by Eric Bower
My mother, Rose, and I, all exchanged a private glance.
My father calling someone a weirdo was sort of like a rotting fish accusing someone else of smelling badly.
“The day before our final exams, Doc and I learned from a friend that Werbert was planning on getting us into trouble with the professors. He was going to secretly place the answers to the final exams in our pockets, and in the middle of the exams, he was going to raise his hand and declare that we were cheating! He was going to try to get us kicked out of school!”
“That swine!” Rose cried.
“What an awful person!” M exclaimed.
“Does anyone have a mint?”
My mouth still tasted like it was filled with wet sawdust and rusty nails. It was pretty foul, and it seemed to be getting fouler by the minute. It was also probably unhealthy for me to have a mouth full of rust, though no one else seemed to be particularly concerned about that.
“When Doc and I learned what Werbert was planning,” P continued, “we decided to play a little prank on him instead. While he was asleep in his dormitory bedroom, Doc picked the lock to his room and we both snuck inside. I placed the O.W.S. Device over his head, which paralyzed him. Then we draped his blanket over him, closed his door, and locked it.”
Suddenly we all knew what happened next in the story.
“You left the device on Werbert’s head so he couldn’t take the final exam,” M said slowly.
“Which meant he failed his class and couldn’t become a dentist,” Rose continued.
“Wait, that thing was in Werbert’s mouth?” I asked, feeling even more nauseated. “You washed it afterward, right? Right???”
P looked terribly ashamed.
“Not only did Doc and I cause Werbert to fail his final exam, which of course meant he failed out of the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery, but after the exam was over, we sort of . . . forgot about him.”
“Forgot about him?” M asked, blinking in astonishment. “What do you mean, you forgot about him? You forgot that you had placed something on his head that paralyzed him and then locked him in a room by himself ?”
“It was a very long and very difficult examination!” P cried, with a deep blush of guilt running across his face. “And afterward, we all went out for a very heavy supper. And you know how tired I get after a heavy supper. It wasn’t my fault! It was the supper!”
M and Rose rolled their eyes, but I nodded my head in understanding. If you’ve ever been seriously distracted and exhausted by food like I have, then you’re more sympathetic to others who have been as well. A food coma could be just as debilitating as an O.W.S. Device. One day, I plan to make the medical community aware of people like me and P, who should not be judged by how lazy we become after eating large meals. One day.
“How long did Werbert have to lie there with the
O.W.S. Device on his head?” M asked.
P cleared his throat and attempted to smooth down the porcupine spikes of his hair, wincing in pain as they stabbed sharply into the palm of his hand.
“In total?” he asked. “Ummm, well, I’d have to say that he was lying there for about . . . three days.”
We all took a deep breath before slowly turning our heads toward the book sitting on the counter: The Hilarious Mis-Adventures of the Ridiculous Baron Family.
To be perfectly honest, if someone had done to me what P had done to Werbert, I probably would have written an even nastier book.
“After we graduated from dental school, Doc and I realized that we had interests other than dentistry. I had much more fun inventing dental tools and devices than I did practicing dentistry, so Doc suggested that I become an inventor. And Doc had much more fun shooting guns, playing cards, and getting into trouble than he did practicing dentistry, so I suggested that he become a politician. Well, it turns out his suggestion was better than mine, because I actually did become an inventor. But shortly after I opened my first inventor’s office, I received a special delivery from Werbert.”
“I’m guessing it wasn’t a letter stating that he forgave you,” I said.
P sadly shook his head.
“No. He swore revenge, and told me that since I had ruined his life and his career, he would one day do the same thing to me. Well, it looks like he’s done it. My career is ruined. Good old Werbert. It’s always good to see someone from the old Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery succeeding at something.”
“That explains the book,” I said, “but it doesn’t explain what happened to—” I had to read the name written on my forearm, “Dunkas.”
“Dorcas,” my mother corrected, as she read her own forearm.
