Recursion

The earthen smell of cellar sat heavy in the still air. A light flickered and buzzed in and out at the other end of a corridor. Three men in loosely fitting riot gear pointed their shaking rifles toward a cloud of dust twisting and coiling into the air below the light. Meter long cobwebs anchored in cracks along the concrete wall began to sway.

BANG! The light went out.

The man in front stepped forward. The latch of a round locket engraved with “X&J” rattled against a hole cut beneath the barrel of his gun. He ran his finger between the long dry-rotted rubber of the gas mask grating against his skin.

BANG! The light flickered back to life.

The dust below the light wrapped around itself as if something had fallen from the light. The mismatched rifles hung frozen in the air. Dust began to drift back down. The man in front leaned back to whisper to the man to his right, “Go check it out.”

“Over my dead body,” snapped the man. “Three hasn’t done any recon since the rat fight, weeks ago.”

Three lowered his gun and stepped out from behind the other two men, “Well excuuuse me!”

“Get back in formation!” hissed the man in front.

Three looked indignantly at the other men. “We just came here to get some names.” Three gestured at the lockets hanging from the other’s guns. “We’re not gonna kidnap the guy.”

“Get your rear in gear, before I bring you to tears, Three,” said the man in front with a forced whisper.

Three picked up his gun and mumbled half to himself, “Quoting Mom is dirty.” He pointed his gun to the light and inched ahead of his brothers. The sounds of their misfitted boots slapping against the concrete floor echoed through the corridor. Each footstep left clear prints in the piled-up dust.

Three stepped up to the light. Below it was a shiny metal chain sticking out of a smoldering pile of ash. Three got down on a knee. He carefully stuck the barrel of his gun through the metal loop and lifted it out of the ash. Out came a heart shaped locket with ash caked onto the sides.

“BINGO!” yelled Three, as he grabbed the locket and vigorously wiped the ash off the locket’s body.

The man up front slapped him in the back of the head, “Can it! He’ll hear us!”

“Chill XJ, no one but you, me, and Emma-Tom are down here.”

Emma-Tom hopped out from behind XJ and got on a knee with his brother, “What’d you get?”

Three held up the glistening pink locket to the light and spun it around in his fingers, looking for a name. The sides were blank and smooth.

Three’s brow furrowed, “I could have sworn I saw a name on there.”

XJ stole a glance at the locket while fixing his gaze past his brothers down the corridor, “Another blank?”

Three stood up, stuffing the locket in his pocket, “I don’t get it, the hearts always have names.”

Emma-Tom patted him on the back, “Don’t worry, I heard this guy has more names than a whole city could use.”

XJ clicked his tongue, “And maybe, if you focus on the job, we’ll live long enough to see it.” He gestured forward with his gun. “Let’s go.” The men picked up their guns and slowly paced into the darkness. The sounds of their footsteps echoed through the corridor, mixing only with the occasional dripping of a pipe or scuffing of an elbow against a wall.

“You hear that?” whispered Emma-Tom.

The men froze. A faint buzzing came and went.

“Lights.” ordered XJ.

All at once, XJ and Emma-Tom pulled alligator clips from batteries hanging at their waists and attached them to large white Christmas bulbs with foil cones around them, zip tied to the sides of their guns. Emma-Tom pointed his light at Three just in time to see him light up a headband with multi-colored lights.

“I swear to the mayor, Three. If we didn’t need you I’d have sold you to the lung farmers years ago,” said Emma-Tom in a biting tone.

“Why?” protested Three, “my gun’s much lighter!”

XJ spun around, “Shut it! Your carelessness is going to get us ki..”

BANG!

XJ stood frozen in front of them.

BANG!

XJ’s face began to wrinkle and shrink tight against his bones. His head dipped lower as his spine compressed and the skin of his hands crumpled like kitchen foil.

BANG!

XJ’s eyes sank deeper into his skull as his jaw moved just enough to squeeze out, “Run.”

The brothers backed up a step, their guns pointed into the darkness.

BANG!

XJ’s body shattered into a cloud of dust.

They turned to run.

BANG! BANG!

They were frozen in place.

From the darkness, emerged an old man in a blue janitorial uniform. In his hands, was a large cylinder connected to a buzzing backpack through a tangle of wires and pipes. The weight of the backpack listed back and forth across his bony shoulders. He meandered in front of the two remaining men. “Bit of gutter trash, huh, Delores?” he said as he patted the cylinder. The man leaned into a doorway and flicked a switch, turning on a light overhead.

