The Time Trousers of Professor Tempus: A Captain Space Hardcore Adventure

by Michael Ronson

  Crewman Gibson walked beside me, noticing my fascination.

  “I could look at that thing all day,” he said.

  “It’s remarkable.”

  “We could get a better view of the thing if we adjusted our course a little closer.”

  “The research group were specific in their directions. We’re on the correct orbit, crewman.”

  “I know, I know. All I’m saying is that it would be, uh, cool to take a closer look at it. We’re all interested in it too, and it’s sitting right there, full of mystery and untapped scientific potential, like it’s trying to tempt us.”

  I shook my head at that and looked round at him. “Tempus? Why do you say that?”

  He gave me a blank look for a short time. “‘Tempt us’, sir, I said ‘Temp us’”

  I nodded. “I understand your curiosity, Gibson, and you know I share your appreciation for all things ‘cool’, and ‘hip’ but we have our orders and you know our ship’s motto-’follow the orders to the letter’. We are here to monitor and monitor we shall. You know our ship’s secondary motto- ‘if you can’t enjoy monitoring-”

  “‘-What can you enjoy?’” he finished. We shared a hearty chuckle at that. It was quite rich, as mottos go. A rhetorical question as a ship’s secondary motto? Quite ribald.

  “Thank you for that hearty chuckle,” he said, wiping a tear from his eye. “I had best go back to waiting at my station for any transmission.”

  “Have we had any yet?”

  “No! Nor are we expecting any in the foreseeable future,” he smiled.

  “Capital. Best get back to it then.”

  He made his way happily back to his station and went back to monitoring his blank screen and I went back to monitoring the anomaly itself. It was curious that looking at something as unique as this- as scientifically engaging seemed to be actively fuelling my anxiety. The headache loomed over my shoulder, itching at the back of my eyes, pulsing at my temples and promising me that it would be back in full force quite soon. But I still looked out that the anomaly. I looked around the deck. My crewmembers worked efficiently and silently in the clean and spartan bridge of my ship, none of them showing any signs of stress or dismay. I shifted in my seat again (despite the lumbar support). I shifted once more. And again. By this time I was drawing looks from my staff, who were unaccustomed to this level of activity and distress on the bridge. Concerned eyes peered at me, pinning me to the captain’s seat and out there in the depth of Space tHe Anomaly staReD baCk at me tOo.

  My headache arrived, apologized for being late and set up shop in my cranium.

  I decided this would be a good time to excuse myself, retire to my quarters and write (or, rather, dictate this).

  Chapter Three

  This Isn’t Right

  Subtitle: This Isn’t Right

  There are no mistakes in creative writing, apparently. Just let it pour out of you. Great advice for the constipated or for a shy fountain but for a structured accounting of events? I’ve been told should be as freeform as jazz, and it sounded almost as annoying. The thing is, I have been trying, these last few nights (writing, not jazz) but what came out was just the same usual jumble of images that were stuck in my mind like a splinter. Every page was just a repetition of the same thing over and over, like a record skipping, it was just a loop of the same thing, the same thing the same remember thing the same thing and on and on and on.

  I flipped through the open document pages on my screen. Drafts and drafts of the same thing. I selected one at random. Not that it would make any difference.

  Where now!?

  Seems I’m floating. At least this new place was free of showers and arses. So far. But what it lacked in wet prisoner posterior it made up for in nothingness. It had so much nothing it was almost something. It’s hard to describe an absence of everything, even to someone with the linguisticalistic prowess as meself. Even time had buggered off. I could feel its absence. After today it was almost a relief. The absence of matter was a little less welcome. Like the prof had promised I was outside of it all, outside of time, outside of the universe. Just me and the one glowing spot of light. We are all that there is me and Berth(which is what I’ve decided to call this little light). That and the bomb casing. The chromoton desynchronizer seems to have gone off but I feel nothing. Seconds- as if seconds even existed here- had gone by since it let out its terminal beep and emitted that large concussive bubble. Maybe it was a decoy after all, a final trick from Tempus. There was nothing to do it seemed a, but reach my hand out and touch Bertha. She was all there was. The tiny sphere. But I was reluctant, I stalled. Robbed of my CALAPAW I hesitated to even reach out. What had been my last words even? Just ‘remember me’, aimed at Funkworthy. Weak. Weak and sentimental. I reach ou

  Where now?

  Seems I’m floating. At least this new pla-

  I cast that page aside and looked at the next one. The same thing again, the same words, the same voice. Troubling images, even more troubling spelling and grammar errors. What did this text and its repetition tell me about myself? That’s what this whole exercise was about after all. I considered why I seemed to be starting by conjuring the image of men washing their rears but I couldn’t find any. It bothered me a tad. That’s not any way to start a book. It’s barely even an acceptable way to start a shower. And putting my own name in there at the end? That was indulgent nonsense. Inserting the author into the work was terrible. My more educated crewman, Michael Ronson had told me that as we had talked about literature one day. I should show this work to him to see what he would make of it with his keen analytical mind, I thought before abandoning the idea. He would probably be too busy being popular with the female contingent of my crew, and justifiably so..

