Thanks to our nukes and our angry motherhood

"In February 2005, the US Department of Defense announced a research program named WALRUS to explore the development of very large airships."

Yay Wikipedia!

PS. His plan was to try and stare it down This game looks incredibly cool. If the sentient dinosaurs are radioactive, and armed with M-60s, that's a serious hazard

(no subject)

"At last!" The tinny speakers beside the window rattled with the argument. I leaned out the window a little farther, and I tweaked the dial on the binoculars a little. The old lunatic who had caused all this trouble was holding onto the handle of the clock generator. His mumbled thoughts came through the microphone I had planted as indecipherable flecks from his long-cherished hoard of indignation.

Half-obscured by the large hand was the curator, in black tie and aviator goggles. He was talking, steadily and evenly, with as much reason as he could put together on the fly. "I don't think your ideas are sound, Mr. Parskhin. I read the proposal you put in last year about our atomic clock..."

The lunatic shook his white hair. "And did I ever get a reply? A rebuttal of some sort? An opinion from someone who knew the field? No! I got you, and what good are you?" He combed the fringes of it with shaking hands. "No. No, I simply have to complete the circuit myself. That's my last word. Back off!" he suddenly shouted, his fist clenching on the steel. "Back off or I, I open it right now!"

The curator took a step back. "You would destroy the clock!? Wait a moment, you would never... Wait!"

The sun touched a window opposite the highrise, and I glanced away for a second. When I focused the binoculars again, the curator and Jerry were fighting, shoved up against the case of the clock. Jerry's hand was still on the handle of the generator; he was using it for balance. Something had to give.

But it wasn't Jerry. The old lunatic got an elbow around the curator's neck and flung him away, and in the backlash the handle creaked open for the second time since the generator was started. The curator lay coughing on the floor as the cooling tank tilted back, with the awesome momentum that ice has, and shattered against the transformer. The liquid nitrogen spilled across the floor, belching steam, and the clock's pump began to rattle violently.

The old lunatic stared, watching the loss of his hope, horrified. I picked up the walkie-talkie from the dusty floor and heckled him through the PA. "Looks like that was it, Mr. Parskhin. No more clock, no more dumbass plan."

He looked up, craned his head around, then shook his fist at the ceiling. "Harry! You! You're jealous! You alerted the staff! You won't get away with this!"

"I ain't getting away with anything, it was just a dumb plan, dammit, Mr. Parskhin. You know it was. I told you it was a bad idea."

"Ha! Ha!" He looked quickly around. "Ha! I can still make it work!" He ran over to the clock and began prying off the access plate with his bare fingers.

"Mr. Parskhin, it's a dumb idea!"

He peered at the tangle of pipes inside. "Ha! The coolant will last for minutes. Ha!" he said again, to the PA speaker. "Did you hear that? More than enough time! You haven't stopped me. You can't stop me," he said, taking out the finely-welded circuit board he had spent three years on from his dirty overcoat pocket. It was basically nonsense.

I mean, it had a bunch of large capacitors, a couple resistors, a clock battery, and six or seven ASICs protected by tiny surge-suppressant blocks. I had been doing the leg work; I knew it wasn't going to do anything in a conventional way. But he was old and insane and a magician. He wrapped the loose end of one of the wires hanging off it around the main power supply, and then jammed the board between two of the large plates, singeing the tips of his fingers. He smacked it a couple times. It was broken.

He turned to me -- to the overhead speakers -- and said "Ha!" loudly and clearly again. He jiggled a couple of the large parts on the board, but nothing suddenly lit up or started making noise. "Harry, did you screw this up?"

The curator, still sprawled full-length on the floor, chuckled. "Looking for this?" He staggered away from Jerry's outstretched fingers. "Yes, I anticipated you'd come here..."

Jerry was bright red. "What'd you take? What did you take?" He grabbed the curator's arm and yanked on his fingers, pulling apart his clenched fist. "Open your damn hand there... What did you take?!"

The curator grinned and said "Nothing." He let his hand open. It was empty. "Heh hah, you damned mental hospital escapee! I didn't take anything! It just doesn't work! Hah!" He kept on laughing. Mr. Parskhin ran back to the atomic clock and tried to move the circuit board, but there was current on it, and he swore and jerked his hand back.

"Dammit--" and he stuck his hand right in and fried himself up. He just stood there, making a humming noise, totally rigid. One of the capacitors burned out with a bang, then another, and then the whole clock just shut down and there was complete silence. The old lunatic, his hair smoking, fell to ground.

"Huh," I said over the PA.

The curator went over and turned him face up, pulling on one arm, then the other, and finally stretching him out like a regular dead person. He brushed down Mr. Parskhin's filthy coat while I sat down and dropped the binoculars. Huh. Guess he was still a little bit crazy, after all.

Then there was static all over the headphones. It calmed down into the curator shouting something. I grabbed the binoculars, leaned out of the window, nearly fell, and dropped them one hundred feet to cement, where they likely broke. Jerry was talking.

"Ha!"

"Jerry, that was real stupid."

"It had to be me," he said, "it couldn't be the clock. I have to be the one to fix the past, because I'm the only one who remembers what it was like when it worked."

"What had to be you?"

"I had to be the time machine. A sort of human time machine. Ha! It's all so obvious."

"I think you were actually electrocuted."

"Yeah! Well, you would think that. Ha!" He ran to the door and twisted the handle. The curator had locked it when he came in; he yanked it back and forth a few times, then got fed up and kicked him. "Open this, damn you! I need to get out."

"Fat chance," the curator said, with dignity.

"Well... well... fine! I'll just travel through time now," he said, and vanished.