Paul Jones - Towards Yesterday

Gallagher deftly tapped in the sequence of code numbers that would prime the detonator: 1-9-53. The bomb was now activated and armed, all it would take now was for him to hit the % key and it would be done. His index finger hovered above the key as he sat on the closed lid of the commode and waited for Baston to get back to the transmission room. A thrilling sense of expectation pounded through his veins as he thought about the lives he now held in his hand.

They were all going to die, it was just such a shame it would be over so quickly.

Lorentz glanced up as the door to the transmission room opened and the skinny soundman stepped inside. Through the crack of the door, he caught a glimpse of Jim saying something to Beaumont before the door swung shut again. The soundman scanned the room as if he was looking for something before noticing Lorentz watching him. Their eyes linked for a brief second and then Beaumont broke the connection, his face flushing with embarrassment at the contempt so obvious in the doctor’s eyes.

“Mina,” Lorentz said, “Would you look after our guest; make sure he doesn’t touch anything would you please?” Mina nodded and walked over to where the soundman stood shuffling his feet.

Henry Mabry sidled—as much as anybody of his enormous size could ever hope to sidle—over to join Lorentz at his computer station.

“All ready at my end, Doc,” he said.

“Good. Good. We can start running the diagnostics as soon as James returns.”

The soundman was still looking about as comfortable as a nun at a whore’s convention. He was attempting to hide his obvious nervousness by pretending to adjust his sound equipment.

Good , thought Lorentz, keep the bastard off balance . They had no right to be here anyway. Things were tense enough without their intrusive presence.

Over the radio link the sound of Adrianna’s voice crackled, “ Doctor Lorentz, we are all set here in the receiver room. ”

Lorentz picked up the small handheld radio from the desk next to him and pressed the send button, “Very good Doctor Drake. Please stand by to begin running the final diagnostics.”

“ Will do ,” then a long pause and, “ Good luck. ”

Lorentz smiled before replying, “We don’t need luck, Doctor Drake… we have science .”

The swing door of the men’s room had closed behind Jim as he made his way back to the transmission room. With less than twenty minutes left until go-time, he was running late and he needed to get to the lab for the final diagnostics check to make sure his end of the experiment went smoothly. If he had not been playing nursemaid to the Church crew, he would be there already.

As Jim made his way along the corridor, he thought he caught the faint wail of an alarm sounding somewhere off in the distance. The main lab building was so well insulated it was hard to make out any sound from the outside. It was probably nothing, and he dismissed the thought.

Jim placed the palm of his hand on the door to the transmission room and paused for a second. Took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Thank God, this is almost over, he thought to himself and began to push the door open. Inside, he saw Lorentz talking into his handheld radio. Towering over him was Horatio Mabry, a look of concentration fixed on his face as he stared at the screen over Lorentz’s shoulder.

“Ah! James. Finally!” said Lorentz at the sound of the door opening.

In the stall of the men’s room, Gallagher stared at the plastic calculator he held in his hand. Such a tiny thing , he thought, but at this moment, it hung like the sword of Damocles over the head of everyone in this building; the power of life and death was in his hands, once again. It was a physical manifestation of the Chaos theory these scientists were always getting so excited about—a butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil and a storm is unleashed on the other side of the world.

Well let’s see how well that theory played out in the real world.

He pressed the % key.

The line of protestors stopped just short of the perimeter security fence. They continued singing as they formed a chain of human flesh that stretched for almost three-hundred feet in either direction of the main gate.

Security Chief Calhoun had pulled most of his men to this location—nearly thirty in all—a small number by comparison to the thousands they faced, but the added muscle made Corporal Parsons a lot less nervous. The Chief had assessed the situation immediately upon arriving on scene. He relocated all but a handful of his men to this one choke-point. If the crowd decided to try something stupid, he would ensure they would meet the full force available to him. He had already called central—command and apprised them of the situation. There were already three Huey’s containing a shit-load of backup airborne and making their way to his location.

In twenty minutes, he would have enough firepower at his disposal to repel a small army.

The Chief was not a violent man by nature; if he could resolve this situation peacefully, without putting his men or the protestors in harm’s way, then he would do his utmost to ensure that nobody on either side of the security fence got hurt. He had already grabbed a bullhorn from the security booth and walked purposefully up and down the innermost security fence attempting to talk some kind of sense into those on the other side.

“ This is a secure area,” he announced . “You are trespassing on government property. For your own safety, please disperse and move away from the fence .” His amplified voice was barely audible to the armed soldiers assigned to escort him as he strode up and down the fence line. He was being drowned—out by the sound of over two-thousand voices singing some hymn he vaguely recognized. The volume of the protestors’ voices was doubled by those who had remained in the makeshift encampment on the far side of the road. With one unified voice, the massive crowd cried out for deliverance.

“ Please ,” the soldier pleaded with them, “ Move away from the fence. ”

A wave of movement passed through the crowd as they simultaneously began unlocking their arms.

“Thank God,” said the soldier to The Chief’s right. “Finally, they’re listening.”

The hymn reached its final crescendo and, as if on some unspoken cue, the mass of protestors threw themselves as one against the high-voltage security fence. Interlacing their fingers with the chain-link, the protestors embraced the current of deadly electricity as it arced through their bodies, scorching their hair, and blistering their skin as bright blue sparks exploded into the air around them like flares. Mouths leapt open in silent screams as thousands of volts contorted their muscles into uncontrollable spasms.

No song leaped from their lips now, just curls of gray smoke that floated into the increasingly cold night air, suddenly redolent with the stink of burning flesh.

The explosive was a half-centimeter thick and covered the entire inside of the casing of the video camera. Safe in its airtight container, it had easily evaded the fluoroscope scan and the trace-scent ‘sniffer’ employed by the security personnel at the compound’s security checkpoint. The characteristic nitrogen signature was contained safely within the airtight camera casing, concealing the airborne nitrogen-compound vapor which would have betrayed the fact that the camera was actually a cleverly disguised bomb, capable of destroying everything within a thirty-foot blast radius.