Devil's Paradise

14: Time Machine: Lady Dragon

Two years later, I was in the lab finishing the time machine when a lady dragon walked in. I glanced over as the door opened, then my mouth dropped open. I set down my tools and climbed down from the ladder.

The head was a perfect dragon's head, with fangs, forked tongue, and a little smoke rising from the nostrils. Green eyes with slit pupils blinked with double eyelids. "Hello," it said, in a raspy bass that was utterly believable as a dragon's voice.

From the neck down, however, she was a human woman, in a black body stocking that left little to the imagination.

"Hello, Delilah," I said, chuckling after a careful examination. "I had no idea dragons could be so sexy."

"I am not Delilah," the dragon snarled, which was pointless, given how the rest of her displayed. Then it broke into a horrible hacking, hissing sound I interpreted, after several seconds, as a laugh.

"That really sounds awful on the outside."

After more hacking laughter, the hands reached up and lifted off the spherical helmet, revealing Delilah.

"I'm glad you like it," she said, smiling. I realized the present tense was not accidental. She wasn't talking about the helmet.

"I helped build it," I said, gesturing to the helmet, "And I still can't get over how realistic it is."

She pouted a little, and said, "We can't make them fast enough. They are putting our town on the world map."

I shrugged and climbed back up the ladder.

"Louis," she said, "How close are you to finishing that thing?"

"Close," I said. "Another couple of days."

"Hm. Do you still think you can travel through time?"

"Yes," I said, going back to reconnecting circuits.

She walked around to the front of the machine. "It just looks like a big doorway. Tell me again how it works."

I sighed. "Merlin, help me remember where we are."

"Okay, Boss."

I climbed back down. "I don't fully understand it myself. The time field is created within the doorway and traveling through the doorway inserts oneself into the time field. How far you travel through time—that's one bit we don't know."

Delilah frowned. "What happens if you get halfway through the field and turn back?"

"I hadn't thought of that. Nothing good. Merlin?"

"As Louis said, this is unconfirmed, but as far as I have been able to determine, anything going partway through a field and stopping would be separated at the point of stopping."

Delilah paled, and my stomach clenched. "They would be cut in half?" I said.

"That would be extremely unlikely, but the person or object would be split in whatever proportion they were through the field when they stopped."

"So a person going halfway through," Delilah said, "would be chopped in half. And the other end—whenever that was—would see a half person come through?"

"That is essentially the hypothesis, Ms. Witherstick, although the proportions would vary greatly."

"Merlin, I don't think we need to experiment with that one," I said. I felt ill, and Delilah looked it. "What about heartbeats and things moving inside the body?"

"Those would be subject to the same dangers, Louis. Therefore you would need to run and jump through the field, to avoid any backward motion."

"Louis, that is much too dangerous." Delilah was looking at me with wide eyes.

I glared at her. "I'll just have to run and jump, then. Delilah, you know what this is about."

She looked back at the machine. "Two days, you said, to finish?"

"That's right."

She nodded abruptly and swept out of the lab without another word. I listened to her go up the stairs before I said anything. I didn't like the determined look in her eyes. She had been against this idea from the start, for several reasons. Maybe they weren't all rational, but that didn't matter now.

"Merlin, I don't know what she is planning, but I'll bet it involves taking over everything and shutting this project down. We can't wait any longer. We have to finish tonight!"

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