Asteria got up and turned on the alarm to wake up other guys. She tried holding the glass box to prevent the dog from escaping. Her palms and sleeves were soaking with blood while dog was gradually getting towards getting away. She found a metal stick laying on the floor and hit the dog with it. She managed to knock the critter down. Marcus ran in and saw Asteria covered in blood and the dog laying on the floor without any movement. “ What’s going on?” he asked, panting.
“ The dog tried to run away…But I hit it with the stick and it passed out.” Asteria said, breathing heavily. She fell on the floor and fainted. “ What the fuck?” Marcus thought. He ran to get the first aid kit and started helping Asteria. The bleeding was immense, progressing and spreading further. He cleaned and bandaged her hands and removed the grass shard from her left thigh. Marcus took out a strange yellow pill and put in under her tongue. “ Hope her wounds will heal faster this way.” He thought, picked her up carefully and carried Asteria in her bedroom. He laid her on the bed, covered with a soft warm blanket and closed the door. Marcus hurried back to the room with the dog inside and continued the night shift. He found a cage where the dog storage would be more secure, and sat down, watching it. Marcus felt someone’s presence, someone was definitely watching him. He got up and started rumbling in a wooden chest of drawers. “ Here it is!” he whispered triumphantly. He put on a special belt and adjusted it. He spined one button on it and then put on a pair of glasses with black lenses. Turning around, he noticed a faint white silhouette . He took out the stun gun to strike it, but then the apparition disappeared.
***
Gillean woke up. Some sort of supernatural force pulled him out of the disconcerting sleep he had. Looking on the electronic clock on his bedside table, he saw that it was 4:30 am. “ Hm, what’s fucking wrong with me?” he thought pessimistically. He got up and went to the balcony. He stroke the cigarette. Smoking is the habit he’d really like to get rid of, but the willpower can’t beat the tobacco addiction. The semi-darkness and early morning’s coolness in the air brought him back. He closed the balcony door and got back in his bed. “ Something whacky is definitely going on”, he pondered, turning on the TV.
“ Breaking news! The new capital punishment wave is rushing all across the US. More and more people die due to their rebellious behavior and our government is taking the revenge. Protect yourself and your loved ones and be careful. God bless us all!”
He fell on the bed and closed his eyes. “ I can’t take this anymore.” he thought . It was still dark. He got changed, took the cigarettes and went out into the sleepy streets. It was eerily quiet outside, everyone was sleeping at such an early hour. Gillean quickened the pace, trying to maintain his composure. As he left the premises of their lab, he turned left. Although his orientation in this area was nowhere near good, he knew there was a some kind of park. Soon he started seeing tiny gazebos and benches surrounded by dozens of trees , flowers and the calm ambience. A dark silhouette was sitting on one of the benches. The gut feeling urged Gillean to come closer and look at the person sitting in a total solitude.
It was an elderly man. He turned around, noticing someone’s gaze. Gillean came closer. “ Hello?” he said in an embarrassed way. “ Hello.” the man replied casually.
“ What are you doing here so early?” Gillean asked.
“ Why? Are you a stalker or something like this?” the man replied, his intonation unfriendly.
“ Sorry for intruding like this. I wasn’t stalking or anything of that kind, I just want to talk.” Gillean said in a flummoxed way.
“ All right. I’m Lucas Bennet. What’s your name?”
“ Glad that you agreed to talk. I’m Gillean .”
“ Why aren’t you at home? What’s bothering you?”
“ Haven’t you heard the news?” Gillean’s face got flabbergasted.
“ About the new wave of punishments?”
“ Exactly! Why are you so calm?”
“ It’s not the worth that could have happened to us. There is something much more terrible being in the state of preparation for us.”
“ Like what?” Gillean was getting in even a deeper quandary.
“ A massive wave of destroying human treasuries and discoveries, more constrains for our lives and growth.”
“ I’m supposed to save y’all but currently I’m a lousy savior.”
“ What do you mean “ to save” ?” Lucas got excited, Gillean’s words stroke a huge interest inside him.
“ You won’t believe it.” Gillean said and sighed.
“ Go ahead, nothing in this world surprises me already.”
