Dr T and his time machine

“Yeah.. OKay Okay.. OKAY! I am telling you, I am telling you one by one in detail…” Dr. T coughed twice.

“Please wait..” He coughed again,turned his wrist around so as to make the other corner face the rope. His whole body was shivering from the pain but still his leg had enough energy left to force the rope one more time to unfold, but the result was similar to the thirty previous times, FAIL.

He was Dr. T. “The greatest scientist this stupid world could ever have” he always wrote in his bio. But people didn’t like him. They would call him a “mad scientist”, burn his laboratory, try to damage it by hurling stones, but then would ultimately return, exhausted, sad as well, seeing all the efforts been futile. Mr. X had his laboratory so advanced that it would have survived even a small bomb blast, with all his contents intact.

A family-less life, political pressure, public hatred. He was above all this. He knew he has it enough in himself to take over this tiny world and all it would take a minute for him. But there was only one hurdle.This muscular man, standing right in front of him.

“It won’t really take time to turn you into ashes with my laser eyes. You have been really annoying with your lack of details.” Said Bob,a normal man turned super-hero after one crazy experiment by US Military Department in order to secretly create a one-man-army but their plans soon got revealed and they had to relinquish their ownership on their creation. Hence,came a super-hero in 2045. It had been one full year since the “Project B.O.B”got leaked and the man was released for good.

Dr. T was one of the scientists working on the Project. In fact he was the Assistant to the team leader. He was the one who suffered a great loss after the US Government cancelled their deal after the exposure of their secret experiment. His payment was left due and he couldn’t even complain about it.

“The replica machine never worked. The DNA samples always got dwindled and the cellular structure could never recover. Moreover the proteins in the DNA would never be replicated. I tried to inject artificial proteins and some tiny bugs in the test body, but it never worked. I AM NOT FROM IT!”

Bob lowered his thighs, turned around and planted a full-fledged blow right onto his nose.

“I sense lies. I recognize lies.”

“I AM NOT LYING!” T shrugged his shoulders, and cried out in pain. He shook his ass to make him free so vigorously that one knot actually got loose.

“Try some more. I don’t mind even if you get free off the chair. Not that you can run alive from this room.” Bob took a chair for himself too and sat in front of Mr. T.

“YOU ARE DEAD! I killed you.” T’s eyes sharpened and stared hard into Bob’s.

Bob lifted his arm and placed his wrist on T’s head. With brute force. T cried out in pain.

“So, Mr. Scientist. From the start. From the absolute start.No roaming around, straight to the point. I feel you have really nice stuff to talk which is why you are alive. If I smell for something cooked, even if it’s for a bit, I’ll burn you. I’ll burn the shit out of you. From the start.”

“Okay. From the start. Just as you like.”

“Go on. Don’t waste time.”

Mr. T relaxed his shoulders, rested his neck on the hood of the chair and exhaled a long breathe and then saw straight to Bob’s eyes. He coughed again. All his organs were groaning in pain.

“When we last fought one month back from now, that in July 19 2046, it was when you were short of breathe the moment my gun which I named“Raptor” hit you. I had made small changes to its bullets by adding a small pinch of copper just to test what it does to you. It was just an experiment and it was the first time, my any of the experiments against you worked. Bingo! But Copper alone couldn’t be your weakness because the metal is everywhere and you could run into it anytime. It was raining the day before, hence the climate was moist at that time, your skin has a special chemical which was used to make you immune to insects but unfortunately it had a disadvantage too. The chemical used to react with melanin of your skin and you would eventually change your color.

A brilliant idea popped in somebody’s brain, so he decided to make you capable of changing colors according to your surroundings by injecting in you a proper proportion of chameleon’s pigment and your blood, but it eventually failed. Since the idea of camouflage was too cool, it couldn’t just be dropped,so the chemical was allowed to remain inside you until the alternative to that chemical was found which could replace it but works the same when required.”

His face fell down and coughed again.

