Issac and Bill look towards him as he starts telling his story, “It was June 11, 2044, I was handed a case by Jeff. Little did I know that this case was going to change my life. It would make me numb and eventually emotionless. Doing things, again and again, expecting them to change would make me truly insane. I got this case and it had a lot of missing pieces, but you know how I love cases like these.” he said as he looked at Issac.
“So I accepted it and looked into it, it was a missing person case. The loved ones of the missing people had hopes that I would find them in the best-case scenario, and in the worst, I would find their remains and what had happened to them. I decided to go undercover for this one, Jeff advised me not to but I did it anyway. Upon investigation, I found out that all these missing people were having a lot of debt. Some were old people having fatal diseases, some were students with enormous student loans and some were just gamblers who had lost more than they had won.”
“All of them had one thing in common. They needed money and lots of it. Of course, they couldn’t go to banks and they knew their families were of no help to them. Getting deeper and deeper into the case I discovered that they were contacted by a private number and soon after receiving that call, they just vanished.”
“Through help from outside the department, I was able to track the phone from which the calls were made. It was a burner and when I found it, it was totaled, broken into 2 pieces. I gave it to the geeks back at the HQ and they were able to create a map of where the phone had been before being destroyed. It was strange, cause out of all the locations the phone had been, it was also at the MSAT building numerous times.”
“I had a bad feeling, people who need money, call from a private number, and then sudden disappearance. My gut was telling me that most of them would be dead by now, but I had to have hope and so I pushed on. I went to MSAT and at the front desk told a sob story and how a friend of mine told me that MSAT can help people like us, people who are under a lot of debt. My story had done its job and I received a call from a private number later that night. I talked to Jeff on the phone and told him that I was going under the radar for a while, he asked me to be careful and I agreed.”
“I was told to wait at an abandoned factory in old Hawkesbay. A car with black windows came and I sat in. The driver gave me a pill which I was hesitant to take, but he told me he wouldn’t drive unless I took it. So I took it and on we went. Midway, I started feeling sleepy thanks to the pill and blacked out soon after. I woke up in a white room, looking around I couldn’t find anything, no window, no bed, no table, just an empty white room.”
“A portion of a wall slid open and a man greeted me, he was none other than Dorian, the guy I just killed, and it was the same facility we blew up. I let him perform his sick experiments on me and once I had enough, I decided to get out of that hell hole. It wasn’t easy, I had to kill many guards and scientists, but before leaving I transferred most of the data from the central computer of the facility back to my terminal at home. But I made a mistake; I didn’t delete the surveillance footage. The cameras had recorded me doing those things, after getting out I called reinforcements to the facility and we sealed it.”
“We arrested the remaining scientists and guards and freed those we could. The press soon followed and the news of MSAT and the horrible experiments took Hawkesbay by storm, Reed wasn’t the philanthropist anymore. Everyone saw his hideous real face and knew what kind of monster he was. Later that day I went back home and looked at the data I had taken from the facility.”
“A folder named ‘Project Annex’ caught my attention but it was encrypted, I asked the geeks at the department to decrypt it and waited for them. Every news channel was showing footage of the inhumane experiments, many people swarmed outside MSAT and protested. The big tech giant was on its knee but it wasn’t dead yet.”
“Reed was denying the allegations and said he had no idea how that facility came into being. Lies, of course, it was written on his face. You could tell if you saw into his eyes and the way he gulped when confronted by the press. The noose around his neck was tightening, sooner or later we were going to find evidence of his direct involvement in those experiments, and then we would have the bastard where we wanted him.”
“Little did I know that the bastard was going to be saved. Mary Maximus came down to the HQ after a few days, she wanted to see me. I called her to my office and we sat down. She handed me a memory tape that had all the remaining evidence. I looked at her in disbelief, the missing pieces were given to me on a plate, but the grin on my face soon faded and my eyes frowned.”
“The evidence linked everything back to Mary and not to Reed. I shook my head, I just couldn’t believe it. I saw her face and she avoided my gaze, something about her body language convinced me that she wasn’t the criminal the evidence claimed. I cleared my throat and told her that forging evidence to save her son was not helping her at all. It was making it worse for Reed.”
“Hearing my words she finally let go and burst into tears, she told me that she would sacrifice her legacy for her son’s reputation. Such is a mother’s love for her children. But I couldn’t let her take the fall for her son’s crimes.”
“I refused to accept her evidence and told her to go back. The case was now becoming something else entirely, my emotions were being brought up into the mess. I had to shake my morality, again and again, to keep it awake. I was in my thoughts when the phone rang, the geeks had cracked the folder and called me to look into it.”
“I hurried downstairs to them, I was almost excited. The geeks left the folder for me to view and I looked at it with wide-open eyes. Project Annex, time-traveling different universes to make sure it is all the same everywhere. Playing with the lives of people, murdering them, and taking their place. All so that in the end Reed achieves total control.”