“ So… I travelled in time and my original year is 2024. I found a time machine in an abandoned mansion which was a scientific lab in disguise and decided to test it. The tech malfunctioned and I’ve already been stuck here for two months. I met some people and together we’re conducting experiments connected with memory, the brain and nervous system, time travel and our boss , Marcus Bell, is working on a major project. I won’t say it’s name for a time being, want to keep it a secret for now.”
“ How can you prove that you’re from the past?” the old man said and squinted. Gillean rummaged in his hoodie pocket and found the broken time belt he was wearing while teleporting to the future version of Detroit. The date was still 19.04.2024 , right when he left for his long voyage in time.”
“ Oh, I see. Your info is credible now. But what is the thing you’re supposed to do to save us all?”
“ To figure out how we can influence the mind with different tech or experiments, find a way to crawl to the government and throw them off. I am to fight all the conflicts and controversy in our society .I haven’t succeeded so far.”
“ Quite a hard task for just a few of you. How many people are in your team?”
“ Four people if counting with me.”
“ Ok, it’s not a lot actually.”
“ Yes, but we help each other in any way we can. It’s what the team is essentially about.”
“ You’re right here. I haven’t had a good community for ages.”
“ Why? What happened to you? Or them?”
“Actually, I’m a historian, philologist and writer. I’ve got PhD in the specialties and I’d been working as a professor in the Wayne university here in Detroit. But it was shut down recently ,and all the documents, scientific works, projects that we’d been trying hard to establish are gradually being destroyed. The government created new censorship structures that destroy every single thing opposing the ideology they’ve been trying to integrate here for years. “
“ What happened to your colleagues afterwards? Are you persecuted?”
“ I live in an extremely secure neighborhood , thus no one can get me. I’ve also got some tools to defend myself with. By the way, I’ve constructed one interesting gadget. It’s a pretty decent opponent for the mechanical dog. It’s a mechanical cockroach. I’m planning to construct more, so there’s an army of such disgusting little dudes.”
“ What is their power in comparison with the mechanical dog?”
“ Ok, let me put it this way. First of all, they’re agile. The cockroaches are able to sneak in everywhere and there are some microchips embedded in them so you can eavesdrop on something really useful. They aren’t almighty , but still decent .”
“ A cool invention! Can you sell some of the cockroaches to us if you don’t mind?”
“ Let’s make a deal: you’ll escort me to your lab or wherever you work, and I’ll present my invention to you and your team.”
“ Of course. But they’re still asleep, what can we do ?”
“ I can show you around my neighborhood and apartment.” Lucas said with a suggestive intonation.
“ I’m down.” Gillean replied.
They left the park and went to Lucas’s neighborhood. The streets on the way were extremely clean, calm and secure, Gillean forgot that he was in Detroit. Seldom had he seen such places here. Since getting to the frustrating future he got used to seeing dilapidated dirty streets and it slipped his mind how picturesque the city can be. There were few people around, mostly dog owners walking their canines, and someone hurrying to commute to work. Lucas led Gillean to his apartment block and they stopped for a moment. Gillean’s face brightened up and he beamed with a kind smile.
“ How’s it?” Lucas asked.
“ Fabulous!” Gillean exclaimed.
Lucas smiled and gestured for Gillean to follow him to the entrance. They went inside and took the elevator to the 15th floor. Everything around Gillean was bright, shiny ,and happiness pervaded the place. The elevator stopped and Lucas went out, Gillean followed.
“ So, here’s where I live.” Lucas said solemnly and opened the door.
The apartment was really spacious and looked like a true genius’s place. There were dozens of bookshelves filled with fiction, philosophical works mostly of German origin , linguistics, world and the US history, teaching methodology. Gillean saw myriad exquisite lights reflecting in the mirror. He gasped and looked around, feeling amazed. “ Why are you still standing? Make yourself at home, sit down.” Lucas said.
Lucas left Gillean alone and went in another room. The atmosphere made him feel as though he was in a some kind of library or museum, he has never seen some many books in one place, especially after the proliferation of E-books and digital life. Gillean got up and approached a desk made of dark wood. He saw a framed photograph on it. Gillean recognized Lucas on it. He looked way younger than he is now. There were two kids and a gorgeous woman.
