The Shot Heard 'Round The World

There was a giant, gleaming pile of scrap metal in his living room.

And it was beeping.

"Spinelli! GET DOWN HERE!"

His roommate popped up from behind the metal monstrosity with a monkey wrench and a Phillip's flathead. "Stone Cold! You've returned…a little ahead of schedule!"

"What the hell is this thing?" he demanded, stripping off his leather jacket. "Why is it in my living room? What'd you do with the pool table?"

"I moved it into the kitchen, duh," he replied. "So? Any luck? Did you find the Fair Elizabeth? Did you convince her to come home from New York and give your relationship another shot?"

Jason scowled and tossed his jacket onto the couch. "I couldn't find her. I parked outside her apartment and sat there for hours, but she didn't come home."

Spinelli's shoulders slumped. "So she didn't even know that you made the trip to see her?"

"…I got a voicemail from her telling me to go home and that she didn't want to see me anymore."

His friend set down his tools and walked over, his expression remorseful. "So that's it, then? The Fair Elizabeth won't take the Stone Cold one back?"

"I don't think so, Spinelli," Jason sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face. "Listen, I'm going to go upstairs, so just…get this crap out of here by morning and have the guys move the pool table back in."

"Er…Stone Cold?"

He glanced over his shoulder. "What?"

Spinelli smirked at the beeping gizmo. "What would you say if I told you I might have a way for you to go back in time to before you started sleeping with Kung-Fu Courtney so that the Fair One would never leave Port Charles and would still be cohabitating here with us?"

Jason wasn't following. "Are you high again?"

"What? No!" Spinelli swept his hair out of his face and hopped back around the machine, picking up his tools. "This is the Spin-O-Matic Awesometown USA Time Traveling Machine. I realize the name needs a little bit of work," he added, "but it's a fully functional time traveling machine. And it can take you anywhere you want to go."

Jason stared at him. "You've got to be fucking kidding me."

"I'm serious," he insisted. "I've been working on this non-stop for the past three days while you were in New York trying to convince Fair Elizabeth to forgive you for your alcohol-induced transgression. And I've done a few trial runs, and it works! It really works, Stone Cold! And I can't think of anyone better than you for the maiden voyage."

"…You've got to be fucking kidding me."

Spinelli rolled his eyes. "Look, I'm telling you, I tried it out. I sent myself ten seconds into the future, threw a handful of confetti in the air, sent myself back to the present, and ten seconds later, guess what happened."

"Your brain fused."

"No, there was confetti raining down! Stone Cold, if you're not at least going to try, this isn't going to be any fun. It's so totally simple. I just have to twist a few knobs and I can send you back in time to before you slept with the Bubblehead Barbie and when Elizabeth was still living here with us. And then all you have to do is, you know, not sleep with the Donkey Girl."

"Enough with the nicknames, Spinelli."

"I'm just saying that she doesn't have a good gum-to-tooth ratio," Spinelli replied. "Let's put it this way, Stone Cold: what do you have to lose? Say this time machine doesn't work. Say you step back out and you're still in the present. What did you lose? Why not just give it a shot?"

He eyed the beeping monstrosity suspiciously. "What do you have to do with this thing?"

"I'll show you." Spinelli took his arm and hauled him over, pushing him through a little portal and into the garishly lit machine. "You stand there, okay?"

Jason nodded, feeling just a little stupid. Spinelli was always designing crazy gizmos and doo-dads that he wanted Jason to try out. There was his Butler-O-Matic that was a timed grill that would automatically fry bacon next to your bed in the morning. That thing had nearly set the bed on fire. And of course, Jason wouldn't soon forget Spinelli's Shave-O-Matic that consisted of six razor blades on a spinning fan for maximum coverage. The stupid kid had actually expected Jason to try that without having a few doctors on hand for the imminent transfusion.

"Just stand here?"

"Just like that," Spinelli affirmed. "I'll take care of everything."

"Whoa, whoa," Jason interrupted, "don't actually do anything. Just tell me what you would do and what would happen, but don't actually do it. Just in case this death trap actually works."

"It does work, but okay. See, you stand right there. And I stand over here." He quickly trotted over to the control board, tools still in hand. "See, there are all these knobs and buttons here. I switch the knob back to a random spot."

He twisted the knob around, not particularly caring where it landed because after all, this was just a trial run. "And that's when I would make sure to set it back to exactly where you wanted to go. And then I'd press these buttons like this and…Oops."

Jason's eyes widened when the machine began to whir. "Spinelli? What happened?"

"…I dropped my wrench on the control board."

Jason swore and was just about to leap out of the thing when it began to rumble, and then it began to smoke, and he heard Spinelli's yell but he couldn't see him because there was too much smoke and the lights were all going off and the thing was shrieking and…

Spinelli stared, slack-jawed, at the empty time machine.

"Holy shit."