The Legend of Dan

by Robert Wingfield

  Tom snorted. “No, it’s a joke isn’t it? The guys have put you up. You had me going there. Okay, I will come back to the club. Are you going to be training with us, or have they only hired you as a ‘toga-gram’ to get my attention?”

  “I see it has worked, but no, really, this is a spacecraft... of sorts.” Kara turned back, and smiled. Tom felt his insides melting. “I suppose you won’t believe me, unless I show you what it can do—we have got time, plenty of it, yet none at all. Urgency is the watchword of the day (and also the code to get the coffee machine working). Put the mind controller back on your head, and think of somewhere nice you would like to visit.”

  “Mind controller? I’m not having my brain messed with.”

  “Brain is it.” She laughed. “I did wonder what was in that cranium of yours. Do it for me... please. Put on the headphone thing again.”

  “No, nothing on earth will make me have my brain scrambled... not with anything that doesn’t come in a glass...”

  “Nothing? What about a peek at my boobs?”

  “What?”

  “When you’ve done what I ask.” She leaned forward towards Tom, giving him a tantalising glimpse of the potential, and crossed her legs again. “Is it worth it?” She grinned.

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “I’ll give it a try then.” Tom eagerly fitted the headphones back on his head. They settled comfortably in place. “Ow, my brain’s full of tingling and popping.”

  “It’s trying to find your mind,” said Kara. She shook her head, and Tom began to worry the something had gone wrong. The headphones, though, were fixed to his head, and he could not move his arms to remove them. his feet started a mad tap-dance, and an uncomfortable feeling spread through his groin.

  Kara coughed, coloured slightly and leaned over him. “I might need to fine-tune it for your particular… attributes.” Her hands ran over the frame. Tom’s feet stopped moving, although other parts were still giving him trouble at the proximity of this amazing woman. “Better?” A screen appeared on the wall in front of him. It was blank.

  “The machine is reading your thoughts right at this moment,” said Kara, after a slight hesitation. The screen stayed blank. “All right,” she said after another, more extended, pause. “Where did you go for your holidays, last year.”

  Tom remembered, and instantly, an image of Bude harbour appeared on the screen. A mixture of scribble and musical notes flashed across, accompanied by eerie sounds.

  “There you are then.” She grinned. “Get on with it.” She noticed Tom’s puzzled expression. “Oh, hang on, I need to set the language to ‘English’.”

  She smacked a console above her head. The scribble and noise stopped, and the screen showed their destination with control buttons overlaid.

  “Do what it says.”

  “I hit this?”

  “No, it would be better if you selected an option from the screen. Don’t press ‘Destruct’. I’ve only recently cleared up from the last time that happened. Try ‘Confirm’.”

  Tom noted the other options, and that the ‘Destruct’ button was in green, inviting him to press it, anyway. Kara grabbed his hand as it hovered over the buttons, and selected ‘Confirm’. The machine hummed and bucked slightly.

  “Come with me.” Kara strode over to the hatch, which hissed open as she reached it, and stepped outside.

  “About time too,” said Tom. “All this nonsense has made me tired. It’s late. Leave me your phone number, and I’ll be away to my bed.” He followed her through the hatch and headed for where he expected to find his front door.

  It was a warm and sunny day as they emerged in Bude. The cylinder had materialised in a rose-bed outside the ‘Elephants’ Graveyard Hotel’, in front of two gentlemen residents, who were still recovering from a hard night on the Sherry. They were surprised. Tom was surprised too, because until then, he had been playing along, still believing it to be nothing more than an elaborate stunt instigated by some of the more eccentric members of the karate club. He was more surprised when, prising a newspaper from the nerveless fingers of one of the men, he learned that they had travelled backwards in time, as well as in location, to the day immediately before he and Freya were due to arrive for their holidays, the previous year.

