6~
The Hour Arch, as the time machine had been dubbed by the scientists who had the honor of working on it, was now complete, and erected on a dais that was suspended on a set of tracked wheels.
Cables still trailed from the Arch's "feet", but now, they were connected to other satellite computers, set up around the Arch to monitor its functions and condition.
Underneath the crane gantries and various-sized, industrial, robotic construction arms, a few mechanical engineers and electricians remained on the premises to repair, or even disassemble the machine, if needed. However, it was the computer programmers and temporal theoreticians who ran the show, and right now, they were busy with what they could charitably call a glitch.
Those who had a moment to stop working, had a chance to catch a glimpse of Marcie and Anne, Benton and Race, and two escorting guards, walking across the busy assembly room towards Quest's dark, yet uncompleted, dream.
"We're almost on schedule, but we've hit a snag," Quest said to them, as they closed in on the Arch. "Since I failed to acquire those sturgeon eggs that I wanted, I will need something else to test the machine, while it's being worked on,"
"How was future caviar going to help you?" Marcie asked. To her credit, she didn't divulge her hand in keeping those eggs from him, but it seemed like such a strange caper. She wanted to know why they were sought so badly.
"I needed test subjects for when I did get the machine," he explained. "The T.H.R.O.B.A.C. was already damaged. Chances were that its safeguards were no longer working properly, and I needed something that could be affected by, say, breaches in the machine's atemporal confinement field, which protects the passengers from aging as they travel."
Marcie found herself nodding in appreciation to the weird logic in Quest's explanation. "Ah, I see. If the fish began to grow in the field while you sent them into, say, the future, then you'd know that there were gaps in the field. Sort of like a canary in a coal mine."
"Exactly," Benton grinned. "You see, Miss Fleach, you do have the kind of mind that I've been looking for in an heiress."
He sauntered over to Anne, luxuriating in her inner turmoil. "As for you, I wouldn't have dreamed of using any of my hard-working staff, but you, Anne, have made an excellent exception."
Finally, the guards stopped the procession a few yards from the towering, technological presence of the Hour Arch, and awaited orders.
"Behold, my guests," Quest said with a grand, flourishing gesture towards the machine. "My future seat of power, and the key to opening the doors to an eternal technocracy."
Humoring him, Marcie decided to do just that, and took a look at the conveyance, studying its details with a young scientist's critical eye.
The Hour Arch was simply that, a 16-foot tall metallic arch with cables winding up its length like ivy, giving it the appearance of some gothic piece of modern art. Glowing, retractable arms set inside its inner walls, pointed down to the next component of the machine, a dark, glassy cylinder, the size of an elevator car, that stood on the dais, between the legs of the Arch.
Marcie determined that it looked rough, but, then, it was a prototype, and prototypes rarely looked and worked as sexy as the finished product. Even if they were made from stolen technology, rather than developed on its own.
Quest, noticing that the teen was staring at the time machine, walked in front of the captive, smoothly pontificating and gloating as he went.
"Admiring my genius?" he asked.
"Sort of," she admitted.
"Look at the top of it. Look familiar?"
Marcie peered at it, again, fearing that she might have missed something. Something important enough for him to gloat over.
High above, set it the point of the Arch's summit, like a jewel in a giant ring, was a pulsating, hourglass-shaped device encased in a sphere that was as clear as glass, but Marcie surmised was made of stronger, more exotic, material. Thinner cables from the Hour Arch's upper curve were laced through the sphere and attached to the device.
Quest was right. There was something...familiar about that particular object. The hourglass shape, the power that emanated and flowed from its core...
And its destruction...
"The core of the Hour Tower!" she gasped.
"The what, dear?" asked Anne, not following the issue being shared between the two of them.
"The Hour Tower, a time machine, believe it or not, and that's its power source," her daughter explained. "It belonged to a mysterious think tank, called Sundial. One of their scientists stole a prototype robot that had a Tower built in. I helped destroy it to save the town."
