Allergic To Time (29 page)

“I think the time machine might be this computer.”

Chapter Thirty-Six.
 

We ran back to the hospital as fast as our feet could take us. Which actually was not that fast as, once again, both of us were wearing heels.
 

Rob struggled for both breath and balance as we raced back to RPA. “If we keep doing this...” he huffed, catching his breath. “We are going to have to wear more sensible shoes.”

“Keep doing what?” I asked, also struggling.

“Solving time travel mysteries,” he replied. “I thought that after this we could kind of go into business or something...”

“Hey!” I replied, grinning. “I thought that as well!”

“Okay, we can discuss this after,” Rob said, picking up the pace again. “Right now we have to get to RPA as soon as possible.”

“Martin Martin Martin!” I called, flying around the corner of the hospital ward to where he was waiting out the front of Connie’s room.
 

“What is it?” He asked, turning around startled.
 

I was a bit over-excited by this point, so I just shouted. “They’ve built a time machine! Naomi and John Raymond.” I stopped and doubled over, trying to catch my breath. “And they based it on my thesis!” I exclaimed, straightening up and doing a little jump up and down on the spot. I grabbed him by the front of the jacket. “Don’t you understand? My ideas were right!”
 

He smiled at me. “I guess that’s great?” Then he frowned. “I mean, except the part about them having a time machine.”

“Right,” I replied. “Well, yeah, that bit is less ideal. But just think about how they arrived at their invention - I was right!” I was still excited despite the imminent danger we were all in.
 

Martin grabbed me by the arms and led me away from the door. “Shh, keep it down. Raymond is still in the room.”

I was still smiling. “He must have sent Connie Hung through time using that machine. Using my code!”

“Alright alright, that’s wonderful, Anna,” he said, leading me even further away from the door. “But you do realise now that he has figured out how to use it, he’s only going to use it for evil?”

I gulped.

“You really have to be quiet.” He turned around to make sure Raymond wasn’t about to come out of the room.
 

Rob appeared around the corner. He’d had trouble keeping up with me for the last couple of blocks, due to his asthma. He waved at us and stood still for a few moments, catching his breath. “We ran back here as fast as we could,” he started. “I don’t think your plan of breaking into Raymond’s office and ‘sending him through time’ is going to work if he has that machine in there.”

Martin’s face turned ashen at the sound of yet another of his plans going to ruin. He looked — firstly — upset, as though he couldn’t believe that yet again, one of his great time travel plans would be foiled by someone who actually knew what they were going. Unlike him. But before I could interrupt, and try to reassure him that it was the intention to carry out a plan that counted, not how successful it actually was, and that he should just keep his chin up and carry on, another look crossed his face. One of steely determination.

“No,” he said firmly, shaking his head. “Not this time. We are going to carry out my plan, and damn it, it is going to work this time.”

Robert and I just shot each other a look like,
Oh no, this guy cannot be serious.

“Martin I’m really not sure-“

“We’re going through with my plan.” He didn’t look like he could be swayed.
 

“Okay…” I said, still unconvinced.

“Tomorrow,” he stated. “First thing, at the crack of dawn. We walk into John Raymond’s office, and we send that bastard though time.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven.

Even though the jig was clearly up by that point, I still let Robert stay with me at the Novotel. It would give him a break from living with Martin, at least. I was still having trouble comprehending that had been their living arrangement for the better part of the last three years.
 

Just as we’d been ordered, we were up at the crack of dawn the following day. It was early, but, looking out the window, I could already tell it was going to be a hot day.

“What do you really think is going to happen?” Rob asked, pulling on a pair of sequinned flares. He zipped them up and admired himself in the mirror. “I mean, you realise this is probably going to end up with all of us dead, right?” He raised his eyebrows at me. “Martin can not organise a plan for shit.”
 

I sighed, and fastened the buckle on the belt of my high-waisted black skirt. “We owe this to him. We have to at least give him a shot.”

“We owe this to him?”

