Chapter Text
July 21st Present Day; Southside Chicago
4:33 PM
They feel like gods.
The longer they build the machine, the more Ian begins to believe in it. And it scares him. It scares him to absolutely no end. But he can’t back out now. They’re in too deep.
The water ripples in the waxy paper cup as Ian places it down on the work bench.
“It looks like a dog digested it.”
Ian’s lips feel Sahara dry. The water doesn’t help.
“No one said it’d be pretty,” Lip mumbles from beneath the work bench. He’s checking the glue on the forest of PVC pipe.
Things are different today. Ian can feel it in the air. A summer storm is rolling through Chicago and the basement air is damp and muggy. The front of Lip’s tank top has a sweat stain on the chest that closely resembles Venezuela. Ian pulls out his Marlboros and lights one. The smoke distorts his view of the machine on the table.
“All good down there?” Ian asks around his cigarette.
“The fuck are you inquiring about my dick for man?”
“That’s not what I meant, asshole.” Ian snorts.
Lip pulls himself out from under the workbench and straightens up.
“Yeah,” he says, scratching a patch of dry skin behind his ear. “We can probably fill it up now. Grab the gas cylinder.” He points and moves back to crouch besides the wild tubing beneath the bench.
Ian lugs the green tank away from the copper covered walls. They’d put the metal netting up weeks ago. It covers the room head to toe like amber spider webs.
“The hell is Argon?” Ian asks, reading the label on the tank; Property of the University of Chicago and Ian doesn’t want to know what lengths Lip went to get it.
“Noble gas,” Lip says, taking the nozzle of the tank and locking it into a valve leading into the pvc. He checks the pressure.
“Safe?” Ian asks, hunkering down besides Lip. The bench shakes as he braces himself against it. The water ripples in the cup.
“Colorless, odorless, nonflammable, nontoxic. Basically not even there.”
Just like the machine.
No one knows what they’ve been building. Kash lets them use the basement of his convenience store. Carl has helped them rummage around the junk yards. No one else.
The tank moans as Lip lets the argon into the tubing.
“This is it huh?” Ian says, flicking his cigarette. “This is the end?”
“Well no, we still have to—ow fuck,” Lip mumbles, shaking out his finger after pinching it. “We have to add something to control how much power we use.”
“That wasn’t on the to-do list.”
“I know. I just added it.” Lip closes the tank and unhooks it from the pvc. “I was thinking earlier and it’ll be way easier to make out what time we go back to if we can control the amount of power we use. We also have to establish rules.” Lip laughs when he notices the wild look Ian is giving him, snatching the cigarette out of his mouth. “First rule of time travel club,” he says, blowing smoke into a cloud above them.
“Don’t talk about time travel club?”
Lip clicks his tongue and points at Ian. “Correctomundo. Second rule of time travel club; we can’t fuck it up man. I mean we don’t know if time is fixed already or if we can change it, but we have to be careful.” Lip pulls himself to his feet and starts dragging the gas cylinder towards the wall again. “We don’t want to cause any paradoxes; that would suck big time.” Lip pauses as he straightens up again, coming to stand beside Ian. “Third rule of time travel club; we can’t bring any shit with us. If we leave something in the past, it’s still connected to the present time loop. And that could cause some crazy shit. Someone messes with an object out of its time loop while we’re using the machine, they could be blasted into the future.
Ian takes back the cigarette. They face the machine.
“Fourth rule of time travel club?”
"I’ll think of something.”
Ian flicks the cigarette.
They can hear the rain all the way from the basement. The cheap one direction fan in the corner blows their hair like wheat fields. Ian scratches his chest. The cigarette is passed between them. Thunder almost makes them drop it.
The water ripples in the cup.
“We gotta get home, man,” Lip says, stubbing out his cigarette between the copper wiring covering the wall.
“Yeah,” Ian says, straightening up and crossing the room to grab the cup off the work table. Fingers around waxy paper.
“Hey, you wanna—shit!”
Thunder makes him drop it.
The water no longer ripples in the cup.
The machine is wet.
A flash of bright light and Lip swears as the single bulb hanging from the ceiling bursts sending sparks like star clusters into the air and the building rumbles and the copper on the walls heats up and glows gold. Ian’s legs feel like jelly donuts and then the dirty concrete is cool against his sweaty cheek, his head merri-go-round.
It smells like rain in the summertime when the air is hot and the dust builds up in your nose. Ian breathes it in eagerly, coughing as he sits up.
“Lip?”
Laughter comes from somewhere far away.
“Right here.”
Ian coughs again, swiping at his face only to find that it’s wet. His brow furrows. The black surrounding them is too dark to see through. Ian’s stomach twists
“I think I blacked out, I think… oh man—” Ian cuts himself off, vomiting onto the floor beside himself. Everything is white behind his eyelids.
“Did you just puke?”
“Uhuh,” Ian blubbers, wiping his mouth carefully, trying to steady himself. “Are there people upstairs?”
He can hear them through the floor boards. Footsteps footsteps.
“Don’t know. How bad is the machine fucked up? Did you see it before the light turned out?
“Fuck that man, we could be getting robbed blind right now. And I am not in the mood for Linda to be up my ass tomorrow.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Lip mutters and Ian can hear him across the room, rummaging around, standing up. Ian gives himself a minute before doing the same, still woozy.
“Where the hell is the light switch?”
“Right side of the door,” Ian mumbles from where he’s attempting to stand.
“It’s not fucking here.”
“Doesn’t matter, I think the lights broken.”
Lip huffs and opens the door out of the back half of the basement. Ian can hear him crossing the front half and fumbling up the steps. “Since when is there so much shit down here Ian, your pedophile boyfriend needs to clean up. This is a minefiel--.”
Ian is fully on his feet when Lip falters and his voice fades away. Ian crosses the room to the door, sliding through. Lip is right, the front half of the basement is littered with jagged silhouettes, more so than Ian remembered. He runs into several of them before he’s actually getting himself up the flight of stairs.
“Why are you just standing there?” Ian mumbles, trying to push past Lip who’s lingering in the doorway, looking out.
“Shit!” Lip ducks down, almost pushing Ian into a tumble. Ian gets a glimpse of someone walking by the door.
“Who was that? Jesus Lip, move.”
Ian pushes past his brother and steps out of the basement.
He is very certain of the fact that this is not the Kash and Grab
“Well we’re not in fucking Kansas anymore,” Lip whispers from behind him.