Time Flux: Welcome to the New World

Recharge

"First name basis now are you?" Asked James with a smile

"My dear, I only helped two brilliant minds come to the right answer a little quicker. I had every confidence you could get to it all on your own even in my absence"

"Rubbish!..." Hannah rushed back over to Rutherford "... you're bloody brilliant!"

James sighed and rubbed his forehead.

"Is someone going to enlighten us or will we forever be stood in the dark?" Clock asked.

Oz looked up quickly and a small pencil fell out of his ear to the ground.

"Absolutely! Using Ernest's research and the Tech-Man's capabilities, we have managed to theoretically create a new fuelling system for what I guess would now be called a Time Engine." Oz explained "We can make a new element!"

"A new element? Is that possible?" James quizzed them, dashing his eyes around the faces in the room

"Until today, no!..." Oz said excitedly "...but my hair isn't the only thing that's bright about me!"

"Have you made it?" Lila asked, silencing the room

"Ah. That's the problem." Oz said, the smile disappearing from his freckled face.

"Even if we could make it in the cottage, we wouldn't have anywhere near the amount of uranium to synthesize. We'd also need astronomical amounts of energy. Just think, in the future when we performed these tests, we put 4 sectors into total blackout." Hannah explained, head slightly lowered.

"Fine, for one minute let's pretend we have this beautiful shiny new element, what then?"James asked.

"Well uh, we can craft a new vessel here. Obviously it will be slightly cruder than Hannah's design but secure enough to allow us to travel. The new element would act as its core, capable of self-charging. We would theoretically be able to jump as many times as we liked." Oz explained

"I only want to jump once..." James said sternly

"About that, we honestly have no idea what kind of data we need to input to go to a certain time. We have the destination codes for what we thought would take us to our new home in the future which ended up sending us here. If we thought about those destination co-ordinates as time rather than space, we could eventually, given enough jumps, plot a course for home."

"Son of a bitch..." James said "So you're telling me, we would need to randomly jump through space and time until you could calibrate your little wristwatch so we can go home and that could take anywhere between 1 and infinity jumps?"

"Yeah..." Oz said.

"Well. Shit..." Clock said, with a slight smirk "That's better than nothing."

"That's the spirit!"

Hannah put her hand on Oz's shoulder and looked across to Clock with a face that could only mean 'hold your horses there cowboy'.

"You are both thinking too far ahead. We don't have the materials to craft the new element, nor do we have the lab equipment to do it even if we had."

"One does." Rutherford said.

The team all shot their eyes toward Ernest. He had a steely determination in his eyes.

"We have all had the sorely desperate experience of being captives of that despicable man. Meaning we were all privy to the goings-on in that ghastly place. Allow your minds to imagine the magnitude of the facilities at One's disposal at a main organizational outpost."

"You want to go back!?" Oz exclaimed

"Not me boy, I would be of no help and be a colossal hindrance instead. But I am not the one with mechanical advantages literally fused to my bones..." Ernest said, looking at Clock.

Hannah walked over to Clock once again, staring up at him with her big green eyes. She searched his face for any kind of apprehension but couldn't find any. The only thing she saw was boiling determination.

"We don't even need to ask do we?" Hannah said with a smile

"Nope." Clock replied "No helping it, we need the uranium after all"

"So this has nothing to do with you having a second crack at One?"

"Nope..." Clock said, hand still firmly sat upon the hilt of his broken sword "Absolutely nothing"

Hannah pushed her hand through the buttons of his shirt and onto the still healing wound on his chest. Lila winked at Oz and they both sniggered like school children.

"Remember James, you have gone down this lone wolf path before, it didn't end well last time." Hannah said, eyes still fixated on his.

"I know..." Clock replied, placing his hand on hers "This time will be different"

"Why?"

"Because this time..." Clock looked at Hannah, Oz, Ernest, and finally Lila "I won't be alone."