Time Again

31 October 2021

“Okay, I don’t get how this works; Just explain it one last time.”

“Jesus, again? It’s a life-sensing device that rewinds time by a few minutes if the user dies, that’s what we’re here to steal. Which means we gotta dispose of this body or it’ll deploy again,” He explained, much as an exasperated teacher would to a class that stopped giving a shit a long ago.

I was starting to get it, but clearly I didn’t look like it because he grandly gestured to the corpse on the ground with the bloodied Nobel Prize still in hand. The ex-person was a chubby bastard with a formerly white lab coat, now more red than anything else.

Plastered around the room and shelves were certificates for government grants and devices that all had the vibe of “homemade bomb” about them. Some more impressive machinery looked like it had been placed carefully on shelves and others had been chucked into boxes with the care of a moving service.

“Jamie, can’t we just break it?” I asked, reaching for his pocket. Jamie immediately slapped my hand away.

“No way! What if that’s what we did last time!?” He shouted.

I looked at him, confused.

“What do you mean ‘last time’?”

“We have to assume that this isn’t the first time we’ve done this.”

“Well, what if we’re just doing everything exactly the same. INCLUDING questioning what we did in that exact way?”

“Then either there’s nothing we can do or there’s something so we might as well at least try.”

Despite his reassurances I felt deflated.

“Fuck it, if nothing’s gonna matter I wanna commit some crimes.”

Jamie shot a glare at me.

“WE ALREADY COMMITTED A CRIME,” He shouted, flinging his arms towards the corpse.

“How about I flip a coin?” I suggested. “If we’re gonna be truly random about it then we gotta flip a coin. That’s how they do it in movies.”

“And if literally everything’s the same then the coin toss is gonna be the same.”

I flicked the coin up and hid it under my hand.

“So? Like you said, if that’s true we’re gonna do all this again anyway. Might as well try. So what are we thinking? Heads we dump the body and tails we break the device?”

Jamie looked down and pursed his lips, deep in thought.

“How about heads we break the thing and tails we try to see how it works.”

I furrowed my brow at him.

“But…we’re idiots.”

“I KNOW!” He shouted, unfolding his arms, “But what other choices do we have?”

I nodded and opened my hand: Heads. We both gave a sigh of relief and scrambled for the corpse’s pocket. The device was a nondescript grey pod with a light on the front and a dish on the top; There were no buttons or displays. The device had turned on since we were talking, glowing a faint blue and the little dish was spinning

He dropped it to the ground and stomped away at it like a comedy prospector stomping on his hat. He gave one last almighty slam and fell back on a nearby office chair. We looked around at the room and ourselves.

“Did it work?” I asked.

“Well, are we back in time?” He replied.

“How would I know what that would feel like!”

We stayed a few seconds in contemplative silence until finally I had to ask.

“Okay, I don’t get how this works; Just explain it one last time.”

“Jesus, again?”