  Kara caught his body as the shock hit him. He had the sensation of powerful muscles working in her slim frame, shockingly strong, he thought, as she propelled him into a nearby pub. She had to force the first pint down his throat, but he recovered enough to guzzle the second one himself. She matched him pint for pint. After a double Scotch chaser and another two pints, he stopped shaking. His companion drank as he did, ‘for company’, she said, but was apparently unaffected.

  The publican seemed puzzled, but confirmed the day and date, when Tom asked for the third time. Kara feigned an explanation, by making a small circling movement with her index finger at the side of her temple, while Tom was staring out of the window.

  “We really have travelled in time?” Tom muttered as he watched gulls riding the wind currents.

  “That’s what I’ve been telling you,” replied Kara. “What’s the matter with you lower life-forms? Are these basic concepts too difficult to get a grip on?”

  “Not really,” said Tom, “but I would like to test out the illusion a little further if you don’t mind.”

  “What do you plan to do?”

  “Let me look in the gift shop over the road.” He rose unsteadily to leave. “If what you say is true, when Freya and I were here, er, tomorrow, last year, yesterday… whenever… she tried to buy a pottery owl from their catalogue. They said there were no more in stock, the last one having been sold the day before. Now, if what you say is true, that’s today. I want to see if the owl is still here, right at this moment. You see, I can beat the person who bought it, and buy it for her instead. I’ve got to do something to apologise, when I get back. I’m going to have a bit of explaining to do, you know, about how I’ve absconded, with totty. She won’t believe nothing happened between us, however much I lie. Something is going to happen, isn't it?” he added hopefully. “I’m going to cop it anyway, so it would be a shame if I was innocent.”

  Kara smiled enigmatically. “Then we should go.”

  They staggered out of the pub, and across the street. Tom stopped at a window. “Look, there it is.” He pointed at an ornament. “The person who actually bought it can’t have turned up yet. Hang on, while I go and haggle.”

  He emerged from the shop a few minutes later, with a nicely wrapped box. “It will be a good peace offering when I get back,” he said, “but I am more convinced. I still don’t believe what’s happening, but I am convinced I’m not dreaming.”

  “Are you?” Kara shrugged. “I’m so glad. Come on; there is much to do.”

  When Tom and Kara returned to the cylinder, they found a crowd gathered around it. There was a good deal of arm waving and idle kicking at the ship, and people were making wildly different suggestions as to how something as large as the cylinder had found its way there, and what the state of the shrubbery would be, when it was removed. There were many mobile communication devices being applied, and a continuous series of photographs and movies being filmed.

  “Let me through, I’m a landscape gardener,” shouted Kara. She and Tom forced a way to the machine. Discussions and filming built with expectation, when a hatch slid open at their approach. People pointed their devices (we are not allowed to mention what the manufacturers of those devices were, either, or we will not get into e-print) at the futuristic interior.

  “Aw, it’s not bigger on the inside,” muttered someone.

  “What do you expect for a film prop,” said someone else. “It’s only made of wood, you know.”

  “Feels a bit solid for wood.” Someone else landed a kick.

  “Can we come in and have a look?” said another man.

  “Of course,” said Kara, ushering To
m inside. “Give me a second to find you a hard hat.”

  She closed the hatch behind them.

  Conversations outside stopped abruptly, as the cylinder shimmered and vanished. The policeman who arrived on the scene soon afterwards, found a mob of confused people stamping about in a very crushed rose bed.

  “We have it all recorded on our unspecified mobile devices,” they said. “Oh.”

  As they checked, they discovered that each of the devices had been completely wiped, all data erased. People’s lives and loves now lay in tatters. They discovered, later, that even the ‘clouds’ the data had been uploaded to were blank, and the backups scrambled, thus saving the providers for making their own efforts to lose it for them.

  There was a wailing and gnashing of teeth, and with no evidence, the policeman had no alternative but to take the whole lot back to the ‘station’ for questioning.

  “But they were filming everything,” said Tom. “There was no mention of that, when we were on holiday.”

