“All right, that’s enough!” Mr. 5 moved his face so close that Mr. 88 hoped he did not intend to use a lot of words that began with the letter P. “I’ve had it with you pinheads and all your preposterous poppycock! I don’t want to hear one more word about Santa Claus or Saint Nicholas or Father Christmas or anybody else like that. Have I made myself perfectly clear?”
The men shuffled their feet and gave a nod and a single-shoulder shrug. Mr. 88 wiped the spit from his forehead.
“Good,” Mr. 5 continued. “Now, Mr. 88 and I are going to enter through the back door and do what we came here to do. And while we’re engaged in our very important work, you two nimrods are going to stand watch. Any questions?”
“Uh, yes,” said Mr. 70. “What about Kris Kringle?”
Decorating Tips for the Holidays
Christmas is a time for gathering with family and friends to celebrate, reminisce, and sing songs about the malodorous nature of Batman. It is also a time to spruce up the house by going out and getting what Germans call a tannenbaum, what vegetarians call part of a balanced breakfast, and what the rest of us call a Christmas tree.
Most people, including the Cheesemans, get their annual tree from a commercial Christmas tree lot. To get the full experience, however, I believe you need to go out and chop down your own tree. Sure, it’s a little more work, though I must say it helps if you live, as I do, close to a good-sized city park.
Once you’ve gotten the tree home and you’re certain you were not followed, you should set the proper mood for the decorating experience. Start by putting on some seasonal music and gathering up some wood for a big fire. Now, unless you live out in the country, the wood-gathering part may prove to be a challenge. Perhaps you’ve noticed that your neighbors rarely use their doghouse or porch swing.
Now that the fire is blazing and the house is at a toasty womb temperature, you may commence with the decorating. First, take your tree and place its trunk in the customized stand, which, with its three opposable thumbscrews, looks like some type of evil torture device designed to force Christmas trees into giving up valuable information.
“All right, Tannenbaum, who sent you? Who do you work for?”
“Ahhhh! I don’t know what you’re talking about! I’m just here to provide a little Christmas joy for a couple of weeks, then dry up and get tossed into the gutter! That’s all, I swear it!”
Now, with the tree firmly fixed in its upright position, it is time to cover it with popcorn, cranberries, and other things your dog will enjoy eating when you’re not home. Assuming you have a dog.
And, if you do, I advise you to leave it at home for protection when going out to buy the tree. Otherwise, villains may seize the opportunity to break into your house for the most evil of purposes.
Chapter 8
The longest journey begins with a single step. I’m not sure who first said that, but odds are it was someone who did not own a car.
Either way, the crux of the matter is that in order to travel anywhere, you must first have a means of getting there. With the once-football-shaped LVR-ZX now as flat as Kansas, the Cheesemans seemed to have no way of getting to where they wanted and desperately needed to go.
“There is one way,” said Sullivan, thoughtfully stroking his ratty yellow beard. “The LVR-ZX may be destroyed, but there’s still the LVR-TS714 version 8.0.”
“What the heck is an LVR-T … 4 … something-something?” asked Simon.
“It’s a time machine,” said Sullivan. “How do you think I got here, by astral projection? LOL.”
LOL indeed. Suddenly it sounded as if getting to where they wanted to go was going to be a piece of cake. All they had to do was hop into Sullivan’s time machine, hit a few buttons, and they’d be there in no time. There was only one problem.
“Where is this time machine of yours?” asked Jason.
“Don’t worry,” said Sullivan. “It’s well hidden. And I think I remember where.”
“You think you remember?” said Catherine.
“Pretty sure,” said Sullivan. “I bet we’ll be able to find it. Of course, it doesn’t have any seats. Or lights, so it won’t be the most comfortable ride. But other than that, it should be good to go.”
No sooner had Sullivan spoken these words than Signor Rossini slammed his pencil onto the table and rose up from the bucket seat that had once belonged to the LVR-TS714 version 8.0. “I must get to a piano immediately!” he shouted while waving his latest composition in the air.
