxes, balancing on the step stool with its flimsy, rickety frame. Rick himself... or some version of Rick... was sitting at the bar, laboring over some stupid equation that had nagged at him for days - not even anything mission critical, just a kink he wanted to iron out before the general ordered the test run to resume.

But the test wasn't going to resume.

Rick went through the ID scan one more time. The machine issued an "All Ready" audio cue. But Rick was done cycling back in time in a fruitless quest to change things. He needed to do something a little more drastic.

A lot more drastic, actually.

Rick issued a new set of instructions. "Emergency destruct," he told the machine's verbal interface.

"Confirm," the machine said, its speech synthesis sounding friendly in a bland sort of way. Not like the world - or even one person's life - hung in the balance.

Rick used his personalized code word: "You betcha."

"Emergency destruct confirmed," the machine said.

The machine wasn't sophisticated enough to reset its timing. The countdown resumed, only now the four seconds remaining weren't going to initiate a temporal distortion, but rather a plasma burst so hot everything in the room would be melted or vaporized - including Rick.

The chamber's doors automatically slid shut, and then a second set of doors - reinforced, thermally resistant - slid closed over the entry way and locked. The room was designed to contain the extreme heat of the self-destruct process. The resulting sterilization would be so complete there would be no trace of Rick left - not a hair, not a bone fragment, not a wisp of DNA. And even if some identifying trace remained, so what? This was Rick's lab. He worked in it all the time. His presence in the lab just before the destruct would never be known. No one - not Dex, not the temporal distortion program's director general, not the Pentagon brass, not even Rick himself - would know how it happened or why. There were security cameras at the entrances, in the lobby, in the corridors - but none in the lab itself, due to the extreme level of secrecy under which the program operated. With so much security surrounding this tiny chamber, the reasoning went, it was safer to leave the chamber's inner sanctum free of surveillance that could conceivably be hacked. Why not? No one could access the chamber without traversing the otherwise well-monitored precincts of the facility.

Ironically, it had never occurred to anyone to think of the obvious: There was one means of ingress to the chamber that was not surveilled, and that was time - the very thing the machine was itself created to help a traveller cross. Rick smiled at the beauty of it, knowing his surviving self would never be busted for his treasonous disregard of orders.

All those thoughts had flickered through his mind in the space of a single second. Rick watched the countdown monitor and tried not to think of anything more... nothing but Jace.

Three.

Their years together.

Two.

Their future together.

One...

Jace he thought, smiling, surprised that tears were in his eyes. Holy Jesus Christ, Jace...

***

Rick looked up as a siren suddenly wailed from the direction of the facility. His Q-Slate and its tangled palimpsest of equations forgotten, he stepped up the hallway and then turned into the garage. Jace was standing there, looking out the open garage door, a box in his arms. He glanced back at Rick.

"Something going on at the facility?" he asked.

"If it is, they'll let me know," Rick replied.

"Should you go over there?"

"No," Rick said. "Protocol is to stay home if that's where we are when the siren goes off. It's probably nothing, but if something is going down - some kind of security breach, or an equipment malfunction, or a cyber attack - they don't want science staff getting in the way. Or getting killed." Rick looked at the box in Jace's arms, then remembered the rickety step stool. "Hey, you're not using that step, are you?"

"Yeah," Jace said. "I was just about to put this box back up on the shelf there."

"Better not use the step, sweetie. It's not very stable. In fact..." Rick pressed a foot against the step, which was already slightly canted. Under a fraction of Rick's body weight the step splintered and collapsed.

Rick looked over at Jace. "It's a miracle you didn't fall off that thing before now."

Jace looked from the step to Rick, a playfully frightened smile quirking on his lips. "Guess I'll get a new step while I'm getting the kayak."

"If they let you off base to go get it," Rick said. More sirens were sounding now. MP vehicles and a fire truck raced past, on their way to the facility. The racket was deafening.

Rick turned to the switch near the door back into the house. The garage door slid down section by section, muffling the din from outside. Rick turned back to Jace, who had set the box down and was putting the broken step into the trash bin. Rick stepped toward him, then put his arms around Jace's shoulders and nuzzled his neck.

"Looks like we might have to shelter in place for a while," he said, with an inviting grin.

"We could be under attack from enemies foreign and/or domestic," Jace grinned back, "and you want to get busy? You're incorrigible."

"Whatever it is, I'm sure it's gonna be a headache," Rick said. "So why not enjoy the moment and let the future unscroll in its own time?" He winked at his smiling, blushing husband. "Want to come back inside with me?"

"How long before they call you up and you have to go deal with whatever's going on?" Jace asked.

"Oh, I dunno... a couple hours? Probably longer?"

"Just as long as it's not quarter minutes," Jace said. "I'd hate to get something going and then have to hit the pause button..."

"Oh, don't you worry," Rick told him. "Anything like this is bound to be a cluster fuck that takes forever to sort out. We have plenty more than quarter minutes."

The two men retreated into their home. The sirens outside faded into stillness, and their laughter rang through the safe, familiar spaces of their home.