Chapter 6: Stalking the Scientists

August 31st, 2015

12:05 am

Cadi felt wide awake. She and Rick were successfully able to get a full night’s sleep while time was paused, and now they were ready to spy on the mad scientists.

Or… the discredited scientists.

“Ok. Are you ready Cadi?” her older brother asked as she stuffed a couple of flashlights and a camera into her bookbag.

“Yup!”

Cadi could feel her stomach churning in an excited way. She and Rick were basically sneaking out of the house, and she had never done anything like that before!

She felt like a rebel.

Rick had her pause time before they left the house, and then he helped her put some lights on the bike that he hardly used anymore, and had Cadi put on a helmet and stand on his pegs.

Then they were off.

Even though time was paused, it was still dark, and Cadi could feel a rush of wind as Rick biked down the dimly lit road. Soon, the two of them found themselves in the park. The eight year old was suddenly very glad her older brother was with her. Even with time paused, it was scary in the dark…

“Rick! Look! There’s blue lights on in the scientist house!” she whispered.

“Cadi, you don’t have to whisper. No one can hear us.”

“Oh yeah…”

“But…”

Rick stood there thinking for a moment.

“If they’re still awake, we can’t really overhear anything if they’re paused… So… forget what I said, be quiet, and it’s time to unpause everything.”

Cadi nodded and closed her eyes.

Immediately, the wind started to blow gently around them, the stars began to twinkle, and the soft noises of nighttime settled around them. However, there was also the sounds of something electrical going on in the house. As quietly as they could, Rick and Cadi snuck up to the house and settled themselves underneath one of the open windows. Slowly, they peered over the window ledge to see the man and woman they had seen a couple of days ago with a weird set up in their living room.

“Why isn’t this working?!” the woman named Emille exasperated. “We were just starting to get somewhere with connecting to the time stream, and now it just seems we’ve hit a dead end. I don’t understand it.”

The man, who they now knew as Harry, plopped his head down on the desk he was sitting at, sighing in frustration.

Suddenly, another person walked into the room, someone both Cadi and Rick recognized.

The man was very well built, with ebony skin and short wiry hair, and he seemed to like sweaters. But since it was still currently summer, he seemed to have settled with a forest green polo shirt.  

He was the art teacher from the high school. Cadi knew him because every summer, she would go to a gifted and talented summer camp, something Rick used to do when he was younger. Rick was also currently in his ceramics class at the high school.

The two siblings knew him as Mr. Johnston, but apparently, Harry and Emille simply knew him as West.

“Any luck yet?” Mr. West Johnston asked, bringing in a stack of papers and yawning. “I can’t stay much longer you two. I’ve got class in the morning.”

“I know I know…” Harry sighed again. “It’s still good to have you over though. We should do something fun this weekend. You know, take a break.”

“We don’t have time for breaks Harry.” Emille cut in, pressing some buttons on a machine.

“Cadi, can you pause time?” Rick whispered. “I want to get a look at that machine.”

“Ok.”

Once time was stopped, Cadi followed her older brother as he climbed into the open window and into the scientists’ living room. There were several different machines and things spread out in the living room. One machine was in a circular shape with two large cylinders on the sides with tubes coming out of them.

Cadi giggled as she poked Mr. Johnston in the leg.

“Cadi! Don’t touch anything!” Rick seethed. “Or anyone.” At this, Cadi pouted.

“Fine…”

Rick was spoiling the fun...

“I wonder what all of this stuff does…” her older brother muttered, sliding a finger gently over the circular machine that was taller than he was.

“Hey! How come you get to touch something and I don’t?” Cadi exclaimed.

“Because I’m older. And you break things.”

“No I don’t!”

“Yes you do.”

“Name one thing I’ve broken!”

“My laptop. Two years ago.”

“That was an accident! And I was six!”

“I’m still not going to trust you with electronics.”

Cadi glared at her brother as he rolled his eyes and turned back to the machines.

She was old enough to handle this rebelliousness!

So when Rick wasn’t looking, she touched something just to spite him.

Rick started to wander into another room, following some of the cables that were hooked up to the circular machine. He found himself in a room with a high ceiling and a stairwell, where several glowing generator looking things were placed in different spots around the room and on the stairs.

“What are they trying to do here?” Rick asked mostly to himself, finding a larger circular machine similar to the one in the living room. The seventeen year old walked over to a rolling chalkboard, where several things were pinned up. On the board, were some strange pictures. Rick looked closer to try to see what was in the pictures.