“Look, one way or another he has protected us from all of this for years,” I pointed out, threading the overlap of my belt through the loop and straightening up. “Think about all the stuff he’s done for us, despite being so terrible at it. In his own stupid way he was only trying to help us.”

“Only trying to help
you,
” Rob said pointedly.
 

“Well, either way: let him have this one.”

Rob grabbed a jacket, even though I didn’t think he was going to need it. “Well, if it looks like things are going badly — and they will be — then I reserve the right to jump in at any time and take control.” He began to head for the door.

I followed after him. “Okay,” I replied. I would give him that, at least. “If it looks like we are about to get killed, feel free to intercept.” I smiled at him.

He stopped in the doorway and smiled back at me. He suddenly grabbed and hugged me.
 

“What was that for?” I asked, after we broke the embrace.

“Just in case we die today,” he said, moving out into the hall way. He paused and added: “Or get sent three thousand years into the future.”

***

The four of us: Robert, Fanny, Martin and I, met in front of our prearranged meeting place: Fisher Library. I still didn’t have a phone, so I was glad to see Martin and Fanny right on time. Not that I really expected anything less from Martin Anderson.
 

As they approached us, I shielded my eyes to get a better look at them coming up the hill. “What the hell are the carrying?” I asked Robert, referring to the machine gun looking thing in Martin’s arms.

“That?” he asked me, surprised. “You haven’t seen it? That’s Fanny’s time machine.”

“Holy hell.” I was suddenly feeling a lot more optimistic about my own invention: the innocuous piece of code that could be fitted nicely into any computer systems. “I’m surprised they didn’t get arrested carrying that around the streets!”

“I guess time travel technology has come a long way since Fanny’s days,” Rob remarked.

I grinned. “I am going to win the freaking Nobel Prize with my invention.” I was suddenly excited about thesis again. The future suddenly looked bright, promising, filled with hope.
 

Martin and Fanny reached us, and Martin dropped the strange machine-gun looking thing on the ground, huffing and puffing.
 

“This is my time machine,” Fanny announced proudly.

“Talk about time travel as a weapon...” I murmured. “How did you even get this through the streets?”

“That’s why I wanted to get here before the sun rose,” Martin said, taking deep breaths.

“Hey,” I said suddenly, kneeling down to get a better look at the machine. “This looks like the thing that Nurse Bianca aimed at us that day at RPA when Rob travelled...” I caught myself and stopped talking. “…Had an asthma attack,” I finished, looking up at him wryly.

“Hey, it does too,” Rob said, kneeling down next to me. “Maybe she wasn’t trying to kill us after all. She was just going to send us through time.”

“Same difference,” I commented.

Rob nodded. “Anyway, what’s the next part of the brilliant plan, Doc?”

Martin glared at him.
 

“We go into John Raymond’s office — or should I say MY office — and we wait there with the machine. When he arrives, we simply aim it and send him 100 years into the future, where he can never terrorise us, or anyone else, ever again. Then I take back control of my office,” he ended.

Robert and I exchanged sly glances.
 

“What could possibly go wrong?” Rob asked, turning away and heading towards the physics building.

***

When we arrived at the office, all guns a blazing — quite literally — we found Naomi and John Raymond standing there waiting for us.

“
Shocking,”
Rob remarked. “The best laid plans...” he turned around to give Martin a look as if to say ‘I told you so, you idiot.’

Martin, for his part, looked horrified, as well as shocked at the face that Naomi and Raymond were already there. I wasn’t sure why he was so surprised. Robert was right: he really wasn’t very good at this sort of stuff.

Raymond stood up behind his desk and came around to before us, a look of mock-surprise on his face.
 

“I suppose you have come here to ‘send me through time’?” he asked, raising his eyebrows at the ancient-looking gun Martin was holding up. “Using...that?”

Martin perched the gun up on his shoulder, and nodded, defiantly. “That’s right. Your days of using time travel as a weapon are over Raymond.” He raised the gun and pointed it right at Raymond’s face.

Naomi gasped. “No!” she cried, and ran in front of the man in black. “Don’t hurt him!”

“Naomi?” Rob asked. “I thought you and I were...”