  Kara smiled. “One of the things you will discover with a properly configured time machine, not one of those cut-price knockoffs you see in some unspecified shows, is that they clean up after themselves. They send little time-bombs backwards along the converging timelines and erase all evidence. Electronic data is so easy to remove or manipulate. Now, if someone had one of the old-fashioned chemical devices, that is a different matter. You can’t erase chemicals, even by flushing them before the fuzz break the door down. But of course, nobody uses that sort of thing anymore.”

  Kara put the headphone apparatus on her own head, and the machine hummed off again into the void.

  Nothing seemed to happen. “Can I go home now?”

  “Not directly,” she replied. “We have other things to do.”

  “Such as? Couldn’t you perhaps drop me off on the way and give me a shout when it’s all over?” He grinned, hopefully.

  “Not really, I need your help.”

  “Help? Help with what?”

  “Oh, a little problem-ette I have to sort out.”

  Tom fidgeted, and gave a weak smile. “Look it’s been very nice and all that, but I’d much rather forget the whole thing, especially as you lied to me about showing me your boobs. You did lie I suppose, or are you choosing your moment?”

  “No.” Kara’s expression hardened. “Perhaps I did not make myself clear. You have no say in the matter, I’m afraid.”

  Tom’s expression faded. “Look I don’t normally attack women, but either you take me home, or I’ll show you one or two rather unpleasant arm-locks, and probably enjoy it.”

  Kara gave a sarcastic, mirthless laugh. “Fair enough. Unless you co-operate, you will not be going home… at all. I’m sure I can think of some really interesting places in time or space to dump you. How about the European Parliament during the Frexit negotiations?”

  “I think you should let me out, now.”

  “Right-o,” said Kara. “I’ll open the door for you. Make sure you hold your breath for a couple of hours, but are you sure you don’t want to stay?”

  I’m going, whatever you say.” Tom shoved at the door. It sighed open as he leaned on it, and he nose-dived into the soft grey sand of a planet, he found out later, would have been Sirius 7 if it had been discovered on Earth yet.

  “For Christ’s sake, where are we now?” Tom spat dust out of his mouth.

  “It’s a planet you will come to call Sirius 77 when your race develops some form of space travel, or at least a stronger pair of binoculars,” said Kara, “but at the moment, it belongs to someone else. You will see their name in lights, sometime.”

  Tom scratched his head, and gazed about the alien landscape. They had landed on a grey plain that stretched in all directions, as far as the eye could see. The outline of a hazy grey sun shone fitfully through a grey dust cloud in the upper atmosphere. His eyes settled on a range of mountains, barely visible on the horizon, and he noticed strange colours flashing in the dullness about them. “What the...” A grey balloon of jelly leapt out of the sand in front of him.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll say hello.” Kara stepped forward to greet the creature. It settled beside the hatch. A mass of tentacles waved about madly, and then an array of coloured lights flashed from within its body.

  Kara took Tom’s arm. “This is a mucronn. It says that it is very pleased to meet us, and if we would care to follow it, we will be bang on time for Lunnch.”

  “Ah, food.” Tom eyed the alien suspiciously. “About time too; I could murder a burger.”

  “I think you’ll be disappointed.” Kara smiled. “‘Lunnch’ is the mucronn spawning ceremony. They need your help.”

  “I’m starting to not like the sound of this.”

  “They’ll be grateful. Come on, aren’t you a little bit curious?”

  “I can hardly wait.” Tom broke the grip, did a quick about-turn, and dived back into the depths of the cylinder. Kara followed him in.

  “Look, it’s not so bad,” she said. “The mucronns are quite capable of spawning by themselves, but as part of the ceremony, I promised that we would demonstrate unarmed combat methods among bipeds.”

  “What are you on about? You expect me to believe that?”

  “I know it’s a bit odd by your standards,” she held her palms towards him, “but then you must admit our friend outside is a little bit odd too. That’s how it is in other parts of the galaxy. Don’t make the mistake of judging other life-forms, based on your own ideals. Normality is purely relative.”

