The Clock, Four Minutes Fast

The door out to the hospital locked itself along with a white screen. The information terminal put up 02:17 where the exit number should have been. The digits blinked once and vanished, but the lock tone stayed.

I checked my wristwatch. 07:01. The network board read 07:06. In my memory the switch to an isolation cell had not happened at this hour. The order was right. Doors, backup power, ventilation, manual control panel. Only, every stage had been pulled forward.

Jang Yura hauled on the door handle. It did not move a finger's width.

"How many minutes does the hospital have."

"31 minutes on oxygen."

"What it takes to open this door."

"Two keys. Without them, a restricted bypass."

O Gyeongtae already had the control panel cover open. He held two screws in his mouth, then caught Jang Yura's look and spat them into his palm.

"If you want to preach hygiene outside a hospital, save it for later."

"I'm preaching it now. Wipe your hands before you touch that."

He grumbled and cleaned his hands with a disinfectant wipe. Even inside a crisis, Jang Yura's rules kept pointing in the direction that kept people alive. O Gyeongtae looked at the inside of the cover and clicked his tongue.

"Full release is out. Key A is in the technical office. Key B is with Continuity Headquarters. Neither one is here."

"Have their locations been confirmed?" I asked.

He pulled up the movement log on the station terminal. The technical office key holder had already gone to the emergency wing of Haneul Hospital with the injured from Myeongjin Station. The Continuity Headquarters key had been loaded into a national escort vehicle and pulled out into the northern control zone. In the original timeline both keys had been near this spot at this hour.

Jang Yura looked at the screen.

"I lived, so the ambulance routes changed, and because of that the key holder went to the hospital?"

"That is the likeliest reading."

"It isn't a reading. The road is blocked right now."

Her words were not an accusation. They were a check on the facts. When a person you saved is alive and moving, the keys that open doors move too. In my notebook I wrote key A to hospital, key B to northern escort. The two key rule held. We simply did not have them.

People crowded in from the back of the passage. Two injured, three station staff, the driver of an oxygen delivery vehicle, one patient's family member. All of them had been pushed toward this exit when the hospital approach road closed. The Haneul Hospital alert repeated through the street speakers.

"Emergency oxygen remaining, 30 minutes."

Jang Yura lined the people up along the wall.

"Clear the front of the door. Anyone who can sit, sit. Anyone who needs oxygen, raise a hand."

Three hands went up. One of them belonged to the mechanic on the stretcher. His cut glove was still there in my memory.

O Gyeongtae brought out the manual clutch shaft. A metal disc about the size of a palm. He fitted a screwdriver into a small notch beside the disc and turned.

"I can make a gap for about 90 seconds. It isn't opening the door, it's slowing the lock pins. Eight people, nine at most. Push equipment through and it drops."

"Not everyone gets out," Jang Yura said.

"Which is why we set an order."

Their eyes came to me. I was the one who counted. That attention did not sit well. Say a number and somebody is left behind. Jang Yura spoke first.

"Order is: people who need oxygen, people who can work the manual controls, people who have to clear the way. Family goes to the back if they can walk as far as the second passage."

The family member started to protest. Jang Yura pressed the patient's name tag into his hand.

"I know you want to go together. If you both get stuck now, you both arrive late. Hold the tag and come in the second group."

He closed his mouth. A concrete next action moved him better than an order.

I recalculated the number who could pass. Door width, stretcher length, clutch hold time, the strength in O Gyeongtae's hands. My wristwatch and the network clock were already more than 5 minutes apart. I took the offline wristwatch as my reference.

"First 30 seconds, one stretcher and two oxygen cylinders. Next 30 seconds, the mechanic and the driver. Last 30 seconds, Captain Jang, Mr. O, and me."

Jang Yura shook her head at once.

"I'm not last, I'm staying at the door. Somebody has to push the injured through."

"The last 30 seconds are the dangerous ones."

"That's why I'm staying."

O Gyeongtae wrapped a hand around the clutch shaft.