“But. Haha to your disadvantage, you know what?” T continued, “The same chemical can react with your melanin more vigorously in the presence of dirty water and a pinch of copper mixed with aluminium. You, my dear were standing near a place bauxite is mined. Remember? That created a very little void in your skin making way for the bullet to straight hit your tissues. And that is why Mr.Super hero you fainted.” He turned his head. “Meanwhile you must not really be thinking why I know all this. It’s because I BUILT YOU. That “somebody” was ME!”

Bob’s eyes turned wide.

“We were just inventing the “triggering switch” out of your leg tissues, it was when the tragedy happened. One traitor and years of hard work gone. If that would have happened at least one month later, you’d be probably not visible to me because you might have exchanged your color with your chair. Ohh, sorry not exchanged, but changed. A skin color chair would look terrible.”

He took another breathe.

“Getting the clue, I knew what I needed to do. I worked day and night and in less than a month the gun which was going to kill you was ready. August 10 is the day it was invented. Today. But this can be a bad idea.I realized it after coming here. Ohh, wait. I was in the middle of something, um yes, then we ended up in a fight. I marched my favorite Tango on you, you destroyed it in minutes and I popped out of it in a parachute and shot you with that gun. The target of the parachute was set to the lab and it brought me safely there in less than a minute, faster than your speed.”

“You actually killed me?”

“Yeah. Although I didn’t see it directly, but I am sure I shot you and it was enough to kill you. After Dr Steve, I was the one who knew you the best. It surely must have turned you lifeless. Of course, if you had been alive you would have come to stop me.” He gulped down his throat and forced his eyes to get it rid from a drop of tear. He shook his head again, cleared his throat and continued,

“Immediately after returning to the laboratory, I fired a missile to three countries simultaneously. It was an empty one, plus it wouldn’t have done much damage. It was a warning. To give me a thousand million dollars and complete command over them otherwise the next one would be loaded with poison which could wipe off their entire race. People paid me. They started to respect me.  I became the master of this world.  The world without their savior-YOU.”

“And the time is?” Bob inquired pompously.

“2048. Just two years for me to gain control over the entire world. I got all what I wanted. Position. Power. Money . But ultimately that lavish life deprived me of fun in every possible manner. Instead of watching television which I regularly did earlier, I had to remain in my lab constantly upgrading it so that it would not face a security breach. I had to always monitor it and I couldn’t afford the risk of having partners since now, the whole world  was behind me. I had been manipulating them since years trying to convince them that my “researches” were for good and would bring technological up gradation to the entire world, but doing so was getting difficult day by day. It was now exhausting for me to counter every attack on me and to outwit every conspiracy.

Then I manufactured many automated bots for every task of mine. They handled everything well and soon replaced me. In the very end, I was just a billionaire scientist in a closed building with nothing left to build and plan. My life had become mundane with no juice left. You know I always said that one should not be like grass. They are meant to be trimmed, chewed and walked over. One should be like a thorn. But being a thorn means you will be thrown into seclusion forever. I finally realized that. But it was already too late. Time had already passed.”

T suddenly changed his pace.
“ ‘But, No!’ I then thought to myself. ‘Even time cannot win against the great Dr.T.!’ I got up and started working. This could never have been thought! I was actually building a TIME MACHINE!”’

Pitch silence. Dr. T paused with a huge smile on his face. He looked towards Bob. He was sitting lifelessly.

“Then?” he gruntled.

T smiled, all this while he was afraid whether he could convince him or not, he finally had made him start believing his total crazy story, apparently.

“Now, all that was left to somehow stop my earlier self to kill you. The best time must be the one when you got killed, right? WRONG. I decided to..”

“Hey wait!”

“What?”

“You just said you were building a time machine.”

“Yeah, so?”

“You never said you actually invented the time machine.”

“I actually invented the time machine.”