Anne was stunned. Incredible notions of time machines and mysterious think tanks faded with the shocking knowledge that her daughter faced mortal danger. If she had known that her Marcie would grow up to be such a daredevil and risk-taker, she would had never left her.
"You risked your life, Marcie Fleach?" Anne asked, her maternal concern rising to the fore, once again.
"To help people," Marcie defended. "You do it, too."
Anne waved a disapproving finger at Marcie. She could see where this was going. "Oh, no! This is not an case of Monkey-see, Monkey-do, young lady. I am an adult. I pay taxes!"
"But, Mom-"
"No "buts"! We're going to have a little talk when this is over."
Marcie rolled her eyes in exasperation. Anne was so busy automatically making up for lost time, as a mother, that she failed to see that they might not live long enough to have that talk.
"Ugh!" Marcie sighed. "Anyway, it was stolen afterwards by Dr. Quest!"
Benton shook his head, slowly. "No, dear. Truthfully, I didn't steal the Hour Tower remains from the police, although I dearly wanted to. Your good friend, Mr. Greenman, beat me to it, I'm afraid. However, because he didn't have my level of genius, he couldn't make it work, so I agreed to repair it for him, in exchange for my using it."
"That's why you two are working together," Marcie figured, while she spared another look at the arch. 'And that's got to be 'the big thing' the bartender was talking about.'
Quest strolled into the shadow of the time machine. "Please allow me to explain the Hour Arch's features. Oh, I need a volunteer. Miss Fleach, could you come up here?"
"No, thanks!" said mother and daughter, not sure on which Fleach he wanted.
With a quick snap and a point to Anne, Quest commanded the guard to grab and drag her towards the Arch.
"What are you going to do to her?" Marcie asked, while thinking of anything to get them both out of this.
Quest walked over to the dark cylinder that the Arch towered over, accompanied by the guard, and a greatly reluctant Anne. He then smugly began to show off the cylinder like a used car salesman, for Marcie's benefit.
"This is the Arch's control cabin, the only part of the machine that actually goes anywhere. Think of the Arch as a sling, and the cabin, as a slingshot," he said, proudly. "It contains the navigational controls that keep the occupants stationary in space relative to the Hour Arch's position on Earth, yet moves their collective mass through time, as well as a tachyon communication loop with the Arch, telling it where to sling the booth, and when to pull it back home."
The guard opened the glossy, black door and shoved the struggling woman into the seated cabin. She fell into the curved couch in the back, and managed to give a desperate look at Marcie, past the guard, before the curved door closed smoothly and locked quietly.
Marcie, who looked equally stricken, was forced to hear Benton continue his talk.
"Before the Arch sends the cabin on its way, the cabin has to be enveloped in the atemporal confinement field, whose generator, a miracle of miniaturization, is built into the base of the cabin. If we send your mother to the future, she might become dust by the time she arrived at her destination, and if we send her in the past…well, you're a clever girl. You'll figure it out."
"Yes, I will," Marcie swore past clenched teeth. "I won't join you, Quest!"
"What happened to "Doctor"?"
"Doctors heal. They help. I don't see that here. As a matter of fact, let her go. I'll go in her place."
Quest gave an oily smile, glancing to the trapped woman. "A tempting offer, but your mother has tried my patience long enough, by helping you stand against my Questoid."
He marched towards a computer station, and asked its operator, "Do we still have control, here?"
"Yes, sir," she said. "The Hour Arch can be operated from here, until it's achieved full functionality, and can be operated from its cabin."
"Excellent." He met Marcie's pleading stare with a satisfied glance of his own. "Set the destination for...sixty years in the past, if you please."
He returned to his spot near Race, the guards and Marcie, triumphant.
"I know that women rarely own up to their ages," Benton gloated, coldly. "But I can make a rough estimate about your mother's. Sixty years should be enough time to wipe her from existence. I'm afraid that the Lab Rat has run her final maze."
Marcie hung her head. The failure was almost too much for her. It was almost too unreal.
Almost...
"Quest, if I ever do join you," she growled, her wet eyes burning into his smug face. "I swear that I'll do everything I can to destroy your little tin empire from within."