  It wasn’t my voice. That was the crux of the thing. But I couldn’t escape these words. Every time I set finger to keyboard they came out.

  Every way I try to go about this damn thing I seem to circle back to this one central figure. Some stranded Spacehman. Hardly a thrilling start for anything. But what really bothered me was that I couldn’t even seem to finish that second paragraph before looping back to the beginning again. Infinite repetition. Maybe this was ‘meta’. Artistic. It was a kind of a statement.

  I scrunched up my face and set out to write again.

  Where now?

  Seems I’m floating.

  Damnit. Damn damn damnit.. I was trapped writing the same thing over and over and over again. I screwed my eyes closed and flailed at the keyboard blindly, hitting the keys at random. I opened my eyes slowly to see what I nonsense I had created.

  Where now?

  Seems I’m f

  The cursor blinked expectantly next to these words as a chill ran down my spine. I was chained to these few sparse (and rather crudely strung together) sentences, lashed to them like a pony chained to a van.

  They ran through my brain like blood ran through my heart. I exuded them uncontrollably, like 84-E exuded its pulses of energy and the more I thought about it the more the anomaly and the story seemed linked in my mind. The writing, the unease, the headaches, they had all been increasing as we had approached Kronis. It was as though the story was coming from there, radiated out like a tendril of its mysterious energy.

  I massage the bridge of my nose.

  Enough writing.

  It’s a fool’s game.

  This stuff seems apt to drive you insane. I couldn't be messing around with this stuff right now. I was on an important monitoring mission. I was in an important role. I was Captain Space Ha- I was Captain Ebenezer Funkworthy and I was meant to do a job.

  Enough. Enough. Turn in for the night. Sleep. Don’t dream.

  Enough for this chapter.

  Where now?

  Seems I’m. Damn. No. Even in my speech now. Is this what madness feels like?

  Enough.

  Chapter FourWhere

  Now? Seems I’m

  Subtitle: Floating. At least

  “Take u
s closer,” I said to Gibson.

  He looked around in mild incredulity. They all did. All the beige uniforms on the deck craned round to look at me in the command chair to see if I wasn’t just making an extremely funny joke. I remained impassive.

  “Sir?”

  I remained steely outside, though inside I felt urgent, like a late train. “Take us a little closer to the anomaly. Like you said, it’s a nice view. ‘Cool’. ‘Yolo’ ” I felt that tractor beam pulling me in. There was something there (it wasn’t a tractor beam, that had been a metaphor). My head pounded.

  “But...our mottos?” he protested weakly.

  “Sometimes rules can be...bent a little,” I said breezily.

  An audible gasp went up around me. I tried to stay stoic in the face of it. I knew I was putting forth a radical notion. I had had to severely reprimand and even raised my voice to crewmembers who had expressed similar sentiments before. I was proud of my track record of upholding rules. It was one of the only things that my COAR file said about me and I wore that with pride- it was a record unblemished by rebellion and carelessness.

  “Take us a little closer, Ensign.”

  Our navigator, Maria Ensign, looked around as if for permission. “Should I do it myself?” I asked innocently. She finally turned round sweating visibly and audibly, and adjusted out orbit around the anomaly. I felt the surge in the ship as our thrusters pushed us a little closer. Maddeningly the itching pain that was behind my eyes only seemed to intensify. But I liked it. It was a pain that felt addictively gratifying, like peeling off a scab or having a really fast wee.

  “Are you sure you’re feeling well, sir?” Gibson asked by my side. He seemed concerned at the madness that had overtaken me but I tried to play it off, act breezy, like the wind does. These terrible similes seem to be invading my brain all of a sudden, like an army of Mongols.

  “Ha, blame yourself. You’re the one who suggested this.”

  But when I looked at him he was peering at my hand which was drumming rhythmically away on the keyboard embedded in my command chair’s right arm.

  I didn’t need to guess what my fingers were typing out. Last night I had doubled the number of pages in my ‘creative writing’.

  “Seems I’m-” I started.Damn. I knew what the next word was. (It was ‘floating’) I had to control my speech

  “Sir?”

  “Seems I’m f….fulfilling your wish. Look out at the anomaly, Gibson. Beautiful thing isn’t it?” He must have noticed my clenched jaw, my tensed muscles, but he pretended not to, and joined me in my looking. The colourful and shifting surface was clearer now, closer, but no less compelling. Fingers drummed harder.

  Gibson played along, bless him. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, Captain Funkworthy? For all that we know still, we’re still no closer to understanding what made it. One of the mysteries of the universe.”

  “Oh, don’t count us out just yet. We might actually be here for the big breakthrough this time as well. And we have come a long way in our understanding of the three fundamental constants in the universe.”

  “Three, sir?”

