Nine Men in Time

"Nine Men in Time" by Noel M. Loomis is a science fiction story written during the early 1950s. This narrative explores the themes of ambition, innovation, and the consequences of meddling with time and identity in a printing company setting. The plot revolves around a unique concept where a production manager attempts to save his struggling printing plant by employing a method of time travel and duplication to meet a pressing deadline. The story follows J.J. Shane, the manager of the Imperial Printing Company, who is faced with the potential closure of the plant due to underperformance. In collaboration with Dr. Hudson, an experimental physicist, they devise a way to send workers back in time to redo their tasks, which leads to a remarkable, albeit chaotic, outcome when High-Pockets Jones, an unusual, towering employee, volunteers for a duplication experiment. This process results in the creation of multiple High-Pocketses, creating a comedic and chaotic dynamic in the workplace. As the narrative unfolds, Shane's ambition to utilize this groundbreaking technology to save the company spirals into complexity and confusion, culminating in a moral dilemma over the implications of their time-altering technology. Eventually, the story resolves with the characters finding a way to fix the chaos, underlying the risks of tampering with time and the importance of understanding one's limits.