She kicked open the forensics lab doors with one of her steel-toed high heel shoes.
"Alright, listen up! Here's the deal, people. My name is Ms. Detective Master Sergeant Beverlee B. Swain and I will be overseeing this operation. Someone give me a sit rep."
Chad matched her stride and laid out what they knew so far.
"Here's what we know so far," Chad said predictably. "Victim is a white female, age 26. Cause of death is a gunshot wound suffered to the back side of the head. Real messy scene, sir."
"So was my divorce," Beverlee quipped. "What evidence do we have?"
Chad looked at her grimly. "Well, that's the thing, sir. The vehicle transporting the evidence from the crime scene was blown up by terrorists. The only thing left was a single drop of the victim's blood."
Beverlee smiled as she sipped her white vanilla mochacinno. "So show me this blood then."
He clacked randomly on his keyboard and brought up a zoomed in picture of the blood.
"Okay, now zoom in. Further. More. Keep going. There! Wait, no. Zoom in more. Pan to the right. Zoom in more. Here, just keep zooming in and I'll tell you when, okay?"
Chad shrugged and resumed turning the dial.
Beverlee watched the screen and continued sipping her beverage. Minutes went by. Finally...
"There!" Beverlee whooped, jumping up from her seat and slamming her face against the screen. "That's a DNA molecule. Zoom in on it."
Chad tried to turn the dial but it wouldn't budge. "Sorry, sir. That's the highest resolution we can get from the image. But... let me try this experimental algorithm I've been working on in my spare time."
He made a few clicks with his mouse and then hit some arbitrary key combination. The image began to sharpen.
"It runs a Darwinian mutation on the pixels and naturally selects the best candidates," Chad explained.
The DNA molecule soon came into complete focus. Beverlee told Chad to zoom in a baker's half dozen more times before they finally found what they needed. There, on one of the genes was an image of the killer's face that had been burned into it when the gunshot had flashed.
"Damn it, Chad! Zoom in further! We have to keep going!"
Chad shook his head. "Sir, if we go in any further we're going to start going back in time! Wait..."
An hour later, Chad had connected the lab's network to a CIA supercomputer. "It's simple," he said, bashing his fists into the keys. "I'll run my algorithm not on the pixels, but on the tachyons comprising the pixels, allowing us to see into the past."
The image on the screen wavered and began forming incomprehensible, impossible shapes. Beverlee was getting a headache. She desperately needed another white vanilla mochacinno.
They saw the entire crime scene rewind, making it look like a dead woman was leaping up from the floor and belching a bullet out of the back of her head into a waiting gun barrel. They pushed even further backwards into time, somehow following the perp to several hours before he committed the murder. They saw him buying the gun. Making his breakfast. Having his first kiss. Learning how to ride a bike.
Chad's nose began bleeding but he cranked the dial even further, now deep in the throes of hyperdimensional madness. The view lurched backwards at a hysterical pace, transporting them through the ages. World War II guys times. Cowboy guys times. Guys in togas times. Times where there weren't even guys around. The formation of the Earth. The Big Bang.
Beverlee and Chad clawed out their own eyes, their screams silent in the vacuum of the singularity, imploding the universe and then birthing it anew.
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