“Explain me how does it works”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

“I was studying on spectrum analysis of a relatively new isotope of Rhodium I prepared, there I found that the objects when kept in to a box filled with the radiations and cutting the gravity, a rotating magnetic field in a parabolic form forces the electrons of any inanimate object to travel through it in a fixed path travelling through one corner to the other, the time required cannot be calculated because time does not run the usual way inside the test box, but the real thing is that the probability of the electron to overcome the binding forces heavily increases if it completes 15000 trips, so if the inanimate object is made to forcefully leave, he will always return to a fixed time earlier set through a…..”

“Okay Okay.. continue to the story.”

T smirked.

“I time travelled to this time and..”

“How do I believe it?”

“How do I prove it by sitting here? I told you to go to the Hide Park basement to find it but you are so notorious!”

“There can be a trap.”

“Ohh come on! No. You think the greatest scientist ever is here out of his safe laboratory to play stupid games with you?”

“Who knows?”

T lowered his head in disgrace. “So one of my creations denies my creativeness. Hush.” He thought to himself. “How would I prove this guy? There is no instantaneous news I could remember of right now, then how?”

He checked around the room to find something catchy. Old portraits, two dirty capes and an ugly looking suit. He glanced towards the windows, panes with dirt of them, there was a wooden plank surrounding the glass with water ripping down the pane and there it was- a shadow of a head flickered.

“THERE IS SOMEONE OUTSIDE!” He screamed out his throat. Bob turned quickly and opened the door.

There he was. Dr. T,  another T, standing right in front of the door. Perplexed. Shocked, with a small button in hand.

He quickly pressed the button and before Bob could jump upon him, he was vanished.

“Oh, my HOLY! He listened to everything Bob! He must be now heading towards the Hide Park to get the machine. WE MUST RUSH.”

Bob got confused. “What on this earth is happening? Should I believe this future-T or not?” He thought to himself. But he didn’t have time, either way. Just as he was about to leave, T sitting on the chair replied,

“You sure you can handle him? He still has THAT gun!”

Bob stopped. He clenched his wrists in disgust and sighed. He turned back and started to free his captive, hardly had he opened a knot, there was a firing all over the room. Bullets went flying piercing almost everything which came in between.

“HOLD YOUR HEAD DOWN!” T shouted.

“The hell is that guy thinking?” Bob managed to speak in the ambush, “He have his own future self here.”

“Yes,” T’s eyes widened, “What is he doing? He just cannot kill me!” Having received a small help, he untied himself and stood up with his hands still on his head.

The firing stopped. Bob started to rise as well.

“No, you stay down! He is using Raptor for sure.” Both of them saw a black tiny man standing right in front the window and through very small amount of light flickering in through the holes which the bullets just made, they could figure out it was the very mad scientist they were talking about.

“You stay down there.” T hissed to Bob, and turned towards the window. “I am gonna go talking with him.”

T came closer to the window. The figure standing outside moved to the left indicating him to come there.

“Back door” T popped. “He is calling me out through the backdoor. I am going through the other room. Right now I don’t know in what state of mind he is, so please stay down.”

“No, you cannot just go there.”

“Why?”

Bob sighed. “There are important stuff in that room.”

“Ohh, come on for God’s sake, in this time why the hell would I care about knowing your habits of reading stupid  porn magazines. I am going there.”

“Why should I trust you? This isn’t feeling right.” Bob was quick.

“Ohh, come on! You can’t be just doing that. The man standing right outside your house is going to rule over the entire world and the only one who could save him is me, well ironically himself.”

Bob groaned. He was right. There wasn’t any option. Plus if T doesn’t returns in 5 minutes, he could always go out and check for himself what was going on.

“Go!” He exclaimed.

——

10 minutes passed by. He didn’t return. Bob got restless. He bent down on his thighs and cradled the floor. He entered inside and got horrified at the sight. The wardrobe was completely messed up and there were papers flying all over.

“SHIT! He took the drive!” He ran off the backdoor, long distant in the dark fields, he could see no one. Both T’s had just vanished into the air.