“The asshole wasn’t satisfied if he had control here, he wanted himself in the driving seat in other universes. I saw reports of the agents he sent, schematics of a ‘chronoton enhancer’, profiles of the influential people in those worlds, a device called ‘Interdimensional normalizer’. It all felt like a bad sci-fi drama script. But it was all real, it could not have been made up.”
“I had to confirm it all, but how? Suddenly, an image popped up in my head. The desperate mother! Maybe she knows about this, if she could confirm anything in this folder. I would have enough to put Reed behind bars. But it didn’t go as I had planned.”
“She looked at everything inside the folder and began to shudder in fear. It was a revelation to her as well, her son was even a bigger monster in her eyes now, and her stance on him had changed instantly. She looked furiously at the reports, her sadness turning into rage, poisoning the feelings she had for her son. She had transformed from the loving mother to something else.”
“She told me that Reed had gone too far, disturbing the flow of time, starting all this behind her back. She told me that everything written in the reports was possible, but she was worried about only one thing, the normalizer! It was a doomsday device, a ticking bomb waiting to explode, it just needed someone to ignite it and Reed was that someone.”
“She accompanied me and we went to the facility where this normalizer was being assembled, it was far away from Hawkesbay. When we reached the facility the lights were off, we had to use flashlights from our phones to navigate the place. Moving from section to section we had reached the main assembling area. There we saw it, the normalizer. It was huge, bigger than Noah’s Ark, huge transformers were situated behind it to feed the juice it needed.”
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“Mary turned on a computer and started snooping around, this gigantic device had the ability to open rifts to other worlds. Instead of going to these places with the help of the chronoton enhancers. Reed would use this device to create as many rifts as he wanted.”
“Sending in his people to fuck around in other worlds. But the device was flawed, too many rifts and it would give up. If that was going to happen the rifts would collide, creating a huge hole in our world, a black hole. This hole would then swallow everyone and everything.”
“Suddenly, the lights turned on blinding us both, a rumbling sound started coming from the normalizer. When our vision cleared we both saw Reed on top of a catwalk, directly above the normalizer. He clapped his hands and told me that he was impressed by my detective skills. Mary confronted her son, asking him why he would go to such lengths, what he would achieve by doing this?”
“His answer was as I had expected, we humans have a tendency inside us, a tendency to be more than what we are, to become God. Most of us laugh at this thought because we know we can never be one. But for a man who has made time it’s slave, surely he wouldn’t pass up on the opportunity to become a God!”
“I sensed something sinister inside him, in his pursuit to become a God, he had forgotten to stay human. The things he did, even the devil would be ashamed of, but I wasn’t there to judge him that was someone else’s job. I was there to stop him. As the normalizer whirred Mary pleaded to her son to stop it, she told him about the vulnerabilities of the machine, but it was all in vain. The normalizer became louder and louder, trembling the ground, enveloping both of us in fear.”
“Reed grinned as he saw rifts forming in front of his eyes. He had planned to throw us in a random rift, we would be wiped off from our world, thrown into an unknown place where no one knew who we were. Where people we were familiar with would give us that look, the look they give to strangers. But before he could do something, the normalizer started to shudder, too many rifts had been created. No machine could handle the force of so many chronotons being pushed into space.”
“The rifts started to collide together, Mary saw them in horror, too afraid to even move. All this was happening a few feet away from us, the rifts started to enlarge and even more collisions occurred, at this point, the computer controls were as effective as a barrier in front of a rushing hover rail. Everything went out of control, we knew it was not safe to stay there and decided to move away from the enhancer.”
“I looked at Reed and saw his face, the grin was gone, he gave me a look of despair and worry. The look which perhaps Icarus gave to his father when he flew too close to the sun and came crashing down. The rifts merged into a huge black hole, and it started sucking everything inside it. Reed was the first to be sucked inside, the catwalk had crumbled and it took Reed with it. Mary had a few tears, but soon they vanished. This was it, our world, the lives we lived, everything was coming to an end, or was it?”
“The gravity of the black hole was too strong but we could still escape if we were quick enough. Mary looked into my eyes as if she was gazing into my soul. She handed me a device, which I later found out to be an enhancer, the first of its kind. The one which Mary had made many years ago, on the screen I saw coordinates of an unknown place, not like I would’ve known what they meant anyway. She looked into my eyes and said, “I’m not strong enough to do it, I don’t know how to find the answers, but better you than me!”
“She advised me to press the initiate button on the display, but I wasn’t ready. The black hole’s gravity was becoming more and more vicious, Mary was going to be sucked in. She kept screaming at me to press the button. I closed my eyes, her voice faded away as she went into it and I too got the courage and pressed the button.”
“There are moments in our lives when we are uncertain and afraid. When we can see nothing in front of us, no future, no chance at life. For me, the moment I pressed the button was that moment, my whole life I had simple goals. Solve cases, help people, and put criminals where they truly belonged. But that moment changed the way I looked at life. The enhancer teleported me to a blank space, for a moment I thought I was too late to press the button. Maybe this is what is inside a black hole, darkness, emptiness. I felt cold to my bone, my jacket was not doing its job of keeping me warm.”