Gurda grunted something, and Stig and Sullivan each snorted out a laugh. Apparently Gurda did have a very good sense of humor.
“Yes, Mr. Rossini,” said Catherine. “We’ll get you to a piano right away.” She hoped, as did the others, that once they managed to get Ethan out of Some Times and back to the real world, he would snap out of whatever this spell was that he was under. “Mr. Moss, how soon can we leave?”
“Please, call me Sullivan. Or Sully. I can’t have my great-aunt and the future former president of the United States calling me mister.”
Catherine smiled. “Okay, Sully. How soon can we leave?”
Sullivan said nothing, but walked to the entrance of the cave and looked out. Apparently he did not see his shadow, because, when he returned to the group, he announced that winter was over and it was now summer, with a slight chance of spring later in the day. “We can leave right away,” he said.
“But there are dinosaurs out there,” said Professor Boxley, not wanting to sound like a coward, but also not wanting to suffer the indignity of wetting his pants again. “And Vikings and Huns and who knows what else.”
“We don’t really have much of a choice, I’m afraid,” said Jason. “Either we take the risk and try to find this hidden time machine, or we all stay here for the rest of our lives, living in a cave and eating roots and berries.”
By now it was beginning to get somewhat darker than it had been. Though day and night seemed to be coexisting, the light remained sufficient for traveling and, presumably, for finding hidden time machines.
It was decided that they would take the sled and the mechanical dog along to make the journey easier and to carry any supplies they might need. These included a few tools should the LVR-TS714 version 8.0 be in need of any repairs, being that it had been sitting in its secret hiding place for the past twenty-six winters, forty-two springs, thirty-nine summers, and eighteen autumns.
As Sullivan pointed out, the runners of the sled could be removed and replaced with wheels, which would do better on the bare ground now that the snow had melted away and the earth had begun to bake in the hot summer sun of late evening.
“That’s a pretty awesome dog,” said Simon.
“Thanks,” said Sullivan. “His name is Rufus. You can pet him if you want. He doesn’t bite, unless I push the right button. I made him from stuff I took off the LVR-TS714 version 8.0.”
Simon gave Rufus a tentative pet.
“Wait a minute,” said Catherine sternly. “You stripped the time machine? Our only way out of here?”
“I took only nonessential parts,” said Sullivan. “You know, like chairs, lights, cup holders. Stuff like that. Like I said, it won’t be a comfortable ride, but it should still get you where you want to go.” He smiled and gave a hearty double thumbs-up, which did little to instill confidence.
“I don’t understand,” said Jason. “Why would you strip parts from the time machine? Even if we hadn’t come along, you’d still need it to get back yourself.”
“Oh, I have no intention of going back,” said Sullivan. “I’m a married man now. I couldn’t leave Gurda. And I couldn’t bring her back with me. They’d put her in a museum.”
“Or on a reality show,” said Catherine.
“LOL,” said Sullivan, which sadly indicated to the others that, in the future, there were still reality shows. He then attempted to lift the sled and flip it over, but couldn’t manage it. “Whew, that’s heavy,” he sighed. “Would you mind giving me a ha
nd, Uncle Jason?”
“Can we help too?” asked Simon, referring to himself as well as to Steve, who occupied his right hand, and Gravy-Face Roy, who sat upon his left.
“Sure, Grandpa. I’ll take all the help I can get.”
Jason and Catherine snickered at this. “Please don’t call me Grandpa,” Simon implored.
“Well, what should I call you?” asked Sullivan.
“How about Gramps?” suggested Catherine.
“Or maybe old-timer,” Jason offered.
This was normally where their father would have intervened and put a stop to the teasing, but, of course, Ethan was no longer with them, and Signor Rossini was off on his own, slicing his arms through the air and humming the tune in his badly bruised head. They were all anxious to have their dad back, but none so much as Simon.
“Okay, on three,” said Sullivan. They all took hold of the sled and tried rolling it over. As they struggled with the task, Gurda seemed to appear out of nowhere to provide that extra bit of muscle necessary to turn it belly-up.