She glared over Robert. Clearly she had been keeping their affair a secret from John Raymond.
 

“Please don’t do this,” she pleaded with Martin.

“Calm down, I’m not going to kill him. This is a safe, working time machine. It doesn’t kill people.” He paused and patted Fanny on the shoulder. “She’s proof of that.” He raised the gun again. “We just have to get this guy far, far away from this time and place.”
 

Naomi still refused to budge. “You want to go with him?” Martin asked her. “Because we had agreed to leave you out of this, if you want. But it’s your choice.”

“Naomi,” I said, stepping in. “Think about this. You don’t want to get sent through time. Believe me. It is the worst.” I looked around at Fanny and Rob, who both nodded.

“Well I’m not letting him go alone!” Naomi cried, staying put in front of Raymond.
 

Raymond suddenly pushed Naomi out the way and lunged towards the computer in the corner of the room. He pulled it out of the wall and held it up in front of him. The action confused Martin enough that he temporarily dropped the gun from his shoulder for a moment. “What is...”

“My time machine!” I gasped, almost jumping in front of Raymond myself.

He looked up at me. “If I go, this goes with me.”

“No!” I cried, echoing Naomi’s cry from minutes earlier.
 

Martin paused to look at me. “Anna...”

“That’s the only copy! They have my entire thesis uploaded in there, as well as the working model of time travel programmed into it. It would take me, years...or longer... to recreate that. Martin you can’t...”

He stared at me. “Anna, you’ll be able to make it again. I believe in you.”

“But...” I looked frantically between Martin and the man in black, who held in his hands my life’s work, my ticket to getting my job back at the university, my future Nobel prize.

Rob touched me on the arm. He nodded. “You’ll be able to build another time machine Anna. You’re brilliant. If we let this guy go, imagine how many other people are going to be killed — or sent through time against their will, their lives ruined.”

I blinked away the tears that had formed in my eyes. I nodded. “Okay...” But a thought suddenly occurred to me: “We can’t let him take that computer though.”

“Anna,” Martin began, clearly still thinking this was about me not wanting to let it go. “I told you, you can recreate it...”

“No, stupid,” I cut in, annoyed. “We can’t let him loose with a working time machine! He’ll just use it on people in the future.”

“Oh, right.”
 

Naomi had started to edge closer to John Raymond and my precious time machine. She looked over at me, and I returned her look, pleading with her. If all Naomi really wanted was respect in the physics department, someone to believe in her, well, then she didn’t need this evil bastard. I nodded at her. “Naomi, come on, please.”

She grabbed the computer out of the man in black’s hands and then threw it, with all her might, down on the hard tilled floors. It smashed into a dozen pieces.
 

I gasped and knelt down over the wreckage. I mean, she hadn’t needed to
smash it.
All she needed to do was grab it and get out of the way. Naomi looked up at me. “I’m sorry...”

I shook my head. “It’s okay. You did right thing.” But I still couldn’t believe it was gone.
 

We looked up. Without either Naomi or the computer for protection, John Raymond was left exposed. I could see Martin breathing in and out deeply, steeling himself for what he was about to do. Robert was standing off to the side, a look of surprise on his face, surprise that Martin’s plan might actually be about to work.
 

Martin’s hands were shaking as he raised the machine gun time machine and pointed it straight towards the man in black. Before he pulled the trigger he looked down at me on the floor.
 

I nodded at him. It was to reassure him that this was the right thing to do, that it was going to work. Unbelievably enough, his plan was about to come together…

“Wait!” I said, standing up. “Give it to me.”

I reached out my hand for the gun. Martin hesitated a second before nodding and handing it over.

I pulled it up to my shoulder. With one final deep breath I stepped forward and pulled the trigger.
 

There was a buzzing, and a flash of blinding light, and I was pushed backwards by the force of the shot.
 

We all blinked and coughed, waving the smoke away from our faces. I climbed desperately up off the floor, trying to adjust my eyes so that I could see. I bumped into Martin and grabbed his arm, and we both turned toward John Raymond’s desk, with trepidation.