Written By: James M. Weir

Edited By: Angelia Delesdernier

Episode 1- Earthquake?

The World seems so small, the universe seems infinite, and then there is time. There never seems to be enough time. This is the story of friends who find themselves out of time. One question is always asked, if you could walk through time what would you change? The truth of that question should be nothing: your scars, your troubles are what make you. Take away one, and you take away apart of yourself. Remember you are you, and you are amazing.

Inside the house of Tucker: Jason is upstairs in his room working on a circuit board for a handheld game system for his little sister Holly. When the alarm on his phone began to ring, he began to instantly panic. He jumped up and fell off his chair running to shut off the alarm. Jason stood up and looked at his phone sighing and walked out of his room, but quickly remembered he didn’t turn his solder gun off, and ran back to turn it off and put it up.

As Jason walked out of his room his sister was jumping up and down putting her shoes on. She looked up and him and tossed him her keys; they both scrambled down the stairs and said bye to their mom as they passed her in the kitchen. They ran and jumped into their car, and as Jason turned the keys the engine groaned then banged to life. Jason and Holly cheered and they sped off to Alberts house for the party.

Albert, one of Jason’s best friends, was having a party as he was accepted by MIT and Stanford. Albert is planning to major in Theoretical Physics along with Physics Engineering. As Albert was getting ready, he heard a bang downstairs in his house. He looked over his shoulder and grabbed his throwing knife. Feeling like something was off Albert walked around the corner slowly as his father taught him to. He raised the throwing knife, and before launching it he saw who it was.

Jason, Marry, Fits, Holly, and Emily, all of Alberts close friends and his crush were all standing in his house but something seemed off. They all looked older and different: Holly’s hair was shoulder length short and instead of the brown it usually was it was bright blonde.

“Hey guys, I thought you weren’t going to be here for another hour.” Albert said still holding his knife firmly in his hand.

“Well, we were going to be but decided to show you our older self-cosplay.” Holly said with tears in her eyes and a sad smile. “What do you think?”

“I think you guys look like you have been through hell. I still remember when my dad came back from missions and he had that gruff look and tense posture. What the hell is going on guys?” Before anyone could say anything, Holly walked over and grabbed him by the hand and lead him into the kitchen.

“Please don’t say anything just listen,” Holly said as she gripped his hand tight. “Some times we see things in others that are hard to see. Sometimes the person is too afraid to act on those things. And sometimes things happen, and you lose time. I don’t want to be out of time anymore.”

Before Albert could reply Holly planted a kiss on him and walked back to the living room, but before she passed the doorway she looked over her shoulder and said, “Please don’t mention this and forget what you saw.”

As Albert finally regained his composure and chased after her, all his friends were no longer there. He gripped his knife tightly and heard his back door open. He twirled around the threw his knife and it jammed into the frame. Jason fell backwards onto Holly and they both hit the ground with a grunt.

“What the hell man y- you could have killed me!” Jason shouted as he tried to stand up and help Holly up at the same time.

“Sorry, just a little jumpy after,” Albert turned his head looking back into the living room and then back to Holly and shook off the feeling. “Never mind; I’m really sorry guys.”

“Yeah, good thing we are used to that reaction from you.” Holly said as she brushed dirt off her jeans. “I take it Fits, Marry, and Emily aren’t here yet?”

“What would give you that impression?” Albert asked sarcastically.

“Don’t know,” Holly said as she pulled out his knife and handed it to him. “But your moms going to kill you.”

Fits is a hyper-spastic mechanical engineer that was working on a crazy new mech suit for Albert’s celebrating getting into the college, but he was running late as he ended up getting caught up in finishing up a look on the suit. Emily and Marry are two girls that have been friends with Albert since they were little. Emily can’t drive yet so she had to bum a ride with Marry, who has a pickup truck and was swinging by Fits’ house to pick him up along with the suit.

Fits heard banging on his garage door, and he kicked the button to open it as he ran around grabbing tool after tool trying to add the finishing touches. Marry walked over and slapped the back of his head as he was trying to screw in a bolt.

“You know I need to have a head to see what I’m bolting into place right?” Fits said as he placed his power drill down and then smiled as he looked at the suit.

“What exactly is this suit supposed to do?” Marry asked as she lowered the tail bed of the truck and removed the bed cover.

“Nothing, I invented it to strictly look cool and help with moving things. It’s just an exoskeleton suit so he can probably lift up to four times his own weight if the artificial muscle fibers don’t tear. But Jason and Holly gave me a hand in wiring and coating the steal muscle fibers in a carbon fiber silicon that makes the material five times stronger. Hopefully running through some of the basic subroutines I wrote will allow me to make sure it doesn’t accidentally break his spine.”

Marry walked over and placed a hand on the helmet and chuckled; she then looked around and saw five car batteries sitting behind the suit.

“How the hell is Albert supposed to power this?”

“He can figure it out.”

The three of them moved the suit into the back of Marry’s truck, and Emily sighed as she looked at the suit. She then brightened up pulled out a handheld tape recorder and began to talk frantically into it. The three of them all got in the truck after Fits locked up his house. On the way to Albert’s house Emily was laying in the back seat and writing in a giant journal, and her eyes were glazed over with imagination.

“So how is her novel going?” Fits asked

“Fairly well, she so far has five hundred pages written and edited, but only in that damn journal so let’s hope its legible by the time she is finished with the book.”

“I’m in the zone but I can still hear assholes.” The three of them laughed.

Albert and the others were in his garage when Marry, Emily, and Fits drove up. As Fits opened the garage door Albert turned quickly, but Jason and Holly grabbed him. Fits threw his hands up and then Albert relaxed.