Without a word, she returned to the cave, and Sullivan watched her with admiration. “You can see why I fell in love with her.”
“You do seem very happy together,” said Catherine. “Where did you meet, anyway?”
“At a discotheque in the 1970s,” said Sullivan. “Would you hand me that wrench, Grandpa?”
With a huff, Simon grabbed the screwdriver with his Gravy-Face-Roy-covered hand and passed it to Sullivan. Not only was he the lone eight-year-old grandfather in existence, he was now being bossed around by his middle-aged grandson. Unbelievable.
“Wait a minute,” said Jason. “You mean you met your Neanderthal wife at a discotheque from the 1970s?”
“Yeah, you should see her do the robot,” Sullivan boasted.
“You met your Neanderthal wife at a discotheque from the 1970s and danced the robot,” Catherine confirmed.
“Yeah. Isn’t Some Times amazing? Everything happening at once. I mean, where else could you go skiing in the morning, then spend the afternoon at the beach, lying in the sun and looking at the stars?”
“Or get eaten by a T. rex with buckteeth,” said Professor Boxley, his eyes darting nervously back and forth.
Sullivan laughed. “Oh, you mean Trixie. I’ve had a couple of run-ins with the old girl myself.” Sullivan removed the runners from the sled and replaced them with wheels stolen from some nonessential parts of his LVR-TS714 version 8.0.
“It does seem awfully dangerous here,” said Catherine, looking around at the wild and barren landscape that surrounded the cave. “Why would anyone choose to live in such a ridiculously hazardous place as Some Times?”
“That’s part of the appeal,” said Sullivan. “Where I come from, everything is so safe. You know you can’t even take a shower without wearing a helmet? It’s the law now.”
“How do people wash their hair?” asked Catherine, to whom such things were of great importance.
“They don’t,” said Sullivan. “But it doesn’t matter, because you pretty much have to wear a helmet wherever you go, so no one ever sees your hair.”
When the sled-turned-wagon was loaded with supplies, Sullivan said good-bye to his lovely wife, Gurda, with a tender kiss and to his brother-in-law, Stig, with a hearty and hairy handshake. They would’ve come along, Sullivan explained, but Gurda had her hot yoga class and Stig was way behind on his hunting and gathering. And so, Stigless and Gurda-free, they started out on their uncertain journey to find the hidden time machine and, for Signor Rossini, a working piano.
Sullivan fired up Rufus, the robot dog, and Simon, Professor Boxley, and Pinky climbed aboard the wagon while the others walked alongside. They were promised by Sullivan that the LVR-TS714 version 8.0 was absolutely, positively, without a doubt no more than five miles away. Six or seven at the most. And certainly not more than eight.
As they left the safety of the cave behind, Jason could not seem to think about anything other than his recently discovered destiny of pitching a no-hitter in the World Series. He gripped the souvenir ball in his hand, the horsehide smooth in contrast to the roughness of the stitches. He imagined standing on the mound, the crowd of fifty thousand rising to its feet as he went into his windup and delivered a wicked forkleball. The batter swings, and the ball punches the catcher’s mitt with a glorious smack. Strike three, game over, no-hitter, and Jason is carried off the field and into the record books.
So lost was he in fantasy that he didn’t realize he was making fake crowd noise with his breath as he walked.
“What’s wrong, Jason?” asked Catherine with a sly grin. “You sound like Darth Vader having an asthma attack.”
“Huh? Oh,” said Jason. “I was just, uh, thinking about something.”
“Baseball?”
“Yeah.”
Future President of the United States Catherine Cheeseman had also been thinking about her destiny. She had never seen herself as a politician; at this point in her life, she really wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. In school, she had taken a career aptitude test, which involved answering scores of multiple-choice questions by coloring in tiny dots with a number-two pencil. After all of that careful coloring in of all those dots, the results stated that she would be best suited to working in a factory that makes Japanese flags.
