2 Minutes to Midnight Read online

  The dog began to bark, and leapt forward until it was no more than two feet from them.

  “Time to go!” Phillip screamed.

  He pushed Lucy through the door and followed after her. The two tumbled onto a grassless field surrounded by trash, burned out hulks of cars, and animal skeletons.

  “The watch!” Phillip yelled.

  He dived back around the corner and grabbed the watch as the black dog dived for his arm. Phillip retrieved the mystic timepiece and rolled back through the door before it could close behind him. He landed next to Lucy, his hand held high with the watch clutched tight in his palm.

  “That was insane. Where the hell are we?” Lucy asked.

  Phillip opened his eyes and propped himself on one arm and when he raised up he could see an old man shambling toward them from the city. He was clothed in tattered rags, limping, and had the gaunt malnourished appearance of a man who had not eaten well in years.

  “Thank the Lord, you made it, Phillip!” The man said.

  “Grandpa? How did you get here?” Phillip asked.

  Phillip’s mouth hung open like a flytrap, as Trevor embraced his grandson for the first time in over five years.

  “You keep that open, a bug’s going to go right in, and trust me bugs are about all that’s left.”

  Behind Trevor McSwain rested the hulking, ruined skeleton of what was once a great city.

  “Where are we?” Phillip asked.

  “Welcome to future New York!” He waved his hand around. “A far as I can tell they blew each other up sometime in the year 2230. The newspapers I found in a library basement describe the political turmoil going on at the time, and what led to the shelled out wasteland you see in front of you.”

  “What happened to your leg?” Phillip asked.

  “Oh yeah, that’s a good one,” he laughed. “I almost died! I was out hunting for food one day and saw a small pig running through the street. I chased it through a department store a weak section of floor crumbled under my feet. I fell to the floor below and landed on a weight set. I’m no doctor so, I have no idea in how many places I broke my leg but I was in agony for months.”

  “Are there any other people anywhere?” Lucy asked.

  “Not here, as far as I can tell, unless they live in the sewers, and there may be other cities with people, but I have had no way to reach them since all the cars have been destroyed. We’d better get inside; wolves come out to hunt around this time of day.”

  Phillip and Lucy surveyed the dismal scene. The catastrophe had blown out windows, broken buildings in half, torn the roads like tissue paper, and collapsed at least one bridge that they could see. Vegetation had taken over. Long hanging vines were draped over skyscrapers like the clinging arms of some horrific green monster, devouring the structures. Giant oak trees had grown strong, and tall through cracked concrete department store floors, and rain, like a waterfall, poured in from destroyed roof tops watering the decaying urban jungle.

  “Were you trapped here, or did you just decide you liked the place and wanted to stay?‘Cause this is jacked up, here, grandpa!” Phillip said.

  “Did you happen to see a little black animal with long claws around the house? I’m not talking about a cat either.”

  Phillip and Lucy exchanged a glance.

  “Yeah, it was chasing a cat through the weeds in your yard. What the heck is that thing anyway?” Phillip asked.

  “Cyril and I picked him up on one of my time travel adventures. He’s a pain in the ass, that one, and got me stuck here.”

  “How?” Lucy asked.

  “When I came through the door, Cyril was right behind me, and normally he’s a good boy, but that day he decided to climb up the pedestal where you put my watch, and when he did he lost his balance, he knocked the pedestal over, and the door closed behind me after my watch fell off the gear. Your mom must have been down there at some point to have found that watch.”

  Trevor led them to a fire escape in an alley beside one of the least damaged buildings.

  “This place is pretty safe from predators. The whole bottom floor is a disaster and the stairwell fell in during the explosions, so once you’re off the ground not much can get to you. After I broke my leg it took me almost six months to get back up here.”

  Trevor grunted as he climbed hand over hand up the short ladder to a landing above their heads.

  “Come on, let’s go.”

  A long, mournful howl echoed through the city.