Lucas came back, carrying a huge box. He put it on the floor and sighed . “ Is this your family?” Gillean asked and pointed to the picture. “ Yes. But I’ve been a widower for 15 years now and my children hardly ever visit me.”
“ Ok , Gillean, behold! My recent invention, and I believe, the most prolific one.” He opened the box carefully and started taking out the cockroaches , one by one. From the first glance they were like small stones, not really noticeable. But when Lucas let them go they started running around , and sneaking in every corner of the room.
“ Oh boy!” Gillean exclaimed.
One cockroach approached him and bit his ankle. “ Ouch! Quite a brutal dude.” Gillean said and rubbed the bitten part of his leg. Lucas brought a band-aid and helped him apply it on the bite.
“ So, what’s your opinion about my creatures?” Lucas asked and started staring at Gillean.
“ They’re really cool. Let’s pack and bring ‘em to my lab and show my team?”
“ But it’s still too early. When do they wake up?”
“ At around 8 am.”
“ Fella, you should sleep for at least an hour, you look too exhausted to go anywhere now.”
“ Why? It’s all right.” Gillean replied and shrugged his shoulders.
“ No, don’t resist.”
Lucas prepared a bed for Gillean and he went to sleep . He woke up when Lucas started shaking him.
“ Let’s go to your place. I think your friends are already looking for you.
“ How long have I been sleeping?” Gillean asked, rubbing his eyes.
“ For 3 hours.”
“ Holy cow, we need to hurry!” Gillean got up immediately.
He took Lucas’s box with the mechanical cockroaches inside and they ran to the elevator. Then they took a porto-cab and teleported to the lab. Lucas looked around and frowned. “ Is your lab the replacement of the old asylum?”
“ Yeah. We renovated it and now it’s the place where our ground-breaking experiments happen. “
“ Looks magnificent.”
“ Yeah.” Gillean said, took out the card-key from his pocket and opened the door. “ It’s weirdly quiet here today”, he thought to himself.
***
“ Hello! Guys, are you there?” Gillean yelled, feeling anxious. He gestured for Lucas to follow him and they went to Marcus’s office. Gillean knocked on the door and eventually heard Marcus’s voice: “ Come in!”
Gillean pulled the doorhandle and opened the door slightly. “ I have a guest with me.” Gillean said in a shy manner. “ Ok.” Marcus replied in consent. Gillean and Lucas came in . There was every person of their team. “ Where have you been?” Gwen asked .
“ Ok, guys. I went for a walk at approximately 4 am because I had insomnia again and I met this incredible person in the park near the river, I don’t remember how it’s called.” Gillean kept silent for a moment and then whispered to Lucas: “ Introduce yourself.”
“ Hello. I’m Lucas Bennet and I want to introduce my recent invention to you.”
Gillean brought the box from the corridor and opened it. Lucas took out all the mechanical cockroaches. “ These are robotic cockroaches . They’re able to sneak in everywhere and can help eavesdrop on any conversation as they have special microchips inside. The critters are really fast and agile which makes them decent rivals for the mechanical dog.”
“ Oh my goodness!” Asteria yelled and hid behind Gwen as she saw one of the cockroaches approaching her.
“ Don’t you mind being our new team member?” Marcus asked.
“ Of course.” Lucas said and shook hands with Marcus.
“ Welcome to you team !” Gwen and Asteria said in unison.
“ Gillean, Gwen will be staying with us permanently, she won’t be going back to the 2024th before we finish all the experiments and the malfunctioned time-machine will start working again.” Marcus said.
“ Yay!” Gillean exclaimed and hugged Gwen.
“ Lovebirds”, Asteria whispered and chuckled.
“ Do you want to have a tour around the facility?” Marcus asked Lucas.
“ Yes, I’d be really grateful for it.”
Marcus and Lucas left the room and went to look around, Asteria stayed in the office to do some paperwork that Marcus gave her , and Gwen and Gillean stood ,looking at each other, smiling.
“ You look overwhelmed.” Gwen said sadly and took Gillean by his arm.
“ I just need to get some rest.” Gillean replied.
***
They left the office not to distract her from work and went to Gillean’s room. They were sitting on the couch ,hugging ,when Gillean fell asleep on Gwen’s shoulder.
“ You’re so delusional sometimes, but I adore you for it.” she whispered and patted his hair.
