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Authors: John Swartzwelder
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talking about, those “unforeseen consequences”. I didn’t see what was so
terrible about it. The gas bills were just as likely to get paid on the floor
as they were on my desk. I left them there. Later I asked him if this is what
he had meant by “unforeseen consequences” and he said “yes”.
I walked out of the office and
took the elevator down to the street. The same guy was running the elevator,
but instead of being an old geezer he was four years old. That gave me an
uncomfortable feeling.
When I walked out of the building,
I saw that the street was filled with old-fashioned cars and equally
old-fashioned people. A calendar boy came by.
“Calendars!” he called. “Get your
current calendars!”
I flagged him down. “Hey calendar
boy!”
I bought the least expensive
calendar he had - the pictures were disturbing and made you vaguely ill, hence
the bargain price - and looked at the year. It said it was 1941. I didn’t
believe it. I turned to the month of February. It was 1941 on that page too.
I started walking down the street,
still half checking out the calendar pages and accidentally bumped into Joe
Dimaggio and Whirlaway. They were both from 1941, I remembered. That looked
like confirmation, but I still couldn’t really believe it.
So I spent the next half hour
walking around asking people what year it was, and they kept telling me, and I
kept saying “get outta here! It is not!” but they kept insisting it was.
I walked up to some people who
were filming a movie on the street and asked Sydney Greenstreet and Humphrey
Bogart what year it was and they both confirmed the date I had been told
before. When I was leaving, shaking my head with amazement, I heard the director
say: “Wait, maybe we should leave it in. Maybe it’s great.” But then some other
guy said: “Naw, it stinks”. And they started re-shooting the scene.
I went back up to my office and
got there just in time to see the briefcase shimmer and then fade away. I had
forgotten to set the emergency brake as I was carefully warned to do by
Professor Groggins about fifty times. If you don’t set the emergency brake, he
warned me fifty times, the machine will return to its default time period after
awhile. I nodded fifty times while he was saying this, but when the time came
to actually set the emergency brake, I forgot. So I guess I dropped the ball
there.
I stood around for a moment,
feeling the empty air where the time machine had been. I waited patiently for
it to come back, but, to make a long story short, it didn’t. That meant I was
stuck here more than half a century from home, with no way to get back. I
didn’t like the sound of that.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I took a walk
around town. It was like I was living in a history book. A stinking history
book. I never did like history when I was in school, and this wasn’t increasing
my fondness for the subject. History is over, I’ve always felt, let’s move on.
I suppose some people would have found it charming to suddenly find themselves
in an earlier, simpler time, where everyone was friendly and stupid, but I
didn’t. Try getting your mail in a situation like that. It can’t be done. The
one thing that made me feel better was knowing that I had screwed up cases a
lot worse than this before.
As I walked, I calmly took stock
of my situation. Number one: I didn’t have the time machine anymore. So, number
two: I was doomed. I calmly tried to think of a number three. There wasn’t a
number three. Then I remembered something that had gotten me out of a lot of
tight spots before – hysteria. It might work in this situation. I would give it
a try. So I ran down the street screaming and waving my arms, then curled up in
a ball on the sidewalk and rolled all over the place, yelling and gibbering.
All this accomplished nothing. Hysteria, I discovered, didn’t work in a
situation like this. Make a note of that.
When I calmed down enough to get
my tongue out of my windpipe, it came
terrible about it. The gas bills were just as likely to get paid on the floor
as they were on my desk. I left them there. Later I asked him if this is what
he had meant by “unforeseen consequences” and he said “yes”.
I walked out of the office and
took the elevator down to the street. The same guy was running the elevator,
but instead of being an old geezer he was four years old. That gave me an
uncomfortable feeling.
When I walked out of the building,
I saw that the street was filled with old-fashioned cars and equally
old-fashioned people. A calendar boy came by.
“Calendars!” he called. “Get your
current calendars!”
I flagged him down. “Hey calendar
boy!”
I bought the least expensive
calendar he had - the pictures were disturbing and made you vaguely ill, hence
the bargain price - and looked at the year. It said it was 1941. I didn’t
believe it. I turned to the month of February. It was 1941 on that page too.
I started walking down the street,
still half checking out the calendar pages and accidentally bumped into Joe
Dimaggio and Whirlaway. They were both from 1941, I remembered. That looked
like confirmation, but I still couldn’t really believe it.
So I spent the next half hour
walking around asking people what year it was, and they kept telling me, and I
kept saying “get outta here! It is not!” but they kept insisting it was.
I walked up to some people who
were filming a movie on the street and asked Sydney Greenstreet and Humphrey
Bogart what year it was and they both confirmed the date I had been told
before. When I was leaving, shaking my head with amazement, I heard the director
say: “Wait, maybe we should leave it in. Maybe it’s great.” But then some other
guy said: “Naw, it stinks”. And they started re-shooting the scene.
I went back up to my office and
got there just in time to see the briefcase shimmer and then fade away. I had
forgotten to set the emergency brake as I was carefully warned to do by
Professor Groggins about fifty times. If you don’t set the emergency brake, he
warned me fifty times, the machine will return to its default time period after
awhile. I nodded fifty times while he was saying this, but when the time came
to actually set the emergency brake, I forgot. So I guess I dropped the ball
there.
I stood around for a moment,
feeling the empty air where the time machine had been. I waited patiently for
it to come back, but, to make a long story short, it didn’t. That meant I was
stuck here more than half a century from home, with no way to get back. I
didn’t like the sound of that.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I took a walk
around town. It was like I was living in a history book. A stinking history
book. I never did like history when I was in school, and this wasn’t increasing
my fondness for the subject. History is over, I’ve always felt, let’s move on.
I suppose some people would have found it charming to suddenly find themselves
in an earlier, simpler time, where everyone was friendly and stupid, but I
didn’t. Try getting your mail in a situation like that. It can’t be done. The
one thing that made me feel better was knowing that I had screwed up cases a
lot worse than this before.
As I walked, I calmly took stock
of my situation. Number one: I didn’t have the time machine anymore. So, number
two: I was doomed. I calmly tried to think of a number three. There wasn’t a
number three. Then I remembered something that had gotten me out of a lot of
tight spots before – hysteria. It might work in this situation. I would give it
a try. So I ran down the street screaming and waving my arms, then curled up in
a ball on the sidewalk and rolled all over the place, yelling and gibbering.
All this accomplished nothing. Hysteria, I discovered, didn’t work in a
situation like this. Make a note of that.
When I calmed down enough to get
my tongue out of my windpipe, it came
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