  “Wolves! Climb, Lucy.” Phillip said.

  After she was up he followed just as a pack of emaciated, mongrel wolves ran by the alley. One of them spotted Phillip and trotted into the alley.

  “What is it with canines lately?” Phillip said.

  “You must be talking about Spot.” Trevor laughed.

  “Yeah, oh by the way, you have a large hell hound or something living in your house. It’s got one eye, a red one.” Phillip shivered.

  “He’s harmless; in fact, Spot’s the reason you’re here.” Trevor said.

  He climbed through a window into a luxury apartment that had sold for over a million dollars in the real estate market long ago.

  “Nice place.” Phillip said.

  “Thanks. Spot is a hologram, and I sent him to herd anyone who came looking for me down to the basement and that door.”

  “How’d you do it? I mean, this place is a disaster, and it doesn’t look like you have any electricity, much less…how?” Phillip asked.

  “At some point people found a way to safely time travel without creating paradoxes, but it takes a ton of power to pull it off. You’re right, there is no electricity, but I was able to wire a series of solar batteries together to one of their time travel machines, and hook it up to a computer. The 3D dog program came with the operating system, so, after monkeying around with their technology for more time than I’d like to admit, I finally figured out how to do it.” Trevor explained.

  “So, you sent a holographic dog back in time? I’m confused.” Phillip said.

  “How’d it know we could help?” Lucy asked.

  “The watch you carry has a special chip in it that emits a beacon in, so that in case someone gets trapped in time it makes it easier to find that person. Kind of like the GPS tracker in your phone. I set the dog to look for that beacon.”

  “How did you figure all of this out? And, where’d you get the watch, anyway?” Lucy asked.

  “I stole it from a government research lab I was working in. I was contracted to work on a quantum field generator, and I saw the watch. I couldn’t take my eyes off it, so one day I just slipped it in my pocket and walked out the door. There were all kinds of random gadgets those boys had been working on. Anyway, It took me awhile to figure out the gear on the back, but once I realized it was a keyhole, the rest was easy. You wouldn’t believe the projects that happen underground, hidden in black budgets. It would flip your lid, kid.”

  “Grandpa, I’m a senior in high school, and I’ve never been away from home. What we’re experiencing now is flipping my lid.”

  “So, how do we get back? I want to go home.” Lucy said.

  “My house is about two hundred miles south of here, and if the basement is still in one piece then maybe the pedestal is there as well. We can put the watch on, and with some luck, it’ll open a door back to our time.” Trevor said.

  “We have to walk two hundred miles?” Phillip asked.

  “Nope, let’s get something to eat, and then I’ve got something to show you.”

  Trevor served them a soup made from some kind of meat, and while it was palatable, neither teen wanted the recipe.

  They stared out the window, marveling at how bad it had all become. The people were gone.

  “What happened to them?” Phillip asked.

  “I don’t know for sure, and this tragedy takes place a very long time after we’re all dead anyway. Besides, this is only one possible future for humanity. Let’s go.”

  Trevor led
them to the roof where a hovercraft sat unscathed by the destruction so prevalent everywhere else.

  “This thing seats four, and now that you’re here I have a reason to use it again. I found this hovercraft about three weeks after I got here in an underground garage.”

  “Very cool! Let’s get going.” Lucy said.

  Excitement ran high as Trevor flew over the foreign landscape toward his home. They crossed the distance in under an hour and when they reached Trevor’s house, all breathed a sigh of relief. It was dilapidated, covered in kudzu and broken down, but still standing. He lowered the craft outside his front door and they got out.

  “Let’s get to the basement!” Trevor said.

  “I second that, grandpa.”

  The trio met no resistance from predatory animals as they progressed through the house, but time and exposure to the elements had rotted the staircase leading down, so they had to tie up to a rope and lower each other down. Stagnant water pooled around their ankles, soaking shoes and socks as they walked, but after a few twists and turns the three reached Trevor’s time portal. The pedestal was broken now, but the protruding gear was still on top. Trevor motioned for Phillip to give him the watch, and then took the device over to its key. Trevor placed the watch in top and the bricks were sucked away once more, this time the doorway showed a pyramidal temple and some natives worshipping a golden idol.

