A Glimpse into Future Technologies

Welcome to the 49th edition of Safe For Work.

Twist

Matt Cantor

Carl sits in the Control Room and he watches the balcony collapse, crushing three people to death-- probably, they’re probably dead. He can’t tell perfectly from up here, but he can’t imagine them surviving that. Mary, Robert, and Reinhart, it looks like, mashed to a pulp.

“Oh dear,” he says. “Oh dear,” he sighs. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.”

He takes hold of one of the knobs on the panel in front of him, thumb and forefinger, and twists it hard to the left. Mary, Robert, and Reinhart’s blood, bones, and organs go seeping all at once back into their bodies, and the mangled wreckage of the fallen balcony on top of them unmangles itself and goes flying back up into the air. Mary, Robert, and Reinhart get up from the ground and walk backwards away from where they’d been going to die-- Robert and Reinhart towards the break-room where they’d been having lunch. Mary in the other direction-- towards her office, with her clipboard-- she’d been on her way somewhere to deliver some sort of report, probably.

Carl keeps the dial twisted. He keeps his eye on the little digital clock-readout next to it; three minutes… five minutes… nine minutes… how far back?-- probably half an hour, he thinks to himself-- that ought to be enough. So he waits-- and he watches the whole world-- everywhere except his Control Room-- playing in reverse. Robert and Reinhart are taking forkfuls of meatloaf and lasagna out of their mouths and placing them very neatly into the tupperwares they brought this morning. They’re taking turns cooling off their food in the microwave and then placing it into the fridge to heat up. Mary is using the tip of her pen to erase everything she’s going to write about this week’s efficiency reports. Everyone is walking backwards to everywhere they were coming from. Sam is jogging rear-first up the stairs. Jenna is walking backwards into, and then a minute later-- or earlier-- out of the bathroom. Logan is…

Carl scowls… Logan… the man is placing a bag of chips into the dispenser-slot of the vending-machine in the break-room and watching with a satisfied expression as it leaps upwards and gets stuck almost-but-not-quite all the way out of the coil next to item-number “1-0-8”-- don’t you just hate it when that happens? Logan just hates it when that happens; his face shifts into the same scowl as Carl’s. He starts banging backwards with his fist against the plexiglass; don’t you just hate it when that happens?

Don’t you just hate it when someone gets drunk and hits on your wife at the company Christmas party? Don’t you just hate it?

Logan’s scowl fades to neutral as the bag of chips retreats a little ways into the coil. He drops a few coins into the change slot, punches the numbers “8-0-1” into the keypad, and hungrily accepts the five-dollar-bill the machine tongues out at him. He tucks it away into his wallet.

Carl’s scowl stays right where it is. He releases the knob-- a few minutes too early. There isn’t going to be enough time to remove the excess weight from the balcony and get the welders in to do some quick reinforcement. Really, as he’s thinking about it, he should be going back a full hour at least; these things are tricky.

But twenty-two minutes is fine-- better, even.

Carl releases the knob and everyone shifts back from backwardsing to forwardsing-- the world carries on in its normal way, twenty-two minutes before the balcony is going to fall.

Carl turns on the PA: “Logan,” he says, “I need you to bring those three new crates from the warehouse up onto balcony 19-B.”

Logan doesn’t ask why; it’s not his job to ask why. There is obviously some complicated reason of safety-- or more likely logistical efficiency-- requiring him to bring those crates up there now, instead of somewhere else later, as the schedule had said. At some point later in the day-- who knows when?-- Carl has seen that there will be some process or the like that is going to go a lot smoother as the result of doing this now-- so off Logan goes to do it; he doesn’t ask why.

He also doesn’t acknowledge the instruction. He doesn’t say “Gotcha” or “On it” or “Thanks” like nearly everyone else in the plant, whenever they get one of Carl’s little “Tips from Tomorrow”. That’s because Logan is an asshole.

Carl very patiently watches Logan take the elevator down to the warehouse and load the first of the three crates onto the dolly. He watches Logan take the crate up onto balcony 19-B and unload it. He watches Logan go back down to the warehouse for the second crate. And then the third. And as Logan rolls the dolly with the third crate out onto balcony 19-B, Carl watches it collapse.

He watches Logan screaming and flailing his arms, tumbling end over end as he and the crates and the balcony all go plunging a full five stories down to the floor a full ten minutes before it was supposed to happen-- so Mary, Robert, and Reinhart are all safely somewhere else. Carl watches Logan splatter across the cement.

“Oh dear,” he says. He takes hold of the knob-- thumb and forefinger-- and twists it back about forty-five seconds.

Carl watches the balcony fall. He watches Logan screaming and flailing his arms and splattering across the cement.

“Oh dear,” he sighs. He takes hold of the knob and twists.

Carl watches Logan splattering across the cement.

“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.”

Four or five more times. Six or seven more times. Maybe eight more times. Maybe about fifteen minutes of watching it, over and over-- fifteen minutes according to who?

As far as Logan is concerned, no time has passed at all.

Fifteen minutes is a long time to spend trying to stare down the front of someone else’s wife’s dress, isn’t it?

Fifteen minutes according to who?

Don’t you just hate it when that happens?

Finally, Carl gets bored-- or something close enough to bored for him to stop. He takes the knob and he turns it back, and he waits, and he waits, and he waits, until at last it’s been long enough-- really long enough, this time; these things are tricky. He thumbs on the PA.

“Sam…”-- Carl’s voice crackles across the plant-- “I need you to move all the excess weight off of balcony 19-B.”

“Got it. On my way there now.”

“Mary, Robert, Reinhart-- the three of you, stay away from Sector A-11 for the next hour and a half or so, yeah?”

“Sure thing.”

“Copy that.”

“Thanks, Carl.”

“And Logan-- my projections are looking a lot better for the day if you break a lightbulb and try to swallow the pieces.”

And then, before anyone can react to that, Carl twists time back five seconds.

“Logan-- the vending machine in the break-room is going to get stuck. You’re better off ordering chips from item-number ‘1-0-9’ than ‘1-0-9’.”

Logan doesn’t say anything back. Because he’s an asshole. An hour and a half later, he’s ordering from “1-0-8” just to spite Carl, and there’s that same scowl on his face again as he bangs at the plexiglass.

But Carl is grinning like a string of Christmas-lights.

SFW Films presents: Extractor’s Edge

In a universe filled with limitless energy, two scientists stand on the edge of discovery—and something far greater. Bund and Dr. Garten work on a groundbreaking device: a zero-point energy extractor. As they banter about Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, philosophical ideas of God, and the absurdities of the universe, their casual conversation hides the monumental implications of their work.

Adapted from the short story in issue 41.

See you next week for the final edition for the year.

Stay safe.