"I have to hold this here. Let go and it shuts immediately."

"You have to get out too."

"Machines don't cut you slack just because you ask. What I can do is hold until the shaft breaks."

He was not an all purpose technician. One hand gripping a shaft was the whole of the solution he had right now. I wrote that condition on paper. Clutch damage likely. Not reusable.

The white screen came on again. The terminal displayed the phrase trial isolation cell transition. Preparing 12 hours of autonomous operation. Myeongjin Station was trying to detach itself from the city network. The hospital was one door away, but a cell boundary is not thinner than paper.

"Starting."

O Gyeongtae turned the clutch. Metal creaked like bone. The gap opened to the width of a palm. Jang Yura pushed the first stretcher.

"Heads down. Oxygen cylinders first."

I counted the seconds. Twelve, thirteen. The gap shuddered. The first stretcher went through. One cylinder caught on the threshold, and the driver dropped low and dragged it clear. Jang Yura kicked a support block into place.

"Twenty eight."

"Second group."

The mechanic came through. His awareness was faint, but his eyes opened. Jang Yura took hold of his shoulder.

"Don't look at your hand, look at my voice. We're getting through."

The mechanic did not look at his hand. Those words moved him. From the far side of the door I lifted the stretcher wheels. One wheel came off. The equipment scraped the threshold and stopped.

"Forty nine."

O Gyeongtae's arm was shaking. Metal filings fell from the clutch shaft.

"Faster. This thing is a one time use."

Jang Yura gave up on the stretcher's folding legs. She stamped the lock pin flat, folded them, and shoved the frame along the floor with her hands. The stretcher was ruined, but the mechanic got through. One piece of equipment lost, one person sent out.

The people still waiting watched that choice. Nobody asked why she had wrecked the stretcher.

"Sixty two."

The oxygen delivery driver and one station worker went through. The family member stepped back with the name tag in his fist. His face had set hard, but his feet moved. Jang Yura gave him nothing more than a nod.

The gap began to narrow.

"Captain Jang, now."

"Mr. O first."

O Gyeongtae laughed.

"I take my hand off and you don't get out."

Jang Yura did not answer. She hooked a safety line around O Gyeongtae's waist and threw the end to me.

"Pull. On three."

"And the clutch?"

"I'll hold it."

"You'll injure your hand."

"Fewer words. Three."

She laid her hand over O Gyeongtae's. The angle the clutch was holding at changed. I pulled the safety line. O Gyeongtae slammed his shoulder passing through the gap. He swore, but he was breathing.

"Eighty two."

Jang Yura went low last. The door came down and scraped the shoulder of her rescue suit. I grabbed her arm. This time she did not shake me off. Instead she said,

"Pull."

I pulled. The door closed and chewed the clutch shaft. The metal disc split in half. Jang Yura rolled onto the ground outside the door, then stood straight up and counted the people left behind.

"How many still inside?"

"Four. Waiting on the second bypass," a station worker answered.

"Keep the line open. Nobody in there needs oxygen."

She checked on the ones left behind before she looked at the ones who had made it through. A rescue captain's habit. I picked up the broken piece of the clutch. Full release was impossible without the two keys. The restricted bypass let only some of the people through, and it destroyed equipment. The rule held, and so did the cost.

Outside, the sound of the city had changed. Alerts in different districts rang on different rhythms. The hospital board showed 07:13, and my wristwatch showed 07:05. O Gyeongtae took an old offline watch out of his pocket. It was close to 07:06.

He looked at the network board and said,

"That one's drunk. This one's still sober."

I wrote the three times in a row. The spread had opened to 7 minutes 12 seconds. The error that started at four minutes had grown. The direction was not consistent either. Synchronization across the whole city was slipping.

A new alarm went off on the roof of Haneul Hospital. This time it was not only oxygen. The phrase hospital node priority conflict came up across the entire city disaster network. A white screen covered the advertising board on the hospital's outer wall, then went dark.

Jang Yura looked at my notebook.

"Next is inside the hospital?"

