An Evening with Will

Will entered the room, holding a sandwich, looking a bit lost and confused. As he took slow, cautious bites of pastrami, he stared intently out the window. "Hey, Jake," he asked, turning to face me with a slight frown on his face, "what time is it?"

"It's 7:30," I said, looking up from my laptop. "Why, what's up?"

"Oh, nothing, nothing," he said, looking down at a device on his wrist. "I think the timing mechanism is screwed up." He stuffed the rest of the sandwich into his mouth, and messed with a knob on the side. Giving it a few flicks for good measure, he walked out of the room.

Whatever. That sandwich did look good, though. I put my computer on the coffee table, and walked into the kitchen to make it. When I went back into the living room, there was Will, waiting for me.

"What time is it?" he asked.

"I dunno, quarter 'til eight?" I said, confused.

"Well, crap, that can't be good," he said furrowing his brow.

"What, that it took me fifteen minutes to make a sandwich?" I said, confused.

"No, that...wait, sandwich? Can I have that?" Before I had time to react, he took the sandwich off of my plate, and left the room. I stood there, opened mouthed for a bit, then set the plate down and opened the door to his room. It was completely empty, except that I had just watched him walk in here. I searched the room, but the only thing out of the ordinary was his workbench. At least, I think. I'm pretty sure the clutter had grown.

I went back into the living room, only to find Will waiting for me again. "What time is it?" he asked. "It's 7:50," I said, glancing at my watch. "What are you doing?"

"Failing," he said in response, flinging himself onto the couch. He looked around briefly for the TV remote, gave up, and propped his feet up next to my computer. "We've got a few minutes. Pull up a seat," he said, patting the piece of couch next to him. I stared at him with a confused look on my face, but he wasn't paying attention to me anymore. I grabbed the remote from underneath the pillow, and turned it to the sports game.

"It's 8:20," he said, looking up from the TV during half time. I looked up as well; sure enough, there was a second Will, walking into the room looking confused.

"I screwed this up, didn't I?" asked otherWill, sighing.

"Big time," replied Will. "Just wait it out naturally."

Both of the Wills left the room; my Will went into the kitchen, while otherWill went into his room. Not more than a few minutes later, yet another Will entered the room, this time through the front door. "It's a great day for science!" he said, with a sort of contageous excitement I hadn't seen the entire evening. "Don't wait up, Jake," he said, walking past me into his room. "I'm going to be testing out my time machine!"

I waited five more minues before yelling, "Hey, Will, you're gone!"

"Thanks, Jake," he said, walking past me to head back into his room.

"Anytime," I said, feeling much smarter now that I had figured out what had just been going on this evening. "Any idea what went wrong?"

"Not a clue," he said, closing the door. " Something is affecting the accuracy. I'll let you know if I figure it out. Or, better yet, if I do figure it out, I'll go back and let you know, so you can tell me the answer so I don't have to waste time troubleshooting it."

I briefly tried to consider how that might work, but it gave me a headache. Man, I hate physics.