#alexpower

“I have not been!” Johnny counters. “He lied to you, Reed!”

Reed merely raises his eyebrow as skeptically as possible, but it’s enough for Johnny to flush, look guilty, and mutter something beneath his breath. 

“Besides,” continues Reed, “I’m afraid you are correct, son. Sue won’t care who started this. She’ll only care that we all participated.” Ben and Johnny groan. They know he’s right. “We are dead.” Reed raises a single finger. “But I have a plan.”

Ben and Johnny do not, as Reed had anticipated, react with joy. Instead, their eyes narrow, and a profoundly skeptical expression settles on their faces. 

“It doesn’t involve time travel, does it?” Johnny says. “Because I’ve sat through enough of your lectures to know that’s never a good idea.”

“Well,” says Reed, a trifle thrown. “It involves some time travel, I suppose—“

“Stretch,” Ben interrupts. “This ain’t gonna end with me havin’ ta punch a dinosaur again, is it? I’ve punched enough dinosaurs this week. I’m all dinosaur-punched out.”

“No dinosaurs,” Reed sighs. He remembers fondly the early days of this fantastic endeavor when they all did what he said the moment he—no, scratch that. He seems to remember being questioned at every turn even then, and special elections being held to replace him—no, no, this is surely better. “I don’t see why any dinosaurs should get involved. I am merely proposing that we create a kind of temporal bubble around the vase so that it revert to its…not broken state. And then trap it in a time loop. It should theoretically work quite well.”

Johnny squints. “And what happens when someone—like, say, my sister—tries to touch it?”

“Ah,” Reed says pensively. “Yes. I can see how that would be a problem. I expect they would also become trapped in the time loop. But—” He claps his hands and grins as he does whenever there is a problem that needs solving. “—we’ll find a way around it!” 

“Groundhog Day,” Ben nods. “We’re gonna get stuck livin’ out Groundhog Day.”

“What?” Reed says.

“Groundhog Day,” Johnny explains. “It’s a movie where Bill Murray gets stuck living the same day over and over again.”

“Ben,” Reed says, put out. “I assure you, we are not. This will be quite safe.”

“I’ve heard that before,” Ben and Johnny say at the same time.

Reed frowns. He does not quite understand how they manage that.

***

Two hundred and fifty-eight days later, Reed, Ben, and Johnny finally manage to break out of the time loop they’d been caught in. 

Sue’s vase remains, unfortunately, broken. 

“I have another plan,” Reed says.

“No!” Johnny says, shaking his head. “No more plans. Let’s just fess up and tell Sue what happened.”

“I have a plan that doesn’t involve getting yelled at,” Reed says.

“I’d rather get yelled at than end up reliving the same day over and over again,” Johnny says. “That was the worst. I got so bored!”

“I got us out of it,” Reed points out.

Johnny glares. 

“Eventually,” Reed sighs. “Some mistakes were made, I admit. The temporal mechanics behind it were quite tricky, but I’m certain that if it happens again, I can get us out of it fairly quickly.”

“No!” Johnny says. “No! We tell Sue the truth. She’ll be mad at us for a few weeks, but she loves us, right? It’s not like she’ll try to kill us or anything.”

“Are we sure of that?” Ben wonders. “When Suzie gets mad, it’s better to run. I vote we change our names and move to a new planet. She probably won’t be able to find us.”

“That seems rather extreme. Also, I am certain she would track us down in approximately 17.678 days, no matter where we went. Perhaps we should write her a note…and then take off to the Negative Zone for a few months. She’s bound to have forgiven us by the time we return.”

Johnny considers it. “I dunno, man,” he says. “Sue knows how to hold a grudge. She might just be madder by the time we get back.”

“What if we all get her presents?” Ben suggests. “Butter her up first. Reed, maybe you could…” He bumps his fist against Reed’s shoulder. “…you know. Show her a good time. And then tell her when she’s all afterglowy.”

“No,” Reed says, shaking his head. “I’ve tried that before. It never works. She’s much too smart for that.”

“Guys,” Johnny says, putting his arms around Reed and Ben’s shoulders. “There’s no getting out of this one. Accept it. We’re dead, and Sue’s gonna kill us. We had a good run, though.”

“Now, Johnny,” Reed frowns, “I don’t accept that. There’s always a way out of everything. We just need more time to think about this.”

“We had like six months,” Johnny points out. “Your best plan was, ‘Let’s run away to the Negative Zone.’“

“Now, Johnny. That wasn’t my best plan.”

“Then what?”

“Dimensional travel,” Reed says instantly. He has had quite a lot of time to think about it, after all. He doesn’t tell Johnny and Ben, but he has come up with 432 possible solutions to their current predicament. 

Ben and Johnny groan.

“Now, hear me out first!” Reed says. “What if we go to a parallel universe and steal a vase from another version of Sue?”

“But then that Sue won’t have a vase. Isn’t that kinda, I dunno, mean?” Johnny says.

“It wouldn’t be difficult at all to locate an evil Sue!” Reed says. “So we won’t have to feel guilty.”

“An evil Sue who still has our mom’s vase?” Johnny says skeptically.

“Sue is still Sue,” Reed counters. “Even when she’s evil.”

Johnny sighs. “Here we go again.”

Reed does not understand why Johnny sounds so trepidatious. This will work. He knows it will.