Time Fracking

A short story

Brittany’s door was one of the last to close in Oklahoma City, but closing it didn’t save her. The Tyrannosaurus rex butted its head against the wooden door of her one-story rambler and crashed through, snatching Brittany around the waist with its massive jaws and piercing her flesh in a hundred places. Brittany’s screams could be heard two houses over, even above the thunder of hundreds of prehistoric behemoths that swarmed Oklahoma City’s streets.

Herds of T. rex, velociraptors, and other carnivores fanned across America. Pterodactyls blocked the sun. The creatures consumed human flesh whenever they encountered it, quickly acquiring a taste for meat that was a hundred million years new. The Army and National Guard attacked from the ground; the Air Force fired missiles and bullets from above. The president reassured the country that America’s military would defeat this onslaught, but privately the president and her advisors were unsure, because the antediluvian invaders seemed unstoppable. 

Twelve hours earlier

As Nick Parker was heading toward an empty seat in OK Oil & Gas’ cantina, he tripped over a leg belonging to Peter Marconi. His forward momentum abruptly stopped, propelling his tray's contents—macaroni and cheese, water bottle, rhubarb pie, and silverware—into the air. 

His five coworkers, Altso, Abby, Bernie, Luis, and Peter, burst into unrestrained hysterics. 

“Hey, Seiko man,” Luis crowed. “Did your watch throw you off balance?” He slapped his knee while the others laughed even louder. 

Bernie took a bite of his BLT and chimed in, “It looks like a watch a penguin would wear,” spitting out half his sandwich while he talked. 

“Get a real watch,” Abby added. “You don’t wanna look like a JAFO your whole life.” She held her wrist up, flaunting her black-dial, black-bezel Rolex Submariner. Her lunchmates held their arms high, too, displaying their Rolexes: a blue and red Pepsi, Deep Sea, and Explorer. 

Rolex was the watch of oil drillers. Everyone wore one except Nick.  

Nick’s fingertips tingled as they glided over his Grand Seiko Snowflake’s crystal, cooling and relaxing his body as if lying in the grass in a meadow under Mt. Fuji’s shade. 

My wedding present. I’m not putting a Rolex on my wrist, no way, no how, not ever. 

Working as an oilman was grueling, with long days under scorching skies; the only relief came from fans blowing hot air around the tented commissary, which was no relief. No relief from the heat and no escape from coworkers’ relentless taunts. Every hour of every day, they tossed epithets his way: “Seiko man,” “Spring Drive fairy,” “snowflake,” “communist geologist,” and “watch wimp.” 

In movies, Rolex was the king of watches, worn by adventurers, billionaires, heroes, and villains.

As for Japanese watches—nobody even heard of Grand Seiko, let alone a Grand Seiko Snowflake, so named for its white dial that resembled freshly-fallen snow. 

Nick adored his Grand Seiko, not just because it was a gift from Miranda or for its beauty, but because of the watch’s unique and advanced timekeeping technology called Spring Drive.

If he had to endure bullying, so be it. 

During their watch-synchronizing ritual, a daily bonding exercise, Nick’s five teammates clustered together, broad smiles stretched across their faces, while Nick scanned his tablet for potential anomalies in the fracking data. 

“Get a Swiss watch like a real man,” Peter shouted as he twisted his wrist and aimed his Rolex Explorer at Nick. “You want to fit in, buddy? Wear what we wear. Just a friendly word of advice.” 

Nick doubted that even a Rolex would open the door to comradery. As the site’s resident geologist, he’d always be the outsider, the dweeb in the proverbial sweater vest. ” He had master’s degrees in geology and physics. Nick’s job was to think about where and how to inject water, combined with various chemicals and sand, to extract the maximum amount of natural gas. Never mind that by the end of the day, Nick was coated in oil and dirt like the rest of his team, as exhausted and stiff as his crew. He manned pipes, secured storage tanks, dug holes, and built rigs like everyone else. But his scientific role and university degrees formed a wall of resentment that would always keep him and his team apart. 

After lunch, Nick surveyed the fracking site. He had just increased the water flow to the maximum—4,000 gallons per minute. Nick liked to stand close to where the pipe entered the ground. He was in tune with the strata below, sensing minute changes in vibration as the high-velocity fluid opened cracks in the earth. This is a good dig, he thought. 

The machines’ rancor prevented Nick from hearing the five pairs of feet approach from behind. He should have been aware that something was amiss because his team wasn’t visible, but his senses were more in tune with the Earth than his coworkers. Nick flinched as Luis and Bernie grabbed an arm, and Abby held Nick in place with a bear hug from behind.

“Fuck, what are you doing?” Nick shouted, his words barely audible over the machinery’s roar. “Let me go.” Nick tried to wriggle free, but three burly oil workers held him. “Let me go!” Nick raised a leg, but before he could stomp on Luis’ instep, Luis slipped his foot to the left.

Peter bopped Nick on the top of his head with his palm. “We’ll let you go in a minute, snowflake.” Peter circled around Nick and flashed a toothy grin. “But first, you’re going to give up your Seiko. Once it’s gone, you’ll buy a real watch like the rest of us.”

“Grand Seiko.” As soon as Nick said the words, he regretted them. Altso slapped Nick on the back of the head. “Pay attention, Seiko man. We’re doing you a favor. Here’s how it’s going to go down.” Altso faced Nick. “One, off comes your watch. Two, into the hole it goes. Three, you find yourself a Rolex like ours. Four, we leave you alone. I dunno that we’ll ever be buddies, but I promise you’ll be better off with a Rolex.”

“Wait, no!”

“Yes, and no waiting,” Abby said.

“No!” Nick’s brain exploded with numbers, symbols, and formulas and then with terrifying imagery. “No, this is a bad idea.”

“It’s the best idea,” Abby said, tightening her bear hug.

“No, no. You don’t understand —”

“We understand plenty. You’re the one who doesn’t get it. You’re the one who stands out with your Seiko.”

Nick spoke breathlessly. “It’s not that.” He shook his head. “Okay. I’ll get a Rolex. Just don’t put my watch into the fracking pipe.”

“Too late. We’ve decided,” Bernie said. “Watching you watch your watch meet its demise will be the best.”

Peter unfastened Nick’s timepiece, the band’s clasp crisply clicking open, and pivoted toward the fracking hole.

“No, no! This is a Spring Drive. It uses electromagnetic braking, tuned with a quartz oscillator. It’s not designed to be simultaneously subject to high pressure and high speed. If the Spring Drive movement survives the journey down the fracking pipe, accelerating and compressing, you’ll create a runaway gravity well, and something bad might happen. Something horrible…” Nick’s voice trailed off as he watched Peter drop his watch into the pipe. “Something awful.” Nick’s shoulders slumped, and his face drained of blood. 

Abby, Luis, and Bernie released him. Nick bent over, gasping, his heart galloping.

“Awful like your sissy watch being trashed,” Peter said.

“No.” Nick shook off Luis and Bernie, stiffened his back, and pointed to the roaring allosaurus with sharp, hungry teeth emerging from the earth. “Awful like opening a fracture in time.”

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If you enjoyed Time Fracking, I think you’ll like my story, The Liberation Gang.