Intermission // Van McCann

10. Harder Than Expected

It took Van 56 minutes to get to work but I wasn't counting or anything. Iván and I tried to get some work done but we couldn't concentrate at all. All Iván did was move stuff around his desk and I began organizing the kitchenette, throwing away stuff we were never going to use. The door opened and our heads turned sharply towards the door, making Van nervous as he entered.

"I'm here. Sorry I'm late," he announced, looking at the both of us. "So what's the problem?"

Iván looked at me in fear, wanting me to speak and I glared at him, wanting him to speak.

"Iván, please! You were the one who witnessed the whole thing," I urged him on. Van turned to look at Iván and he seemed to shrink.

"Because you and Ren called out sick today, Bondy wanted to go on a mission to the future," Iván started, scratching his head. "He was in the time machine when the power went out. I'm sure you saw the email. The power went out for less than a minute, but when it came back on, everything got reset so I panicked and pressed the button to bring Bondy back but nothing happened. I waited for the time to expire to press the button again but he still didn't come back. I turned everything off and turned it back on hoping that would fix things but he's still not back! I think he's stuck in the time machine and I don't know what to do!"

He was crying again and I felt horrible. Van continued to stare at him, wide-eyed until he came to his senses and walked up to the time machine. He crouched down to assess all the outlets and to make sure everything was plugged in. After a few minutes, he stood up.

"Everything's plugged into emergency power," he said slowly, pushing his hair back. "It always has been but it's unfortunate the university had an issue. I reckon they had a power surge when everything began using emergency power all at once, causing the system to overflow and fail. Is the power stable now?"

"I called facilities engineering about an hour ago and they said everything should be fine now," I responded.

"I'm going to restart the computer," Van announced, shutting everything down. He began turning everything off and made sure everything was off before restarting the computer. "Iván, did you notice anything strange when the power went out? We didn't blow a fuse, did we?" Van began checking the wires out of precaution.

"Inglés, por favor," Iván replied.

"Did you hear a loud pop? Did you see any sparks?"

"No."

"That's good news, then."

The computer was finally ready and Van began turning everything on again. He gave it a minute before walking around, checking that everything was in working order.

"Well everything seems to be working fine..." he said to himself, and he pressed the button to bring Bondy back but nothing happened. "I'm going to pull up the log." Van began typing away and a screen I have never seen before popped up. He began scrolling through the pages of text, quickly reading what was on the screen. "This is the activity log," Van explained. "I'm looking at the history of all actions taken. I see that the power went out at 1035. The computer logged that. Where did Bondy go?"

"He wrote it down," Iván answered, pointing at the notebook. Van glanced down and opened it, entering the settings like I had earlier before Iván stopped me. Van stood up and made his way towards the time machine and I could feel the fear kicking in.

"Y-You're not actually going to use the time machine, are you?" I questioned. We already lost Bondy and I didn't want to lose him either.

Van turned to look at me, smirking. "'Course not. I'm going back to the good ol' days when we were afraid to go back in time." Van knelt down to remove one of his boots and set it on the time machine. "I'm gonna send my boot to the future but at 0955." Van walked back to the computer to double check the settings one last time. "3...2...1...."