“I screamed in fear but I couldn’t even hear my own voice. I looked at the enhancer and it was dead too. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, but a shrill sound forced me to open my eyes. I was lying on a floor, I felt something solid but I was laying in space, beneath me were stars and galaxies, they were rapidly aging. I could see them explode, cool down, disintegrate and form again. They were caught in a cycle, they had no end and no beginning. When I saw in front of me I could see an endless corridor, I started moving towards it but I couldn’t reach it. The corridor was endless, but so was the journey to reach it.”
“I grew tired of walking, sometimes I even ran but it was of no use. I gave up eventually and sat down in my despair. I started to remember my office, the suburbs of Hawkesbay, and the things Mary said to me before being sucked in. It all felt like a lifetime ago. Suddenly, I heard a peal of loud laughter, it sounded evil.”
“It was as if someone or something was watching me and was enjoying my failures. I was afraid at first, but having nothing else left to lose I shouted to ask who it was. This time I could hear my voice and the voice replied, “We are the ones who have observed you till now, you have always had a connection with us. Your kind has tried to control us many times, but many have failed. The lady, now she was a clever fox; she had harnessed the ability to move forward or go back without tapping directly into us. She had instead used chronotons, she came to us once and we showed her the fate of her world and the worlds connected. Alas, she never really tried to fix her mistakes!”
“The voice was a blend of male and female, whoever was talking wasn’t too pleased with me either. I had to know who it was, but before I could ask anything, it once again spoke, “We are Time! As impossible as it may sound, you are talking to us. We might have been invisible but we exist and you are standing below us!”
“I was shocked, for a few moments my mind was blank. It felt like a train had hit me, but instead of flying away, I had stood still. I thought this was a joke, maybe a bad dream and I would wake up any moment now. But it was neither, this was reality. I talked to myself like a schizophrenic, trying to remain sane.”
“A few moments later, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I asked time what my purpose was and all it had replied was, “Your purpose is to fail again and again, watch your worlds get decimated again and again. Until the time comes when you send someone else in your place, someone who can change your fate. Till that day you will be our slave, stuck in a loop, with no way out. You can try to find a way, but after each failed attempt you’ll be sent back till that someone comes!”
“Nothing made sense, why me? What had I done wrong to be dealt such a bad hand by fate? I had so many questions, but before I could ask them. I was pushed into the corridor, its roof was made of vibrant lights of different colors.”
“I looked to the left and saw glimpses of my life, things that I had done and when I saw to the left, I saw the things I would do...the man I would become. Of course, the corridor did not show me the way out or that ‘someone’ time wanted in my place. It only showed me vague images and moments that would happen eventually. I had evaluated the state my life was in, it rated 10 out of 10 on my fucked-up scale.”
“I was in a hole, no matter how hard I crawled up, I was destined to fall and try again. I asked time what would happen if I killed myself, and it laughed again. Mary had screwed us all by discovering time travel, it didn’t matter if I was alive or not. The black hole would be created by Reed and our world along with the others would be swallowed, the loop would continue because the flow of time was disturbed. It was altered from its original path.”
“Time was smart too, every cycle meant that my age would revert to the old one. After every failed attempt to escape from the loop, I would come back to the corridor of time, and there, time would laugh at me once again. It was very smart, to avoid any paradox, there were never two of me alive in the same cycle. The reason why Issac couldn’t find anything on himself in this world.”
“After a lot of killing, deceiving, sabotaging, and failing here I am, this is going to be my billionth try. So now do you understand why I used all of you? Reed isn’t going to become the God of time. He is just a pawn who thinks he can kill the King. The only significance he has in the bigger picture which I just showed you, is that he triggers the end of the cycle and I start it. My fight was never with him, it was always with time.”
“This cycle has proved to be somewhat promising, getting Issac from P: V01D seems to be the decision I should’ve taken a long time ago...” the Overseer stopped and went to take a beer from the refrigerator leaving Issac and Bill speechless. For a while, they stared at each other in absolute silence. Issac cleared his throat and said, “Fuck my life! We are in some deep shit!” whereas Bill just remained silent.
When the Overseer came back to them, Issac asked him, “So now you want us to make sure Reed builds the faulty normalizer once again. But what if I am not that someone, what happens then?” he nervously chuckled and replied, “Better you than me, I don’t know how to find the answers!” the answer hit Issac like a bullet. “Fucking hell! I don’t want to live like this, why did you drag me into this mess?” he asked.
The Overseer replied, “It was just a joke cheer up. I will tell you what you have to do when the right time comes. Till then we have to keep the love birds in line. David is the only one who can fuck everything up. But I have a plan for him too!”
After revealing the reality of his existence the Overseer just teleported from the safe house, leaving Issac and Bill dumbfounded. Did the Overseer tell them the truth, or was this also a part of his plan to keep them both in line? Only time would reveal it all.