“Sorry probably should have knocked first; one of your dad’s rules.”

“No, that’s on me I don’t know why but all of today I’ve been jumpy.”

Albert walked over and gave Fits, Marry, and Emily a hug, then Marry dropped the tail gate and Albert saw the suit. He reached in to pull it out and was surprised by the weight. Jason, Albert and Fits all moved the suit to stand in the middle of the garage. Albert took the helmet off and pulled a wire out and plugged it into one leading to his computer.

“So, the only thing I would see to have trouble with would be keeping the power bank charged. I still haven’t found a proper component to make a battery other than lithium, but that shit is expensive. I could try an experimental compound but I would need a chemical engineer to help with the newly formed acid to prevent any destabilization. If we make a powerful enough battery to power this damn thing it can’t burn up and it definitely can’t get too hot, or it will explode causing a small but powerful explosion. If only I could figure out the formula for cold fusion. But I really am trying to create a fusion reactor without having to rely on palatium or hydrogen which means it’s impossible.”

Holly walked up next to him smiling and placed down a small glass vile with metal caps on both ends containing a blue liquid. Albert looked at it and tilted his head like a dog and looked up at her. Holly shrugged and walked away: Albert popped the cap and used a pipette to extract the liquid and placed it on a slide and slid it under his microscope. As he looked, he was slightly giddy as he grabbed his other pipette and grabbed a vile labeled ‘new battery?’. He took a sample and dripped it into the mixture and it turned bright blue.

Albert held his hand up and motioned everyone to step back. Albert dropped one more sample onto the mixture and it exploded knocking him backwards. Albert rose and then jumped up shouting, “Yes!” Albert ran over to the burnt and shattered slide and cleaned up the glass and his microscope.

“Now I need a proper housing material and I will be all set.” Albert said laughing and then everything happened at once. A rumble shook the ground and the entire ground moved from underneath them.

When the earthquake stopped half of Alberts house was destroyed and Albert was trapped inside the garage under the rubble. The five other friends tried to dig him out and figure a way inside but the front and back doors were caved in. Jason looked around for anything they could use but the back of Marry’s truck was crushed by a falling tree.

Hours passed before they were able to get into the garage, once they did Albert was severely injured. By the time the paramedics were able to get Albert out he was nearly dead. He was in the hospital for five weeks and by the time all the operations and appointments were over he no longer was the same Albert.

“Albert’s friends visited him every day, and by the time he was released he couldn’t walk, and he couldn’t see, and he couldn’t move. What a tragic end to such a dumb weirdo. The End.” Emily read from her book and Albert laughed but sighed as he gripped his ribs.

“That is so funny I forgot to laugh. I’m just glad you guys are okay; that earthquake came out of nowhere.” Albert said as he stretched his back.

“Yeah, the news is calling it the biggest one in history, and some scientists are concerned it could be Yellowstone getting ready to blow.” Fits said as he laid a coffee cup next to Alberts bed.

“Not only that, some freak lightning storm is over Manhattan and it’s causing some major damage to some buildings. It’s almost like that weird shit that happened in Florida with those two weird android robot things.” Holly said as she leaned up against Albert’s headboard and was scrolling through news feeds.

“I told you before that was all fake CGI renderings of a tsunami breach in Jacksonville, Florida, and someone just layered their characters over it to make it look like people did it.” Marry said as she took candy from Jason’s container.

Jason shoved her slightly, and put more Reese’s Pieces in his mouth. Albert took the cup of coffee off his bedside table and took a sip. He cringed and then put it back down shaking his head. Holly reached over him and took the coffee and sipped it, and nearly spit it back up looking at Fits.

“What the hell F, why the hell did you make it straight black?”

“I always make it the way I like my men and women.” Fits shrugged and blew Holly a kiss. They all chuckled and then Albert coughed and blood came up.

“Can I have a tissue?” Holly grabbed one off the floor and handed it to him.

Albert’s ribcage was crushed on his right side and due to that fact, he was put on many different drugs and one of them caused him to cough up the blood build up in his lungs from scar tissue that is ripping. The six friends have been through a lot together in their life, but it is only the beginning of the story.

“So, I also found something really cool last week when I was hiking in Yellowstone. I took it and thought you might like it Al, so here.” Holly jumped up walking over and grabbing a small green and blue rock and laid it next to him. “This was such a cool looking rock and it reminded me of that cool mixture you made with the new acid mix I created. I mean I only saw it for a second but it turned green shortly before the explosion that knocked you on your ass.”

Albert looked down at the rock and smiled and looked back at her, and before she could react, he leaned over and kissed her cheek. The room became dead silent and then a phone rang and they all jumped. It was Jason’s phone and when he answered he learned that there was just a major explosion in Washington state just south of Seattle. Albert turned on the news and they learned it was a combustion of some new powerplant set up by the D.B.T.: ‘Department of Biological Technology’ a well-known power organization. The president of the company insured that this was a slight malfunction and luckily no one was hurt as the powerplant was ten miles off the shore line.

“And that is why you don’t experiment on a high level; they were lucky it wasn’t an oxygen based chemical or it could have set fire to the atmosphere.” Albert said as he gripped his side shaking his head.

Albert laid his head down and all the friends decided it was time to leave, but Holly wanted to stay for a minute to talk with Albert. Jason wasn’t having it so he grabbed her by the arm and proceeded to drag her out of the room as she threw her fists around like an anime child. Albert smiled and looked at the rock she gave him then he began to drift off to sleep.