In one picture, it was of the circular machine that was in the living room. In the picture, it looked like it was up and running, and in the middle of the bright light that was emanating from it, there appeared to be… the figure of a person?

What were these people doing?

What were they looking for?

Suddenly, Rick jumped as he heard a crash from the living room. He ran in there, to see Cadi standing there petrified, a destroyed machine at her feet, her arms still out as if she had been holding it.

“Oops…”

“CADI!”

“It was an accident!!”

“I said don’t touch anything!!”

The two of them froze, as suddenly, the machine at their feet started to beep and smoke.

“Agh!!” Cadi screamed, launching back as it started to whizz around. Rick quickly grabbed her and pulled her into one of the closets. It was a sliding door with the lines that shed little bits of light on them.

“Unfreeze time Cadi! Let the scientists handle it!!”

Cadi closed her eyes.

“What in the world?!” they heard Mr. Johnston exclaim. The two of them peered through the cracks in the door.

Harry jumped up, knocking his papers everywhere, and Emille immediately reached for a nearby fire extinguisher as the little machine caught fire.

“Harry! Shut it down!!” Emille yelled. Harry turned to his computer and then started to madly type away at it.

Finally, the machine gave one more beep and powered down.

The three adults in the room stood there for a moment, trying to calm down after the commotion.

“When did the generator stabilizer start malfunctioning?” the woman wondered out loud.

“Um. It was malfunctioning a few days ago-remember? We had that little-.” Harry began.

“No! I’m not talking about a few days ago.” Emille interrupted. “I mean just now. The machine was over there a few seconds ago, and somehow it ended up all the way over here…”

The two men did not have an answer for this.

Silently, the woman picked up another little machine with an antennea and started slowly walking around the room.

“What’s she doing?” Cadi whispered. Rick quickly clamped a hand on her mouth, shushing her. Cadi struggled against him as all younger siblings do. She stopped when the machine in the woman’s hands started to make a shrill noise.

“Did the scanner actually pick something up?” Mr. Johnston asked.

“Yes… An actual time anomaly!” she exclaimed. “The stabilizer somehow interacted with some part of the time stream!”

“Really?!” Harry asked, jumping up and looking at the scanner himself. “Was it the only thing?”

“I don’t know… Let me see…”

The scanner continued to let out a shrill shriek here and there as Emille traveled around the room. Cadi and Rick hardly dared to breathe.

The two of them felt their hearts beating faster as the woman slowly started to come towards the closet. The scanner was starting to go crazy.

“Why is it freaking out over the closet?” Harry asked, confused. “We don’t even have any machinery in there do we?”

Emille put her hand on the handle of the door.

“Cadi!! Pause time! Pause time!” Rick whispered frantically, pulling her back from the door. Cadi quickly closed her eyes.

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Emille opened the closet door right as the scanner stopped freaking out.

There was nothing in there but unused coats that they would eventually bring out when the summer season was over.

“That is certainly strange…” she muttered, turning and waving it around the room again. It shrieked again at their open window, but when she looked outside, there was nothing there.

“What’s going on?” West asked as he helped Harry pick up some of the pieces of the broken stabilizer.

“I don’t know… Harry, plug in the stabilizer camera into your computer. Let’s see if it picked anything up.”

“Camera? Why in the world would you have a camera on something like that?” West asked.

“Well…” Harry began as he hooked up a usb to their broken machine. “This isn’t the first time some of our stuff has mysteriously broken. And when you’re dealing with time, you want to be prepared for anything.”

“Are you talking about the weird person you saw?”

“That Emille saw.”

“The woman.” Emille added, sitting next to Harry as he pulled up the camera’s file. The three of them scooted in closer to see if there was anything picked up.

The three of them stared at the first picture, a blurry picture that was still distinctly of a person wearing a pink shirt and black hair.

“She was here…” Emille breathed, trying to zoom in but finding the quality wasn’t good enough.

“I’m not so sure…” Harry said skeptically. “I think this is a different person. See how short the hair is? The other pictures have shown longer hair.”

Impatiently, Emille clicked the arrow to see if there were any other pictures. There was only one more picture, but it was a lot clearer. It only showed the person’s shoes, but they obviously belonged to a child. They were dirty pink and blue tennis shoes.

“That… certainly is… odd…” West said slowly as they continued to look through both pictures.

Emille narrowed her eyes.