Dangerous Business by Sean Baker
For this freestyle project we were tasked with creating a narrative on anything we wanted. I have always been a fan of the Sci-fy genre, and especially enjoyed the idea of time travel. So I wrote my narrative on a Russian scientist who came to America in hopes of inventing time travel. He is employed at Google and has to impress his bosses with his plans on time travel. My narrative has an insane twist at the end that I'm sure readers will enjoy.
English is where my original idea came to life. We took a long time researching and coming up with an outline for our stories in class and it took me a while to finally land on this idea. When I finally picked this story out, I had a hard time coming up with a way to make the story interesting. This is when I decided to add the twist to the end, leaning the story from only sci-fy to sci-fy-thriller. For the next few weeks we worked on our projects having a lot of time to revise and get feedback from our peers and instructor. When we had what we thought to be a good story we had to choose someone from the community to read it and provide feedback of what they think of the piece. Once all the errors were ironed out I turned it in for a final grade.
I learned a lot of new things from writing this Narrative unit. This was the first time I was tasked to use at least 50% dialogue to move the story along. For me this was a very hard thing to accomplish because I had no prior work with that extent of dialogue. After a few attempts I finally had enough dialogue to move the story along and make sense.
Short Story:
A brisk autumn breeze blew through the expanding gardens of the Ivanov estate. It was early in the morning, the sun had just started shining through the tall California redwoods lining the borders of his hilly mansion perimeter. The early fog was still rolling through the trees, and the strong winds billowed the cropped hedges. Suddenly just for a second everything was calm and time stopped, at this same second Dimitri Ivanov’s eyes shot open from slumber. The old scientist had a serious looking face with white hair and large circular glasses. As soon as his eyes opened he cracked a huge smile and jumped out of bed. Immigrating from Russia to the Silicon Valley in his early thirties, he was one of Russia’s most valuable scientists he came to the tech capital of the world to go into technology-sciences. He was a hard working man and stuck to his beliefs, he was good with his money and made most of his millions from stock market investments. With such a successful scientific track record from Russia Dimitri scored a one in a million job at Google where he was paid to mess around with anything scientific, creating inventions and performing experiments.
Dimitri parked in his usual position and ran inside the closest building which was his office. Walking through the lobby with his briefcase tucked under his arm he spotted his three bosses sitting with a fourth gentleman Dimitri hadn’t seen before waiting for him in the colorful lobby littered with creative art and inspiring decor all around. Dimitri walked over to them,
“Hey gentleman how’s it going!” Dimitri said enthusiastically.
“We are good, my friend, always glad to see you come by to talk about another brilliant idea concerning time travel.” Dave Montgomery, the boss on the farthest left, said smiling back at him. While the other two bosses stood there observing emotionless in their identical plain brown pants and blazer, with white button down undershirts. The only difference being the color of their ties. The smaller boss wore a bright red tie to match his red cheeks which stood out on his pale white face. He had round glasses and blond hair. His name was George Palm the biggest holder of Google stocks. The taller man had a black tie which matched his hair, he had blue eyes and carried a notebook tucked under his arm. His name was Darren Yutan a genius programmer who everyone at Google looked at as futurologist. As for the fourth man he wore a black suit.
“Come this way.” Montgomery beckoned his tone getting a little more serious.
“Alrighty,” Dimitri said reluctantly.
The bosses led Dimitri to one of the many meeting rooms. The man in the black suit followed behind Dimitri, waiting in a chair outside the door of the presentation room. A timid Dimitri stood in front of the sitting bosses to the side of the projector screen where he was projecting his ideas as a powerpoint.
“As all of you may know time travel so far is only something of science fiction. I am here to change that” Dimitri said proudly while the three bosses looked at each other with raised eyebrows.
“I spent weeks fooling around with different theories on how time travel might exist not coming up with any positive scientific results. I decided to take a break on being scientific and take more psychological approach. The way I see it there is one way to go about creating time travel, you get all of the world’s leaders and top scientists together in one place, then you make an agreement between them all saying if they invent time travel in the future to use it to come back to this exact moment in this exact place. If everything works correctly a time traveler should be transported in front of us giving up all of his secrets to time travel.” The bosses looked at Dimitri silently for a moment. Then they looked at each other with surprised expressions.
“How can you be so sure this will work, and what evidence do you have supporting your hypothesis?” Montgomery asked in a questionable tone.