  “I don’t have any normal or pure relatives,” said Tom.

  “I’m not surprised. Come on, you’ll enjoy yourself. How many other folks are spending an afternoon like this?”

  “Can I think about it?” Tom desperately ignored touching the outstretched hands, silky and flawless as they looked.

  “No. I’m bored with you now.” Kara flicked her hand across a panel. “Auto eject,” she muttered. The security systems took over and dumped them both painlessly in the sand in front of the mucronn. The hatch slid shut, before Tom realised what had happened.

  Kara stood up, and brushed herself down. “Right, you can either stay here on your own, and wait for the sandstorms to suffocate you, or you can come with us. Your opponent waits.”

  “Opponent?”

  “Er, sparring partner I meant to say.”

  “Okay, okay, and then can I go home?”

  “What, back to wifey, when there’s a whole universe to explore with me?” She flashed a portion of supple thigh at him.

  “I suppose I haven’t got that much on at the moment.” He brightened as he surveyed her body. “A bit like you really.”

  She blew him a kiss, and started across the plain. “Come on then, don’t dawdle.”

  The mucronn was already bouncing away into the distance, flashing colours like a malfunctioning disco light.

  “Where are we going? I can’t see anything.” Tom shaded his eyes as they followed behind it.

  “Over there, near the mountains.”

  “But that’s miles away.”

  “Wimp. After your busy day at home, I expect you do need a lie down to recover. It’s hard work doing nothing, but there are easier ways than walking. Want to try jumping along instead?”

  “Like this?” Tom tried. He leapt lightly forward, and was amazed to travel a great distance through the air, landing beside Kara and steadying himself against her. “Er, how did that happen?”

  “This planet is smaller than Earth, so gravity is a less. Distances are also misleading, as you will probably notice from the curvature of the land. And you can let go of my breast now.”

  In a short while, they were standing by a grey globule of a building. Tom was panting and sweating.

  “Couldn’t you have parked nearer?”

  Kara smirked. “No, you needed the exercise. If we had landed any closer, the mucronns might have considered it a threat, and we don’
t want to upset them now, do we?”

  “Don’t we?” Tom screwed his face up, and a mask of grey dusk fell off in a sheet. He sneezed.

  The mucronn flashed more lights and then leaned against a vertical slit in the side of the structure. The entrance pulsated rather obscenely, and then sucked the creature in.

  “This way. Follow on.” Kara was sucked through in a similar manner. Her voice drifted back. “Hurry up or you’ll be shut outside!”

  “It’s a long time since I did this sort of thing.” Tom closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and dived through the gap. The hole closed behind him, with a loud slurping noise, and he found himself in a downward sloping tunnel. He also found himself sliding rapidly down its greasy floor, towards a pinprick of light in the far distance. The distant spot grew as he approached, until it became a hole, and then a gaping chasm. With a cry of alarm, he was hurled through the ceiling of an enormous silent discotheque, packed with what he now knew were mucronns. The floor seemed to come up towards him and gently took the downward momentum. The feeling reminded him of a rather large lady he had spent the night with, by accident, after a heavy drinking session. He got shakily to his feet. Kara was standing in front of him, side by side with another, larger mucronn. It had one of its tentacles round her waist.

  “This is Overlord,” she giggled as another tentacle wandered up her toga. She slapped it away. “He’s in charge, here.”

  The mucronn shone a red light at Tom, as he tried to stay upright on the soft, slippery floor. Kara rummaged in her bag and produced a small torch. She flashed a series of colours. “This is how we communicate,” she explained. “I’ll translate for you. I said ‘This is Two-Dan. He is pleased to meet you as the official Spawning Mediator detailed in the Rigel Constitution of UD52200. I trust he will be acceptable. By the way, I’m translating the star names into ones you Earthies might recognise of course.”

  “Of course.” Tom nodded absently as he gazed around.

  “This planet is called, in lights, red, red, green, orange, splong.”