Real Time

Two men are hard at work in the Scheimholz Building in downtown Odyssey, and their project is a bomb. Lou Dodsworth and Benny Marks once hosted a morning show on radio station KODY, until a loudmouthed shock jock named Bryan Dern took over their time slot and cost them their jobs. Now they want revenge. Benny has built the device from instructions he read in a magazine, and the timer is set for exactly 8:26 by the studio clock, just twenty-one minutes away. The pair slip out to their van to wait.

Meanwhile, Connie Kendall is driving John Whittaker downtown. Whit has agreed to debate Bryan Dern live on KODY, Christianity versus atheism, and Connie wishes he wouldn't. Dern has said outrageous things about God and the church, which is exactly why Whit feels he can't stay silent, but Connie is sure the whole thing is a publicity stunt and that Dern can't be trusted. When they spot Dern on the sidewalk while his voice is still coming out of the car radio, Connie thinks she has caught him in a trick, but he smugly explains that the station is playing a tape of his old shows. Whit goes inside with Dern while Connie circles the block hunting for a parking space.

She never gets the chance to warn Whit of what she notices next: Dern has wired himself with a hidden microphone. Up in the elevator shaft, an electrician doing repairs loses his grip on a heavy pipe. It crashes down the shaft, and the elevator jams to a stop between the second and third floors with Whit and Dern trapped inside. Wilson from building security promises to get help.

With thirteen minutes left, Lou phones the police and warns that a bomb will go off at 8:26 to protest the Bryan Dern show. Captain Richard Quinn sends Murphy to alert the bomb squad and the fire department, then races to the building himself, because John Avery Whittaker is trapped in that elevator. Inside it, Dern needles Whit about his faith, asking why God isn't getting them out, and Whit asks Dern whether his atheism is real or just part of the act. Dern insists he is serious. Then the fire alarm sounds, Dern starts talking anxiously into his coat collar, and Whit discovers the truth Connie suspected: everything they have said has been going out live over the radio. Instead of getting angry, Whit tells him to keep talking. That broadcast may be their only lifeline.

Outside, Connie asks the two men in the van to give up their parking space and mentions that her boss is trapped in an elevator with Bryan Dern and that there's an alarm in the building. Benny panics aloud about the timer shorting out, and Connie can't shake the feeling she knows these two from somewhere.

Quinn reaches the top of the elevator and breaks the news: there is no fire, but there may be a bomb, and only minutes remain. Fire Chief Grady arrives with his men, but the fallen pipe is wedged into the pulley rigging, the sledgehammer won't knock it loose, and the power saw is stuck in traffic. Then word comes over the walkie-talkie that the bomb has been found at the bottom of the shaft, wired around the elevator base, with no time to remove it and no safe way to cut the wires. Whit tells Quinn there is no choice: everyone else has to get out. Quinn reluctantly orders his people back, passes down coats for the trapped men to huddle under, hands over his walkie-talkie, and goes.

Alone with the countdown, the great atheist falls apart. Dern begs God to save him, over and over, while Whit prays calmly beside him. Dern counts down the last five seconds, the moment arrives, and then a truly terrible smell fills the elevator. The bomb was a stink bomb.

A newscaster wraps up the story that evening. Lou Dodsworth and Benny Marks have been arrested at a donut shop after local student Connie Kendall recognized their voices and told the police. And the much-promoted debate has been called off as pointless, since hundreds of listeners heard Bryan Dern calling on God for his life. Dern insists it was all just a figure of speech. His listeners aren't so sure.