The Paradox Corridor

Chapter 27: Signs of Life

Stephen looked exasperated.

"FOOL! You talk of subjugating and ending our people's race, but you still don't realize that I hold all of the cards!" He paused, and then laughed. "However, I still play the part of the hypocrite, as I, too, am a fool! I spent, no, wasted, years and years of my life on trying to find a way out of an impossible position, when all this time this bomb laid here, able to deliver what our decades of work failed to bring us: a way out of this terrible, terrible war!" A resounding BOOM shook the already dilapidated lab, and we all watched on as a Sorratakan ship, having been shot down, headed straight toward two of the anti air cannons in a last-ditch kamikaze attempt. The anti-air cannons tried desperately to fire at it, in the hopes that it would divert the crash, but were forced to abandon their position as the combination of metal and gravity destroyed 2/3 of all Thalidian resistance in the area. As the ship exploded with teratons of force, Stephen began to speak again,

"No matter how much you batter and bruise our planet, you shall NEVER gain ANYTHING from it! In fact, the only thing that you could gain from all of this is more available parking spaces in your parking lots, as any spaceship in the same solar system of the explosion would be incinerated, or at the very least heavily damaged! At least then you would realize that this entire war was pointless! You shall gain nothing from it! This is the final word from the people of Thalidia! IF WE ARE GOING DOWN, YOU ARE COMING DOWN WITH US! BOMB! BEGIN THE COUNTDOWN! CHANGE SETTINGS! 30 SECONDS TILL DETONATION!" And with those words, the circular cube in Stephen's hands floated up, scanned the area underneath it, and began counting down. Stephen laughed maniacally as he watched the cube begin to glow brighter and brighter. He laughed right until a grappling hook came out of nowhere and wrapped around the bomb. I turned to see that it had been shot from the robot, and a quick scan revealed that it was priming its feet. For what, I had no idea. I saw it put the cube into a hatch that had opened in its side, and put its hands at its sides, priming them up as well. Then, when it looked up at the sky, I knew what it was about to do. It was about to fly as far away from the planet as possible so the explosion wouldn't cause nearly as much damage. The only thing I didn't get was...why? Why would it try to protect the planet it was trying to raze and destroy? To save the majority of its fleet, maybe? My rather fast thoughts were interrupted by flames, exhaust, and a loud roar that were emitted from its feet and hands, and the robot began to accelerate toward the ceiling, just as I had thought. But as it broke through what was left of the ceiling, the strangest thing happened. The robot was suddenly wrenched to its side in midair, as if something had grabbed its side by what seemed to be an invisible force. No matter what it did, which included a lot of thruster changes and cannon discharges, its side remained...stuck, or whatever the heck it was, inside the building. I was surprised, but Stephen wasn't. In fact, he began to laugh manically, so hard in fact that he doubled over. He would have continued if not for the fact that the robot shot a missile at him, which seemed almost funny since it was rather obvious that the missile was supposed to shut him up, rather than actually doing him any harm. Sure enough, the missile hit the wall a little to the left of him, forcing Stephen to dive to the right. The robot continued it's intense struggle, but I quickly realized that the entire situation was hopeless. The bomb, for whatever reason, could not leave the lab, a system, I realized, that was most likely to prevent the thievery of arguably the most dangerous thing in the universe. The robot was completely tied up with trying to carry out its mission, and Stephen sat among the dismal wreckage of the lab, laughing like a total maniac. Then I realized that there was one other thing in the room...me. I could actually hear the gears whirring as I began to think faster than I ever had. My train of thought went something like this:

"I don't have any weapons, so brute strength won't work. Anyways, that wouldn't do much at all. I could deactivate the bomb...but how? I don't know the passcode, and I would need a lot more time...I can't make Stephen do it, because he could just stall for time or lie...Timeout. What can I do? Reality check: I can move, use time radiation to do cool stuff (although I don't have much radiation left). I can send things through time and program extremely fast...WAIT. THAT'S IT!" My train of thought brought me to one conclusion: If I could make a program to do it fast enough, I could maybe, maybe send the bomb to a different location, and even a different time! I began furiously programming while I, as quickly as possible, fired up the electrical rod, while at the same time moving the pedestal down so it could fit the bomb. I immediately attempted to signal the robot, but it's comm link was currently disabled. I knew that no matter what I did I had to move the bomb to the pedestal as quickly as humanly (or, I guess, inhumanly) as possible. So I stopped asking nicely, and channeled all of the remaining radiation energy into the new program I had created. This took all of 4 seconds, by the way. (Andrew, I told you already! MACHINES THINK FASTER THAN PEOPLE! STOP INTERRUPTING!). The program activated instantly, and the world seemed to slow down extremely. I saw the bomb at 8.5 seconds, the robot slowly firing away at the invisible boundary, and Stephen laughing. I looked "deeper", and saw the entire room at the molecular level, and watched as the atoms, even at this slowed down state, whizzing around crazily. I concentrated extremely hard, and I saw results, although not immediately. One by one, I saw the atoms begin to flow lazily toward me. My ultimate molecular "vacuum" was working. The effect began multiplying, and I watched, with some delight, as Stephen slipped toward me in slow motion, then grabbed onto a handlebar on the broken wall. The robot, too, began to feel the effects, and it's attempts became that much more difficult as it began descending slowly from the ceiling. I wondered if it would take too long to suck the bomb up, but right as I did I saw the molecules of the bomb stuck in the robot's side all ripple at once. I watched as text rolled across the screen: EMERGENCY. BOMB CRITICAL. ACTIVATING ENERGY SHIELDS AND REDUCING THE COUNTDOWN TO 30 SECONDS. I WOULD ADVISE NOT BEING NEAR THIS BOMB, FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY. I couldn't believe my good fortune. The bomb's settings had activated, and what it didn't know was that it had just increased the timer rather than reducing it. I couldn't believe my good fortune. The vacuum continued, and random debris began flying toward me. The rod activated right as the debris went under it, and the debris shot through the time door, which I had set to send to any location where there was no life. The robot's fuel cells began to run low, and the robot began to speed up it's decent toward the ground, or, more accurately, me. I increased the vacuum, and then I heard a high pitched wail. The robot's power was all but gone, and it dropped toward the ground like a stone. It hit with a CRASH, and pieces of it's metal-like armor began to fall off as it tried to get away from the vacuum, but to no avail. I changed the vacuum to suck only what was in front of me, and the combined power of all that suction was too much for it. It stumbled, and then it began to rather quickly slide backward towards me. As it tumbled towards me, more and more armor fell off of it, and as one of it's legs was torn off, I looked at the world at the molecular level, and saw something fascinating that I had never seen before: there were life signs inside! Maybe the robot was alive after all, sort of like me! I showed up on life scans too, so it would make sense. I saw the bomb in its chamber inside the robot, and watched as it broke free of its bondage. Everything took little to no electricity to send back through time: the bomb, however, needed far more electricity, and I watched with horror as the countdown reached three. I poured the last bit of my power into the rod, almost overloading it, and the bomb, almost hissing with anger, flew through the door right as the counter reached 1. I felt sorry for wherever the bomb had ended, because it was about to go through living hell.