  “That’s not home.” Trevor said.

  “Grandpa, if you take that key off the pedestal cold this time travel watch be used anywhere?”

  “I suppose so, but we’d need a doorway, and those can be drawn on boulders, or a wall. What are you proposing?” Trevor said.

  “Put the key around your neck, and let’s go exploring.” Phillip said.

  “We don’t have to go home right now, and since we have a time machine we could use it. It seems to be opening random windows anyway, so who knows when our window in time will return?” Lucy said.

  Trevor smiled with his two conspirators.

  “Are the two of you really OK with that? It could be dangerous.” Trevor warned.

  They both nodded approval with a conspiratorial grin. Trevor cut the gear off, hung it around his neck, and gave the watch back to Phillip. With one final glance they walked through the portal and into a jungle ceremony, taking place more than twenty-seven thousand years BC.

  Strangers in a bar

  Edward Sheck had in his possession a small device that could save the world, but would he convince a stranger in a bar that his own life was worth saving?

  Slow white flakes were falling silent as the grave while Edward Sheck made his way home on a sidewalk hidden beneath a three inch layer of snow that was getting deeper by the minute. Edward was seven blocks from home and there were no cabs running during the storm.

  “The school kids are probably ecstatic about this.” He mumbled to himself.

  Head down, hands in his pockets, and fighting bitter cold, he cursed himself for walking out into the snow for a lousy pack of smokes. The flakes were stinging his eyes, obscuring his vision, and felt like daggers against his exposed face. He noticed a green neon sign glowing bright like a signal flare against the whiteout. It was Regal, the local no tell motel. They had a bar and it would be a good place to stop and rest before continuing the next six blocks. The hotel was known as a dive for social rejects, drug addicts, and those cataclysmically screwed by life. A sign on the door read:

  Rooms to Rent

  BY: Hour, Night, Week, Month

  Inquire Within

  Edward walked into an almost empty bar. Two old barfly’s sat in a corner, one with his head on the table passed out, and the other leaning back against the seat with his mouth wide open, snoring. The joint smelled like old cigarettes, cheap booze, and despair. Regal was the kind of rock bottom you hit and never came back up for air. A flat screen television above the bar was displaying the Weather Channel, and Edward could see a mass of white covering the entire state.

  The bar tender was a young Latina in her early twenties, with long brown hair, and a face so pretty it reminded him how alone he was.

  “Good evening, madam. What do you have on draft?”

  Tia was the name on her tag. She rattled off a series of domestics, and a local microbrew called Scat. “With a name as hideous as Scat, it’s got to be good beer, right. I’ll have a pint, and a shot of Johnny Walker. No, make that two shots. I’m freezing.”

  “No problem, my friend. Scat’s not too bad. It’s a little like a wheat pale ale. You don’t have to drive anywhere do you?”

  “Heh, in this storm? My car broke down a few blocks back, and I think it’ll be covered in a mountain of white a few hours from now anyway.”

  “You need a room for the night?” Tia asked.

  “Depends on how drunk I get.”

  “Well, if you need one it’s 29.95 a night, and I wouldn’t wave a black light around in there. You know, if you actually want to sleep.” Tia said.

  “Thanks for the tip.”

  Tia put his shots and beer on the bar, took his credit card for the tab, and went back to cleaning. She did busywork to keep her mind off of the stalled climb up the ladder of her career. Edward stared at tiny beads of condensation rolling down the side of his bottle, and then he noticed a newspaper lying folded in half on the counter. He reached over and unfolded it to the front page.

  Record Numbers Lose Power as Freak Winter Storms Pound Area

  Edward shook his head, slammed his shots, and chased them with the pint of Scat beer. He held up his hand and motioned for another round as he read the paper. According to the press, three people had frozen to death because their power had been shut off due to payment issues.

