He had been sitting at his desk for about a week, wasting hundreds of sheets of paper and liters of coffee. Immersed in equations, thousands of calculations and notes were hanging all over the office wall.
His eyes lit up like mercury lamps, what he had been looking for was there, in front of him, depicted as a long list of numbers and formulas.
He ran out with a box under one arm and holding several folders with the other.
He stopped in front of a room from which came a melancholic piano melody.
He entered without any warning, slamming the door against the wall.
"Landon! It's urgent!"
The guy's hands slammed against the piano keys, and he looked over to where Gauss was standing with his box and his other stuff.
"Would you like to explain what all the fuss is about?!"
"Yes! No… not really. Come with me."
"Who in their right mind would go with you before asking…?"
He didn't finish speaking, since the door had already been left open and Gauss' footsteps were walking away along with the background noise.
"Hey Gauss! Wait for me, I'll come with you. Just don't make me regret it."
He didn't answer. They continued walking, going past halls and corridors, until they finally reached an industrial elevator that took them five floors down.
When they finally left the enclosure, they walked through a tunnel that led them to a rather small room, covered with metal segments and the rest made of concrete. There was a computer on one side. In the center, there was a large white box next to a tripod.
"I have no idea why I agreed to come here with you without asking you anything, but… what are we doing here?"
"I found out that when you stole my cannon, some external thing changed reali… Damn it Landon! Damn thief…! Ahem… Oh excuse me, I'll continue with what I was telling you; you created a small space-time anomaly with it, generating a junction between dimensions, I didn't know how, but now I finally discovered the reason, and I even managed to understand the alternative functions of it."
"Yeah… Wait! What the fuck are you trying to do? Your goddamn shit almost blinded me… Hey, come to think of it, I never stole your cannon… We could get punished for this, we'll be demoted to Class D!"
"It doesn't matter anymore, I trust you, now contact Cygnus, tell him to come."
Landon looked a little annoyed at Gauss' attentiveness to the last thing he had said. He was immersed in the folder in his hand and talked without looking at anything other than what he was reading.
He was about to shout something at him, but he stopped, and walked to a wall where there was a microphone and a small keyboard. He typed in some numbers and then some acronyms.
"Hello? DIM Department? Get me Dr. Cygnus."
"This is him. What do you want?"
"Oh… Uh… Dr. Gauss wants you to come to the… Let me see… To test chamber 300-D, I don't know exactly what for, but he's requesting for you to come here."
"Yes, I remember, I don't know why I accepted."
Cygnus abruptly hung up. Landon spoke into the microphone again and when he received no response, he returned to where Gauss was.
He took out from the white box the Kleinac Cannon, and was now mounting it on the tripod, while he carefully checked the whole device, writing things down in the folder.
"Hey… Cygnus will be here in a few moments… I think so, he didn't ment…"
"He'll come, now grab that camera on the table, and start filming."
"Filming? Why…? Oh well… Wait, does the O5s know we're here? Is this something confidential or…?"
"No… I mean yes, at least one of them, he owed me a small favor, and granted me this experiment."
As Landon set up the camera, he talked to himself regretting being there.
The elevator dinged outside the room, a man in a black lab coat walked in with a blank face.
"You are Gauss, and you are Landon. We'll be damned for this… Stop playing with that German SCP, asshole, I don't like this at all. Now then… What do you need?"
"It's not a fucking SCP…! Yes, it should… You know about this stuff too, so I want you to be here during the experiment, try to observe and write down anything important, then compare the data with the CK.3-34 firing test."
Cygnus slightly adjusted his Kevlar under his shirt, and made an affirmative gesture. He sat down in a chair in front of the desk and began to look through the files' dates. Meanwhile, Gauss was putting on an anti-radiation suit as he turned knobs and buttons on the weapon's control panel. He finished making some settings and turned the trigger to the left, leaving it pressed without touching it.
Automatically the Cannon's cylinders began to rotate, faster and faster while illuminating the rear part.
In a matter of seconds a thin stream of light shot out, melting the steel plate at the end of the chamber very slightly. Phill activated other elements of the panel and the beam of light was absorbed, and focused into a sphere measuring only a few centimeters.
"You're fucking nuts! Turn that thing off right now!"
While Landon yelled at Gauss, Cygnus ran to the door of the test chamber and tried to get it to budge, but was unable to open it.
"Be quiet, this is harmless. Film it, Landon."
"I'm already doing it, damn it!"
Phill pulled a small lever near the rear of the weapon and the sphere was shot with a powerful lightning bolt. A white light with blue tones illuminated the entire room. A cloud of dust emerged from the ceiling after a strong tremor. When it finally dissipated. A blast of cold air and snow entered the chamber, a round screen illuminated the room with sunlight.
Cygnus stood behind the computer desk while Mulnero was still filming with his trembling hands.
"Are… Are we dead already?"
"Vortrefflich! Vortrefflich! It works! Damn it, it works! Tell me you filmed it Landon, tell me you did!"
"Yes… It's… This is something… Strange… Why is it so cold?"
"By concentrating the positron flux in a controlled gravitational space and then releasing it without colliding with physical surfaces, I have created a bridge! To the first time the Kleinac Cannon was fired…! It was in Russia during the winter many years ago, in an area outside the laboratory… Can you see it in the background?"
"It's… Trees… And a building…"
"It's Russia! In the year 1970!"
Gauss put on a pair of protective goggles and adjusted his radiation suit.
He reached in with his hand and then his whole body, while being watched by the two men who were astonished at such a vertex being generated. Cygnus shouted from the test chamber while Phill was already in the past.
"VanDerGauss! How long will this stay open? It's dangerous for you to go in! You won't be able to come back!"
"I've got about 10 hours! It's not the energy that's the problem! It's the temperature!"
All of a sudden, a very familiar voice shouted from the side of the past. A man with a large artifact in his hands, dressed in a white lab coat with blood stains, was shouting for help towards Gauss.
"Hilfe bitte! Hilfe!"
He had remained frozen at the sight of the man standing several meters away from him. In the cold, white snow some men with red badges on their shoulders were approaching with large rifles.
"Narushitel'! Narushitel'! Ya ubit' yego!"
Soldiers were running and firing toward Gauss' position.
He couldn't move, the past had turned out to be scarier than he had expected.
He was reliving again one of the moments he hated the most in his life. Now he was looking at him… His former self dressed in the same bloody clothes he was wearing at that moment. He looked at the Soviets as they approached, firing. Bullets whistled around him. He still couldn't move. A shot grazed his metal arm, ripping his suit and leaving a small mark.
"Mein Gott."