"Yes. And conditions come before dates now."

"So you haven't thrown the dates out yet."

I could not answer. My hand was already reaching for the original timetable. The habit of wanting to believe a wrong timetable beats no timetable was still in me.

O Gyeongtae pressed the piece of clutch into my hand.

"That's what a missing key costs. Don't go thinking the next door opens for free."

I put the piece in my pocket. We had cleared the first zone, but Myeongjin Station had sealed into a cell behind us. The hospital was sounding alarms ahead of us. The network clock kept running ahead.

The four still inside answered over the radio. Two station workers, one family member, one patient who could walk. Nobody needed oxygen. Jang Yura confirmed that twice. Once over the radio, once through the voices carrying under the small gap beneath the door.

"How long until the second bypass."

O Gyeongtae fitted the split clutch pieces together. One tooth of the metal disc was gone entirely.

"Use this again and it chews a person instead of a door. We need a different control panel."

"Location."

"The auxiliary panel on the hospital side. Except that one has to be opened from the far side."

Jang Yura got hospital security on the line immediately. She kept it short.

"Four people are still inside the Myeongjin Station exit. Can you slow the lock from the far side using the hospital auxiliary control panel?"

The answer was vague. The person on duty said they would look for the drawings. While she waited, Jang Yura gave instructions to the ones still inside. Step two paces back from the door, get wet towels ready, family member keeps holding the patient's name tag. Even with the door shut, there were things people could do.

I wrote those instructions in my notebook and then erased them. That was Jang Yura's field. What I had to record was the result her instructions produced. The four inside did not pound on the door out of panic, so no further clutch debris got wedged in. Controlled waiting was what made the next bypass possible.

The oxygen delivery vehicle reached the hospital's rear entrance, but the connection valve did not match. Responding to the Myeongjin Station incident, they had used the temporary cylinders first, and one adapter had moved into the emergency wing. A hospital staff member ran off to find it.

"Is that because of us too," Jang Yura asked.

"In part. The Myeongjin Station patients went in first, so the equipment moved."

"Then it isn't in part, it's inside our responsibility right now."

I nodded. That did not mean carrying the whole weight of it. But costs that sat on the direct path of our intervention had to be recorded.

O Gyeongtae sat down against the wall. He opened his palm to show me. The finger joints of the hand that had held the clutch were red and swollen.

"A man who works with his hands can't earn his keep with a hand like this."

Jang Yura looked at it and set a small cold pack on top.

"Earn your keep later, count your breaths now."

"One, two, three. That do it?"

"Keep going."

Even that small joke had a function. O Gyeongtae started counting his breathing deliberately, and the gaps between coughs stretched out. Humor did not erase the danger, it kept a person holding on.

I looked back at the door to Myeongjin Station. The space of the first five cycles was closing behind me. Server evidence, the ventilation filter, the mechanic's glove, a control panel without its two keys, a broken clutch. All of them were things that had come out of one place. None of them was fully resolved. Even so, the people were outside the door.

The first response came from the hospital auxiliary control panel. Bypass possible from the far side, estimated 6 minutes. The oxygen timer was running down faster than that. The choosing was not over. The reward for getting out of Myeongjin Station led straight into new limits inside the hospital.

I wrote the network board, my wristwatch, and O Gyeongtae's offline watch on one line. Maximum spread between the three times: 7 minutes 12 seconds. From now on the first question was not the date but the source of the time. And yet my head was still holding on to that big date, D-27.

Jang Yura read that line and said,

"Conditions before dates."

"Yes."

"Don't just say yes, write it down as the next sentence."

I wrote in the notebook. Keep the date predictions, but do not use them as the sole basis for an order. Confirm current time source, equipment status, and people's positions first.

Only then did Jang Yura turn her head.

"Now we go into the hospital."

I wrote the number who passed and the number left behind beside the piece of clutch. So that a successful bypass and the people still waiting would not be kept apart.

Synchronization error across the city: 7 minutes 12 seconds.

The Haneul Hospital oxygen alarm went off again.