"Then, it's a good thing that I'm close to conquering time, Miss Fleach, so I can undo what you do," Quest countered. Then, he pointed to the operator. "Proceed."
The computer operator's fingers flew along the keyboard, sending commands to the cabin's navigation computer, starting the sequence of protocols and events that signaled the activation of the Hour Arch.
The lights of the Arch's inner arms began to pulse and they began to extend down from their holes, pointing at the top and sides of the cylinder, and Anne, inside. Suddenly, charged particle beams from the arms tips struck the air around the cabin in perfect sync, cocooning it in a ethereal glow.
Marcie was lost. She couldn't think, either from the desperation of the situation, or from just not finding a solution in time. Whatever the reason, all she could do, as her heart sank, was watch her mother, who she just found after years of separation, die before her eyes.
Her hands clenched in anger at Quest, at Mr. Greenman, and herself, but she kept them at her sides. Then, one of her wrists bumped against the hard, round object in one of her lab coat pockets.
In all the excitement, she had forgotten that Anne had slipped something into it when they hugged in Quest's office, earlier. What was it?
Marcie surreptitiously slipped a hand into the pocket to feel what was in there. It was covered in bumpy surface details, like the skin of a grip. It was meant to be grabbed, or manipulated.
Then, her thumb stroked against a stub that rose from an angle on the object. She had an dubious idea of what it was, but time was literally running out for her mother. She had to take a chance.
She depressed the thumb button, pulled out the object from her pocket, and let it fall by her feet. Then, she closed her eyes, and prayed that she was right.
The men around her noticed the device fall to the floor, but before they could turn and run, everyone in a yards-wide radius of Marcie, lost their ability to see, in a literally blinding flash.
Anne's flash grenade went off successfully, and even though Marcie closed her eyes prior to detonation, because she was at ground zero of the blast, even her vision was affected.
She broke into a stumbling run towards the machine, guided more by memorization of its location, than true sight. What she could make out was a blurry illumination of everything ahead of her, but she was making better progress than the rest of the people around her, who she could hear crashing into computer stations, tripping over cables, or bumping into themselves.
Finally, Marcie collided with the cabin's face and clumsily felt for the latch to open it. Soon, she found it and unlocked the booth, setting of safeguards that did work, shutting down the whole machine with a loud, dying thrum.
"Mom! Are you alright?" Marcie asked, as she thrusted a probing hand into the interior, hoping against hope that she could feel another hand.
When a trembling hand did grab hers, Marcie let out a silent, grateful word of thanks, and pulled her Anne out.
With the flash's effects starting to wane, Marcie remembered the direction of the entrance to the assembly room, and ran, pell-mell for it, pulling her mother along , and not sparing a single glance in back of her. She knew they had to hurry and escape, for if her vision was clearing, so was Quest's and the others.
The consternation behind them sounded softer and more distant as they ran across the expanse of the chamber, and finally reached the steel door.
Marcie grabbed the door handle, gave it a wrenching twist, and swung it open, allowing them to enter one of the complex's Assembly Section hallways.
Sprinting over to a waiting elevator, they both jumped in, Marcie scrabbling across the floor buttons and punched one that she hoped would take them up and away from the mad Doctor Quest, at least, for the moment.
As the car ascended, she leaned wearily against the car's wall, while she caught her breath, thinking about her past escapes, and how they might have compared to this one. She didn't even care. They were safe, for now, and if they were fast enough, they were going home.
"That..." Marcie wheezed. "...was too close. I'm seventeen, and I'm saying that I'm too old for this..." She took a better look at her mother, and was too shocked to speak any further.
If Marcie stood up straight, Anne would just come to her chin. Anne stood in clothes that were too awkward and baggy for her, now, smallish frame, her bodily proportions, no longer indicative of an older person, but of someone much, much younger.
"Well, considering the circumstances, my dear," the girlish voice of the youthful Anne Fleach, said, while she hiked up her loose clothes with a troubled shrug. "I have to say that I'm too young."