“Pretty crazy, isn’t it?” she said, admiring the campaign button. “To know what life holds in store for you? Though, to be honest, I’m not sure I want to be president. Too much pressure.”
Jason shrugged. “Could also be fun. Maybe I’ll arrange it so you can throw out the first ball at the World Series.”
“Gee,” said Catherine. “Then I’ll be sure to have something to put in my memoir.”
“Maybe you can get Simon to write your memoir for you.”
“Good point.”
As they walked and talked, something suddenly occurred to Jason. If his great-nephew was middle-aged, that meant that in Sullivan’s world, Jason would be dead, which bothered him greatly at first. Still, did he really want to be alive in a time when helmets were required in the shower and the world was run by the evil Plexiwave empire? Then again, if he and his family had anything to say about it, there was no way Plexiwave would take over the world.
Chapter 9
Once upon Some Times, there was a family of time travelers who had found themselves stuck there (in Some Times, that is) while wanting nothing more than to find their way out of that dreadful place. As they set off to find the machine that very well might make that possible, they found that the terrain in Some Times was as unpredictable as the weather. One minute the ground was hard and flat, the next hilly and covered in deep, shifting sand that made walking slow and arduous. They traveled through an overgrown meadow, then into a grove of gnarled oak trees, then out onto a stretch of dry, cracked earth.
Sullivan suddenly removed the remote control from the wagon’s cup holder and used it to stop Rufus in his tracks. The rest of the group stopped as well and watched as Sullivan took a moment to chew a bit on the inside of his lip and pull worriedly at his beard.
“Sullivan?” asked Catherine.
“Of course we’re not lost,” came Sullivan’s preemptive response. “It’s just that things look a little different this time, that’s all. I’m absolutely, positively, one hundred percent sure it’s this way. Easily ninety percent, that’s for sure. Seventy-five percent at the very least. I think we’ve got at least a fifty-fifty chance of finding it if we keep going this way.”
“I am losing patience,” grumbled Ethan in broken English. “I must have access to a piano.” For emphasis, he waved his composition in the air before folding the pages and shoving them into his pocket.
“Don’t worry, Signor Rossini,” said Catherine. “We should be at the opera house soon.”
“We had better be,” he said with a scowl. “Otherwise I will find it on my own.”
As Jason and Catherine exchanged a look of concern for their father and
wondered if he would ever return to normal, Sullivan started Rufus on his uncertain journey once again. Another half hour had passed when they began to hear some type of commotion. It grew louder as they drew nearer to the source.
Just up ahead, not more than a quarter mile, there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of busy people, engaged in various tasks, moving like ants across the desert floor. They were building something, and as the wagon neared, it became apparent just what that something was.
“Wow,” gasped Catherine. “They’re building a pyramid.”
“Well, that’s progress, I guess,” said Sullivan.
“I can’t wait until it’s finished,” said Simon.
“Well, you’re going to have to wait, Grandpa Cheeseman,” said Catherine. “Looks like they’ve got a few years to go.”
The structure appeared to be about one-third finished, and, as with any large construction project, some people were working while others only pretended to work, and some made no attempt to look busy and just stood around, talking. Though Catherine found the scene nothing short of fascinating, Pinky did not like the situation one bit and signified so with her trademark warning of danger.
“Maybe we should ask those guys for directions,” said Simon.
“That’s a dumb idea,” said Gravy-Face Roy.
“I think it’s a great idea,” said Steve.
“Yeah,” said Catherine. “Great idea. Let’s all learn to speak Egyptian, then we can wander down there and ask them if they would be so kind as to direct us to the nearest abandoned time machine.”
“That was sarcastic, wasn’t it?” asked Simon.
“You’re catching on,” said Catherine.
After a quick discussion, it was officially agreed upon that they would not ask the ancient Egyptians for directions, and would instead continue to rely on Sullivan’s sketchy recollection of where he had stashed the time machine. And so, they gave the ancient construction site a wide berth as they passed, barely drawing notice from the workers, the talkers, or the guys pretending to work.
No Other Story Page 7