Driving Doctor Mayhem

[33] Test, Test

I left and got myself a Big Gulp full of coffee after Doc and my conversation, and Gideon showed up a little bit after with a box latex gloves.

"It's so there won't be any fingerprints," Doc said, answering the question that I didn't ask. Slipping on a pair, he quickly flicked the power switch on the ray gun. "It's ready!" he singsonged as it revved up. "Test one is starting... now."

He pulled the trigger.

I blinked, and suddenly, I was holding a potted plant. Gideon had Cleo on his head. Doc was sitting on the kitchen counter and had changed his outfit entirely, switching from his normal ratty shirt and tie to his best suit underneath his lab coat.

"It worked!" he yelped, jumping off. "I mean, I knew it should've, but I didn't expect it to. And on the first test!" He chuckled giddily, setting the gun down.

"Congrats," Gideon chirped, picking Cleo up and stroking her. "One question."

"Yes?"

"If it freezes everything except, I'm guessing, whoever pulls the trigger, how are we supposed do anything?"

"Uh-huh," I added. "That seems like a good question, Gid."

"It's science," Doc said. "If I shoot you with it again, it undoes the first shot."

"Ah, that makes sense."

"It really doesn't," I sighed. "I don't know a lot about science, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't work that way. I feel like that would just make us... dead."

"Of course it works that way," Doc snorted.

"Oh, yeah?" I countered.

"Yes," he shot back. "Do you want proof?"

"If at all possible, yes."

Doc stormed determinedly over to the living room and yanked his analog wristwatch from where it was laying on the end table, holding it up to my face. None of of the hands were moving, including the seconds hand.

"I know that it works because it just did. Ready to trust me, Miss Banks? It will save a ton of time."

I nodded dumbly, accepting that pretty much everything I knew about physics--which admittedly wasn't much--was being tested by a unemployed accountant with a ray gun.

All of a sudden, the seconds hand jolted forward. Birds began chirping obnoxiously outside the window, and Doc turned away, checking his own watch, which had which had gone unaffected by the ray gun.

"Buffer time is equivalent to nearly twenty five minutes!" he announced, proudly pacing back and forth. "Hm, better than expected."

"And nobody else knows what just happened?" Gideon asked.

"Precisely," Doc chuckled, curling his finger around the trigger a second time, looking far more comfortable with the who thing than before. "And they won't when I do it again in three, two--"