“Hello rats. What are you doing under my bridge?” he asked with a sneer. “Oh right, you can’t talk, because you’re garbage. You’re garbage like all the rest of the refuse I collect.” He paused, the buzz of his backpack filling the silence. “I’ll tell you what, I haven’t had many visitors in the last couple hundred years, so I’m willing to make a deal. If you can trick me, I’ll let you pass. Heck, I’ll even let you take some of my stuff. But I gotta warn ya, nobody has gotten past me, not even the stupid soldiers I snagged this time pipe from. So whaddaya say? Up for some fun?” He raised his eyebrows in anticipation.

The men stood frozen.

“Oh, right,” he muttered as he slightly twisted a dial on the pipe.

Three gasped for air as his eyes and mouth started to move.

Emma-Tom immediately started to yell, “You crazy bastard! As soon as I free myself you’re gonna…”

BANG!

The old man lowered the pipe. He looked at Three with a frown. “That a no from you too?”

“WAIT, WAIT, WAIT,” he pleaded, “I’ll play, I’ll play.”

“Excellent.” cooed the old man. “Question one. What I did to your dusty friend over there is called a ‘time modification’. I simply set the pipe to how many years I want him to experience, and ‘voila’ rat, extra wrinkly.”

A bead of sweat rolled down the side of Three’s face as he eyed up the dials on the time pipe.

The old man continued, “If I aim the pipe at your friend here and turn the switch ever so slightly the other way, what do you think will happen?”

Three’s eyes darted back and forth between the pipe and his brother. “Uh, he will get younger?”

“We have a winner!” The old man whooped as he adjusted the pipe.

Three sighed in relief, “So you’ll let us go?”

The old man stopped cheering. He pointed the pipe at Emma-Tom, “Question 2.”

BANG!

Emma-Tom’s body began to shrink.

“How many seconds does your friend have left to live?”

“Wait, no! Please!”

BANG!

Within seconds Emma-Tom’s body had shrunk down to nothing.

“Wrong answer, rat.”

“NO!” cried Three.

“Well it looks like I expected too much of you, time to go,” sneered the old man.

“Wait!” yelled Three, “I can still trick you!”

“Oh? How’s that?” the old man lowered the pipe.

“That is of course, assuming you know how to use your time pipe.”

“Excuse me, rat? What did you just say to…”

“I just mean it takes a real genius to master moving things through time.”

“Rat. You really think you can goad me into doing what you want?”

A flash of panic crossed Three’s face, “Of course I do!”

The old man frowned.

“If you don’t release me from this time hold you can’t see how dumb my plan is, and you will be forever curious as to why I was so confident.”

The old man lowered the gun, “Keep talking.”

“Unfreeze me and give me a marker.”

“You’re going to beat me with a marker?” the old man chuckled in disbelief.

“No spoilers,” smiled Three.

The old man walked into one of the rooms and found an old marker. He held up the marker and asked, “What can you do with a dried up marker?”

“Zap it,” replied Three.

The old man tossed it onto the ground beside Three.

BANG!

“Okay, now unfreeze me.”

The old man paused, “You jump me and I’ll send your ashes to right before the bombs started.”

BANG!

Three fell to the ground. He picked up the marker and pulled the lock out of his pocket. “How far back can you send something?” he asked.

“I can send any object as far back as I want, why?” replied the old man.

“For this trick to work I need to test something.”

“This isn’t what we discussed,” the old man said as he raised the pipe.

“I promise. Just one test. Come on, you’ve got time,” Three pointed his best finger guns at the old man.

The old man grimaced, lowering the pipe. “You get one.”

Three popped open the marker and scribbled a word onto the heart shaped locket. He capped the marker and dropped it. “Okay, set the time pipe to 10 minutes ago.”

The old man adjusted a different dial.

“And, GO!” Three yelled, as he pitched the locket at the old man.

BANG!

Three dropped to the ground to grab his gun.

BANG!

His body was frozen.

“That was it? A gun grab? After so much build up? You were right, that was a spectacular failure, rat.”

“Was it?” Three began to laugh.

The old man thought for a moment, then asked, “What did you write?”

“Run,” Three said, as he began to howl with laughter.

The old man stared at Three as he laughed. His body frozen on the ground, Three continued to laugh as he looked back at the old man. He laughed as he looked around the room around him, as he looked at the white board marker at his feet.

He laughed and laughed and laughed himself to tears.

The old man watched silently as Three wept.