“Mr. Montgomery there is no evidence to support this claim. It is an original idea and will pave the way for a new era in human history, if it works that is. To be honest I have no idea if this will work but we will never know until it is tried.”
“Pffff,” Mr. Palm said rolling his head and eyes towards the ceiling in a disapproving manner.
“This is such a ridiculous claim! How could technology from the future simply appear in front of us just by signing a world agreement. Agreements change with time, doctor. And I simply don’t believe the world is ready for this huge leap in technology. Think of this at an ethical standpoint, we don’t know if this future will even exist, or even what will lie in it. What if humanity is doomed fifty years down the road not giving enough time for us to develop a time machine?” Mr. Palm said in a very rehearsed manner as if he had talked about this subject before.
“Those are very valid points Mr. palm, sir, but how will we know if we do not try? This simple agreement could lead to the end of every world issue decades before. We would be fools to not try this!” Dimitri proclaimed talking very fast and with passion.
“I love the idea!” Darren Yutan said while simultaneously tapping his fist on the table twice. The other two bosses looked directly at Mr. Yutan’s closed fist resting on the table from the taps then immediately changing their views on the topic and agreeing with Mr. Yutan. After agreeing the two bosses stood up and half leapt out of the room with very grave expressions on their face. Leaving Dimitri alone with Mr. Yutan. Mr. Yutan’s smile beamed down at Dimitri looking truly impressed.
“Dr. Ivanov! This is impressive work I am excited for you to start drafting up an agreement! In fact why don’t you start right away? I have a perfect place for you to work. Consider it a promotion from your old office.” Mr. Yutan paused looking at the gleeful expression on Dimitri’s face, “why don’t you follow me down to it.” He proceeded standing up and moving towards the door.
“Of course Mr. Yutan! I can’t believe you enjoyed my idea, even I think it’s kind of far fetched but hope is all I need to make it happen and by giving me your support it will fuel my drive to perfect this project,” Dimitri said standing up and grabbing his belongings to accompany Mr. Yutan positioned at the door.
“Here begins our journey through time!” Mr. Yutan said with a chuckle while opening the door and escorting Dimitri out into the hallway.
“This is my assistant Jeffrey he will be joining us on the walk down to your new office.” Mr. Yutan proclaimed as the man in the black suit stood up smiling and nodding towards Dimitri. Dimitri gave him a nod back then started walking next to Mr. Yutan down the hallway as Jeffrey tailed not far behind. The three arrived at a set of elevators and Mr. Yutan pushed the down button. Dimitri’s heart fluttered a little bit, he had never been to any of the lower levels of the Google buildings. The lower levels were only designated for the elite employees of Google, a group which Dimitri now belonged to. The elevator arrived and Dimitri, Mr. Yutan, and Jeffrey filed in. Dimitri stood behind both Jeffrey and Mr. Yutan facing the elevator doors. Mr. Yutan pressed a button labeled “basement” while letting out a sigh and closing his eyes. The elevator started descending. BANG! The limp body of Dimitri fell to the floor. Jeffrey stood looking down at the body for a few seconds. Jeffrey knelt down still holding his silenced M9 pistol in his left hand, he outstretched his right hand closing the eyelids Dimitri Ivanov.
“Such a fucking waste. All his potential gone.” Jeffrey said choking on his words a bit, “I hate killing doctros Darren.” Mr. Yutan’s eyes shot open resting upon the face of Dimitri silently saying his goodbyes.
“We must do what is good for the company,” Mr. Yutan said firmly. “We can’t have anyone, and I mean anyone, find the secrets to time travel. You know if this happens our entire business would be exposed and the technologies we transport from the future will become worth nothing.”
“Yea, yea just next time you need someone to kill the next father of time travel get someone else to do it because this will be my last time. I’m done with it.”
“Sigh, so be it, Jeffrey.”
The elevator came to a creaking halt at the lowest level and the doors opened.
“Give me a hand this time wouldya?” grunted Jeffrey while starting to drag Dimitri’s body out of the elevator by his torso.
“Alright, Alright.” Mr. Yutan grabbed Dimitri’s ankles helping Jeffrey hoist the body out of the pool of blood growing on the elevator floor and out into the massive basement of Google. The basement stretched underneath the entire Google campus, most of it was made up of one large room containing endless aisles of storage. The two carried Dimitri’s body down a few aisles until they got to a furnace. They dropped it in watching the body become engulfed in fire, then closing the cage door and turning away.
“Done.”