  “It doesn’t have to be this way.” He said to himself.

  As he continued to drink himself into a stupor, Edward realized that there was now another man beside him at the bar. A tall gentleman, about his age with a dark wool coat was motioning for the bar tender.

  “How’s it going?” The stranger said.

  “Fine, and you?”

  “Oh, not too bad. My car got stuck a few blocks back and I saw the sign for this place while I was calling for a tow.” He answered.

  “Yeah, the weather’s a bitch. You see the paper today? Massive power outages all over the place,” said Edward.

  The man looked down at his paper and nodded.

  “You know, it doesn’t have to be this way.” Edward said.

  “It doesn’t? Maybe they should pay their bills.” The stranger said.

  Edward cocked his head from side to side in silent disagreement, and said nothing more for some time as the two men drank their beer watching the weather on television. The topic of the evening news programming was the blizzard heading their way, and an impending energy crisis. Edward lit up a cigarette, grunted once in a while, shook his head and drank more alcohol as he blew white halos into the air with his smoke.

  “Sorry man, I just get so frustrated. I worked on a project to create free, renewable energy for Grudge BioSystems. It was classified top secret for the Department of Energy, and let me tell you; this little device we built could run your entire house and fit in a shoebox. Complete freedom from the power company.” Edward nodded.

  “That’s a lot to tell someone you just met.” The stranger said.

  “Well, what’s your name?”

  “George Smith, pleased to meet you.” He extended his hand and Edward shook it.

  “See, now we’re not strangers anymore. Look, it’s just a shame that in this day and age anyone has to suffer while this technology remains hidden from the world. They’ll never release that device to us, and the good they can do for people will be suppressed because of human greed. That’s why I quit.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “I don’t know why, I guess I just don’t have anyone else to tell, and you probably don’t believe me anyway.”

  George nodded. He regarded Edward with the cold, calculating e
yes of a man who has walked up on a snake in the woods.

  “What’s that saying?” Edward slurred. “Be the change you want to see in others? It starts with us man, you and me having conversations about it. Not with the government and their secret projects, you know? Now you tell someone, and then they tell someone, next thing you know the whole thing is on the Internet and people are starting to ask the questions! We change the game.”

  George drank his beer as he allowed Edward to finish his speech.

  “So, you quit your job?” George asked.

  The amount of alcohol Edward had ingested combined with the speed at which he drank, as well as his low tolerance for alcohol had turned him into a flibbertigibbet.

  “Yeah, I did, and since I had enough of the secrets I snuck one of them devices out, too leaving the rats behind.” Edward said.

  “Wow, that’s incredible. So, what did you do with it?”

  “It powers my house. Ha, ha, ha! I connected the main line to that little device I named “Zero” and it runs everything. No more power company stealing money from me. Look, the point is people need this device, and if we could just let it out we’d solve the world’s energy problems overnight.” Edward said.

  “Do you even know how it works?” George asked.

  Edward shot him a cautious glance. Perhaps he had said too much.

  “Hey, you started the conversation. I was sitting here drinking a beer.” George said.

  “OK, well, they’re zero point energy devices. To put it simply, each one pulls limitless energy out of the quantum field, and we figured out a way to harness that power.” Edward explained.

  “What’s your company doing with it?”

  “I don’t know, exactly, but there’s always contracts for the government. Black budget BS. I basically work for the think tank, but that’s about it.”

  “What would you do with it? I mean, you’re just one guy.” George asked.

  “I’d like to find a venture capitalist to help me reproduce these devices and sell them to third world countries for enough of a profit to pay back the loan with some interest. The only stipulation I have is that the countries we sell them to give it to the people for free. If this happens you’ll see massive, wide sweeping economic changes, and people who were once being crushed under the thumb of corporate greed will have an opportunity to thrive. This could also work in the United States.”