EIGHT

"No," cried Phoebe, slapping the side of her computer monitor, "no, no, don't freeze up on me now. I'm almost finished."

"Thank God," Piper sighed.

Phoebe looked up and saw Piper and Malcolm standing in front of her desk.

"Hey, sis," said Phoebe, smiling. "I didn't hear you come in."

Just then Phoebe noticed everyone in the outer offices. She watched them for a few moments and noticed that no one was moving.

"Piper," said Phoebe with a nervous smiling looking at Malcolm, "what's going on?"

"Do you know where Paige is?" Piper asked.

"Yeah," said Phoebe. "She said something about going to a move with a friend. Why? And who is your friend?"

"Come on," said Piper, grabbing Phoebe's hand, "we'll explain on the way. I hope you wore comfortable shoes today."

"So you mean the entire world is frozen in time?" Phoebe asked after Piper and Malcolm had explained to her what was going on.

"Perhaps more than that," said Malcolm. "It is possible that the field extends far out into space as well. As I explained, it continues to increase in strength the farther it travels."

"And you brought me out of it how?" Phoebe asked.

"Oh, well, that's a little harder to explain," said Piper. "It seems my explosive power has some applications none of us ever considered."

"Explosive power?" Phoebe questioned, suddenly realizing what Piper was saying. "Are you crazy? You used your explosive power on me? What would you have done if I had blown up instead of being freed from the time freeze?"

"She would have been very sad for the next eight hours and forty-seven minutes," said Malcolm. "But you were really in no danger. The device that has frozen time compensated as I knew it would."

"Lucky for me it did," said Phoebe. "So, if you can't blow this force field up, Piper, what are you planning? Are we going to use a Power of Three spell to bring it down?"

"No," said Piper. "Spells are useless right now. As Malcolm explains it they must be some form of external magic we're able to control so they're affected by the time freeze as well."

"So then what's the plan?" Phoebe asked.

"We find Paige," said Piper, "I unfreeze her, and then she orbs inside the shield and shuts the machine down. That should put everything back to normal."

"Orb?" questioned Malcolm.

"Yes," said Piper. "Sort of like teleportation, I guess. Anyway, Paige should be able to orb through the shield. If she can all she has to do is flip the off switch and time restarts."

"And if she can't?" Phoebe asked.

"We'll jump off that bridge when we get to it," said Piper. "Right now we have to get to Paige and get her out of the time freeze."

"She should be just ahead," said Phoebe. "Assuming she didn't go somewhere else first. You know how impulsive she can be."

"Just like her big sister," said Piper.

"Yeah, yeah, okay, I used to be really impulsive," said Phoebe. "I'm doing better though."

They had just come to a theater and saw a line of people standing in front of the ticket counter. Paige and a man neither Piper nor Phoebe recognized were in the line near the front. The man had some money in one hand and appeared to be counting it. Paige stood next to him with her arm linked in his watching him.

Like everyone else Paige and her date were frozen in time. Phoebe found it odd to see Paige frozen. Piper's freezing ability didn't work on witches so even when she used it she and Paige had been unaffected. Of course seeing everything everywhere frozen had a very unsettling affect on Phoebe.

Piper stepped up next to Paige and raised her hands. She hesitated for a minute. Even though her power had freed Phoebe and hadn't seemed to do any harm it still didn't feel right using her explosive power on her sister. Still she knew she didn't have any choice. It was the only way to free Paige and restore the natural flow of time. After a moment Piper tapped into her explosive power and cast it at Paige.

"And I heard this movie is supposed to be up for a couple of Academy Awards," said Paige. "Austin? Austin, are you okay?"

"He's fine," said Piper. "He's just a bit frozen that's all."

"Piper, Phoebe?" questioned Paige looking around. "Is it a good idea for you to be using your freezing ability in public, Piper?"

"Actually," said Piper, "I didn't do it. Malcolm here did."

"Malcolm?" questioned Paige, looking at him.

"Malcolm Spencer," said Malcolm, introducing himself, "professor of applied physics at CalTech. A pleasure to make your acquaintance."

"Piper, Phoebe, what's going on here?" Paige asked looking around again. "I though only Piper had the ability to freeze things?"

"As far as I know I am the only one," said Piper, taking Paige by the arm. "At least the only witch. What's happened here isn't magical. Come on. We need your help and we're running out of time."

"My help with what?" Paige asked.

"We'll explain on the way," said Phoebe.

By the time they had reached the warehouse they had given Paige the basic gist of what was happening. Malcolm had tried to help with the explanations but always seemed to become more technical than the girls could understand. By the time they entered the building Paige knew as much as any of them did.

"So this machine actually stopped time?" Paige asked. "I didn't know that was possible."

"Well until a few hours ago it was all theoretical," said Malcolm. "And unfortunately since it's all happening outside the bubble there won't be any substantial readings to analyze. And I'm not sure we'll ever be able to fully understand exactly what went wrong."

"We can analyze later," said Piper. "Right now Paige has to get inside that bubble and shut this machine done. How much time do we have left?"

"Not as much as I had hoped," said Malcolm looking at the control panel. "Apparently the loss of coolant is increasing exponentially. I'd say we have less than seven minutes before the coolant drops below the safe level. Then the reactor will go super critical and explode."

"So there's no time to loose," said Piper. "Paige, you have to get inside that bubble and shut the machine down. There's a shut off switch on the control panel. Just flip it and Malcolm says the machine should shut down."

"That may not be possible," said Malcolm.

"What are you talking about?" Phoebe asked.

"According to these readings," said Malcolm, "the reactor has already begun to malfunction. It's flooding everything inside the bubble with massive amounts of radiation. That amount of radiation must be affecting the controls. There's no guarantee any of them will function properly. Which means the shut off switch may not work."

"It's our only chance," said Phoebe.

"That's not all," said Malcolm. "The amount of radiation flooding inside the bubble is massive. Several times the lethal dosage for any living organism. If anyone enters the bubble they will be exposed to all that radiation. If Paige orbs inside she'll take the full force of it. And there's no way to protect her from it. If she goes in there she'll die within minutes."