  “Yes, as I was taught the universe has three constants: time space and Space H….Space…”

  “You already said, space, sir.”

  I blinked some sweat out of my eyes. “Ha. It was on the tip of my tongue. What an annoying sensation that is, don’t you find? Haha! What was the third? Someone told me a long time ago. I must be getting old, Gibson, it’s becoming so hard to remember me. Hahaha!”

  After my laugh died out and nobody joined in the only sound was my fingers, still clacking away at the keys. Even as I didn’t look at them. Even as everyone else did.

  I excused myself from the bridge before I could order us closer again.

  Chapter Five

  They’re starting to suspect. I know it.

  I can’t sleep but my crew does, and that’s when I alter our course just a hair further inward, towards it. We’re spiralling closer to the anomaly at a slow and eventual pace. I know. I can feel it. Every rotation increases that splitting headache and makes my twitching fingers dance further, spilling page upon page of writing. I’m close to something.

  But one can only stay awake for so many nights on the bridge of your ship, staring intently at a rift in the fabric of space and time, taking painkillers, typing the same paragraphs over and over in a page without looking and muttering without raising a little polite concern from your crew.

  It starts with polite inquiries about how you are feeling that day. Innocuous enough stuff but I dare not answer. The story- the stranded spaceman, Bertha and the bomb casing- now infect too much of my speech. So I can’t risk opening my mouth for fear that the words will tumble out. Hell, even dictating this journal entry now I have to delete every tenth word, as I start the story up over again.

  “How are you feeling today, Cap’n?” asked Perkins this morning, cheerfully but with caution in her eyes.

  I fixed her with a friendly look, wiped some sweat from my head and nodded vigorously, which is an acceptable greeting.

  She looked down at my fingers, working furiously at the keypad. I was up to about a hundred and fifty words per minute now. It felt good, like a headache does. “....Cap’n?” she asked.

  I turned back, affixed a wide grin to my face and nodded more enthusiastically, making good eye contact the whole time. Even that didn’t seem to satisfy her and her insatiable thirst for ‘good morning’s.

  “Do you need another uniform, sir?”

  I looked down at my own one. It was impressively wet with sweat, but I had learned that discarding clothing was the cause for more concern, so I left it on. I shook my head and looked back out of the viewscreen at it.

  “Have...uh...have we had any luck fixing the comms?” she prodded, like a stick to an ant’s nest. The rest of the crew were looking our way while trying to appear not to. I had tired of the scientists asking us to stop altering our course, I had grown bored of their warnings that we were getting dangerously close to the Kronis station, so I had simply disconnected a few wires in a few panels and now the comms panel lay pleasingly dead.

  I looked over at it and shrugged, then grinned, then furrowed my brows seriously as if to say ‘I don’t know, but it will be okay, but I’m seriously looking into it’. Perfectly clear.

  “.....Captain Funkworthy?”

  Did this damnable woman need everything spelled out in literal words that could be heard? I clenched my jaw and pointed my face toward her.

  “Where. Now?”

  Okay, bad start. I winced and pulled back control.

  “Where now? We’re on the bridge of my ship! Where everything is under control.” I nodded again. Good recovery, I thought. But my mouth was running away with me again. “Seems I’m floating.” Damn. “Seems we’re all floating. In a sea of problems today, eh, Perkins?. But it’s fine. Comms will be repaired soon.” I clamped my mouth shut but words hissed out through gritted teeth. “At least this new place- by which I mean the Kronis station- was freeeee” I clamped a hand over my mouth, knowing what words came next. I had to not say ‘showers and arses’. That was important. Perkins. Damn damned damnable Perkins still persisted, worry creasing her face like an anxious shirt.

  “Free of what sir?”

  Don’t say it. I squirmed in my seat. Looked back out at the anomaly, took a handful of painkillers and sweated some more. The urge seemed to pass.

  “Sir?” he asked.

  “Showers and arses!” I yelled.

  The words, three innocent words seemed to echo in the bridge.

  My crew no longer pretended to not be looking at me.

  “Metaphorically, I mean. Metaphorically, Perkins. Wet prisoner posteriors. It’s a metaphor. For our current situation with the comms unit. It’s broken, I’m concerned but still in control and there’s no cause for alarm. Just like with a..”

  “Wet prisoner’s posterior?”

  “Exactly. It’s a common expression,
I mean metaphor. Think about it,” I implored.

  She looked at me with sceptical eyes, a sceptical face, even his hands were frozen in a sceptical position. I doubt that she was thinking about the metaphor. I looked around the bridge, at my crew. It looked like a mutiny waiting to happen.

  Time. time time time. It was all circles and time. The circle was closing in around me and time was running out. Those faces were waiting to turn away from me, to lock me up.

  Chapter Thirty...No. Chapter Six

  Chapter Six

  Subtitle: Floating. At Least

  “I think I have it, doctor. These headaches are caused by a split! What I’m seeing is fragments of another reality that I can see through the anomaly. The dreams are glimpses at that-the writing too!”