——

“He now knows everything. We are finished!” exclaimed Bob in horror.

“No. We cannot just be. This silly stuff cannot be our end.” came a rough voice from the President. He was sitting on a sofa having his tea when this news broke out to him.

“You are so stupid. I gave you the drive for one day. Just one day. And you couldn’t protect it. You are so stupid, Bob, that even you are a disgrace even to the word ‘stupidity’” He took another sip. “Anyway, I will get back to you later. Right now to tackle this, I have a plan. Take me to the place where the machine is kept.”

They were to the gate of the basemen of Hide Park in a flash.

——-

“Yeah, got it.” Spurtled Bob.

“Remember, just the exact words you need to speak, don’t mess up.” President groaned. “Umm, they must be coming here at any moment to retrieve the machine. I have to go to execute the rest of the plan and you know my results are your actions. This is the coat you undressed from him before capturing him. After he believes in your story, just hand him over. I will leave right now.”

“Right.” Bob’s chest became firm. He turned towards the door of the basement and soon after a tiny wait, T was there.

“Sorry, I might be little late. Actually I was busy checking the contents of a drive.” T said.

“Ohh, don’t be. I absolutely had fun waiting for you. Before you even go into it, I am going to kill you.”

T took out the Raptor and pointed to Bob.

“Now you can not touch me with that little toy of yours. Did you notice this armour I am wearing? I brought it from the 22^nd century. “

“What, you time travelled?” T was taken aback.

“Obviously. This armour will automatically direct any on coming bullet towards the shooter himse—“

He fell down on the ground. T kept his gun back in to his pocket. Took his coat and was about to leave.

“How did you?” Bob groaned in pain. His chest was melting.

“Idiot. There wasn’t any time machine. EVER.”

Bob’s eyes widened in disbelief. T hurried away.

“So, it was the replica machine after all!” Bob’s mouth exploded. His body turned red as he lay lifelessly on the ground.

——

“The case is solved. The ‘leakage’ of the plan, the drama of the US govt, everything was scripted. You never needed a super-hero in your army, they are already a super-power. But you surely did need someone who would carry your dirty deeds, who would “fly” off to any land without having a passport or without anybody questioning, somebody who’d dig deep into every army’s secrets and convey them to you. All the countries got furious at the leaked news about U.S. building a super-human and you knew that while being a member of UN, you must immediately stop it, or else, just gift it to the world. You planned for the latter. You let the news deliberately leak and the one who did it was none other than Dr Steve.” He sighed.

President relaxed his shoulders, “I am impressed.” They both were standing right next to the laboratory.

T continued “Then people raised concerns as you expected them to. You immediately relinquished the ownership of Bob gifting him to people as their “saviour” and they happily believed you. Their fantasies about the Hollywood movies have had actually come true. Everyone sees U.S. as their friend now but at the same time deemed themselves subservient. Bob would just fly off to any land, collect information and fights one or two crimes there to make people happy and you would save the information in THIS drive.” He raised his hand showing a tiny flash drive being chuckled between his fingers.

“Your original plan wasn’t known to Dr. Steve, he was just merely following orders but it was when his inquisitiveness shook him to eaves drop a conversation between you and Bob for which he was killed.” T sighed. “And we stupid scientists worked day and night to fulfill a dream. A dream which we together saw to produce a man which was going to be an invention of the history. All that was in vain. It was all a part of your plan.” He sighed.

“But, “ his face immediately brightened, “your perfect plan has one replacement. YOU with ME. I am going to rule this world. And no matter how much it ridicules my own cooked up story, I would rather be remain bored throughout my life if I had whole world bending before me.”

“How come you suspected us?” asked baffled President.

