I Planned For This

"I planned for this!" I cried toward the locked door. My words echoed off the metal---four inches thick and secured to cement walls---the reverberation masking my wavering inflection.

"You can't stay in there forever!" a voice cracked through the wall-speaker. Jones it was, head of security, flanked, no doubt, by a contingent of badged police officers. "You're only making it worse," he cried. So cliché, this Jones, like playing cops-and-robbers in a '50s B-movie.

"Sorry, but you'll have to do it the hard way." A perfectly in-character, premeditated response that---premeditation, my forte. Typically.

I frowned and clenched my fist at my temples.

"We have a warrant."

I grinned, but only briefly. "Back to work," I mumbled. Double-checking my lock algorithm, I calculated about an hour of decryption before Jones succeeded "the hard way." I grasped the wrench, a clumsy instrument, especially for our Device, but time---ah, the irony!---often required such sacrifices.

A patch of red?

My hand convulsed, and the wrench clattered upon the tiling. Merton's task this, I realized (irony upon irony!), bending to retrieve the tool---shining as if brand new, the bloodstain having been an illusion.

Join now!

Jones switched tactics. "We know you did it!" he blared.

What could I expect? As a young man, I had mapped out our television B-movie schedule every Sunday. The "Sci-Fi" films tempted us into the science that eventually became our time machine---Merton and I, best friends, always analysing the feasibility of even the most inane premise. Ours the noblest of endeavours: the search for knowledge, for ultimate truth.

"Brilliant deduction on your part," I mouthed to Jones as I applied the wrench. Though a delicate operation, my awkward grasp required both hands for steadiness.

"And how feasible ...

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