Instead, he had done little more than become a glorified security guard. Every now and then, something would come up. Some scientist would accidentally create a worm-hole in his lab for 2/100ths of a second or some astronaut would lose a minute or two of time while in orbit. Events like that were easy to manage. Easy and boring.

Arthur looked at his watch, disappointed to find that he had 6 days left in his shift. The last few days always seemed to drag on forever. He had just decided to nap when a small, red light began to blink on the Chronostat. He squinted at the light, frowning. He had never seen anything other than a peaceful green grid on the Chronostat, and was sure it was malfunctioning. Then another red light began to blink. Then another. Within seconds, there were close to thirty blinking, red lights. Arthur sat, staring. He had no idea what was going on, but he was starting to get a bad feeling in his stomach. He leaned over and pressed his comm button.
“Uh, sir?”
There was a sudden gasp on the other end, followed by a crash and a shout. There was some more noise and some mumbling, and then Arthur heard “Arthur? What in God’s Green Garden do you think you’re doing, scaring me like that?”
“Uh.. I wasn’t trying to scare you.”
“Where the hell’s your voice coming from?”
“This is the comm, sir.”
“That thing works?”
“Apparently. Well, anyway sir, I noticed something odd on the chronometer. Like…there’s a lot of red lights on it.”
“Impossible”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. But-”
He was cut off by the sounds of klaxon alarms flooding the room. Suddenly, every panel and instrument in the room was going crazy. A hollow, robotic voice came over the speakers.
“WARNING. LEVEL 10 EVENT IMMINENT. LEVEL 10 EVENT IMMINENT.”
Arthur stared helplessly at the monitors and instruments. This was all he ever wanted. Something exciting was happening. Something huge. “Oh shit,” Arthur thought, “we’re all gonna fucking die.” This thought was followed immediately by “Did I just piss myself? Is that seriously piss I’m standing in?” Before he could figure out the answer to that question, his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell to the floor.