“Ohh, just on the day a reliable source informed me about something fishy about the death of Dr Steve, I planted a burglary attempt at your place of residence. Obviously, nobody could have break into the President’s residence considering the security. But you knew someone who could dare to do that might also be the one who actually could and there is only one such person.ME. So you sent Bob to spy on my laboratory, to catch a glimpse of me whenever I come towards my impenetrable yet transparent glass-wall and observe my behaviour. But how idiotic of both of you to not know I had CCTV’s all over.” He paused for a while.

“So, why Bob, a super hero suddenly becomes so interested in spying on me when he clearly knows that he can easily beat me if I faced him. Meaning he was sent by you. Although the burglars failed, you still got frightened and moved the drive to the safest place you knew second only to your house. Who would suspect a super-hero to be owning such a thing? People? NO, ME? YES! That was around the time I was working on Raptor and I accelerated the process. Too much bad luck for you in a single day, isn’t it? I prepared the Raptor and got myself out, ran into Bob who was well spying on my laboratory, told him a story, he found it fascinating, took me to his own residence, got scared with Raptor and very happily handed me the much anticipated drive.”

“And you must have already understood by now that it was the replica machine after all, and it’s obviously with the T coming right here in a minute. Waiting is boring, so let us pass some time. The machine when pressed creates an exact replica of the person holding it, now guess where is the machine?”

President’s head was still down, “It must have been with the T who was firing from outside. T sitting inside must not have it because simply Bob would have checked it and found your time machine story false.”

“Brilliant. Now tell me which T am I?”

“You are the one who was sitting inside.”

“You guessed it right, Presi.”

“I didn’t guess it, I know it.”

“Eh?” gasped T.

“Your replica machine creates a void human, with brain, but empty, with memories, but empty. It has to be given orders or programmed.”

T gave a hush into the air with a proud face, “Brilliant!”

President fell on the ground, completely defeated. The wind was flowing as if it would erode everything away along with it. But then, President looked up,

“What if Bob demanded to see your laboratory? Then you must give access to him, but there must be measures to detect your presence inside the lab.”

“Yes, there are. Not only the sensors detects my presence, but doesn’t allow anyone beside me enter it. I had considered that too hence I had those sensors off.” Saying that T walked towards a tiny door of the laboratory, a small screen popped up and asked for a password, he started to enter it,

“Moreover, Mr. President the pass code to this is only known to me and if you enter any other key, the laboratory will automatically lock itself and never open without me. Also if anyone force me to type in the pass code, there are two of them, one which opens it and the other BURNS it. That was necessary, actually because this laboratory is my life. Furthermore the pass code can never be changed from outside, it can only be from inside.”

“But there can be no detection of your fingertips while doing that because you disabled that sensors as well.” President put his hands in his coat.

“Yeah, now sit down there, admire the beauty of my lab and die” he picked out a gun from his coat pocket.

“That explains the mystery” President was up with his hands now leaving the coat.

“What is that thing in your coat?” T noticed.

He looked towards the screen, “WRONG PASS CODE, YOU CAN TRY INFINITELY TIME INTRUDER!”, it displayed.

He lifted his head, the President had a button in his hand, “The machine has a flaw, the replica can be programmed by anyone and even a dead person’s replica can be created as well as programmed. Ohh sorry, even a dead REPLICA’S replica can be created as well as programmed!”

T’s eyes widened.

” You were absolutely correct in your deductions except for two things. That the drive won’t auto-destruct if authorized from me sitting miles away. Second, there were two, not one who were spying on you. Since you would not believe that a man like Bob would carry someone to accompany him. Further more, I served as a leader in a regiment in Afghanistan. There, we are given special training, one of them was of camouflage and I was marked “absent” in every class, just exactly for the opposite reason” he looked up behind T.

T turned back swiftly and into the transparent glass walls, he could clearly see President, another President holding the replica machine and Bob standing right beside him.

He turned again, President lifted his hands, “and Mr. Scientist, your door takes ten full seconds to close.” and immediately vanished.

So, there he was T standing right outside the immense secure building with a drive in hand whose countdown has begun.

__END__