I must have smudged the writing on my arm. I was always smudging things up. A regular smudger, I am. I quickly rewrote “DORCAS” and smudged it up almost immediately.
“That’s where you’re wrong, son,” P said solemnly. “Werbert was the sort of fellow who always meant everything he said. Literally. Every word. He never exaggerated, and he never joked. If he ever told you that it’s raining cats and dogs out, do not go outside, because you can be certain there are a lot of confused animals falling from the sky. When he wrote that he was going to ruin my life, he meant my entire life. Not just my present or my future, but also my past.”
Rose and I crinkled our brows in confusion, but M seemed to know exactly what P was talking about.
“No, McLaron,” M said, quickly shaking her head back and forth. “It’s not possible. In fact, it’s scientifically impossible. And not only is it impossible, it’s also very weird.”
After giving my mother a wink and a knowing grin, P quickly shuffled over to the other end of the work garage. Standing in the corner, beside a metal file cabinet containing the blueprints for all of my parents’ inventions, was a very tall and wide object covered with a dusty drop cloth. It was P’s latest invention, a top-secret invention, which was so top secret that not even M knew what it was. M and Rose had all been asking him about it for weeks, but he kept saying that he’d show us when the time was right.
It appeared that the time was finally right.
“You’re right about one thing, my little muffin,” my father said as he gripped the edge of the drop cloth. “Time travel is indeed quite weird. It is perhaps the weirdest and most confusing concept imaginable, and if you sit around and think about it too much, your mind will likely end up turning into a lump soup. But you’re one hundred percent wrong when you call it impossible. Not only is it possible, it has already occurred. Werbert Turmerberm—”
“I still don’t believe that’s his real name,” Rose whispered to me.
“It’s like his parents tried to name him ‘Herbert’ and ‘Wilbur’ at the same time,” I whispered back.
“—has invented a time machine,” P declared. “And he is using that time machine to travel back in time to spy on us, so he can write his embarrassing stories about our family in order to humiliate us and ruin our professional reputations. And now that he has destroyed our present and future by turning us into worldwide jokes, he is beginning phase two of his dastardly plan, which is to travel back in time in order to ruin our past. That is what he has done to—” P glanced at his forearm. “. . . Porcas.”
“Dorcas,” M corrected, as she read from her arm again. I glanced at the smudge on my arm and then tried to write “Dorcas” over again, but it just ended up as another smudge.
“Werbert will not stop until he’s eliminated each and every one of us from existence, wiping out the Barons forever,” P finished, the serious glint in his normally carefree eyes expressing the severity of the situation.
It sounded pretty horrible. In fact, it sounded like it could quite possibly be the worst thing to ever happen to us. I once ate a fried fish sandwich that turned out to be rotten, and I was sick for over three and a half days, but being eliminated from existence sounded even worse than that.
Though that fish sandwich was pretty bad . .
. I should have never ordered a second one after I noticed the first one tasted a bit funky. Or a third. And definitely not a fifth. And I really shouldn’t have gotten onto that Ferris wheel afterward.
“So, what do we do?” Rose asked.
“How can we fight someone who’s in the past?” I asked, rubbing my tongue with my handkerchief in an attempt to wipe away the final foul taste of P’s dusty invention. It was really lingering, and it was beginning to make me feel as though I might be sick.
“We must travel to the past as well,” P said, a mad grin spreading slowly across his equally mad face. “Werbert has invented a time machine. . .”
He whipped the sheet off his invention with a flourish, like a bull fighter tempting a bull with his red cape. “. . . But I have invented one as well!”
M gasped.
Rose gasped.
I sneezed.
“McLaron!”
“Mr. Baron!”
“Seriously, no one has a mint?”
SOMETHING WENT BOING!
My father had certainly invented some strange looking things in the past. He’d built doodads and gizmos and thingamajigs covered in blinking lights, turning gears, electrical currents, steaming pipes, buzzing buzzers, and blooping bleepers. He’d built fully functioning underwater ships, high-powered space rockets, and trousers that looked as though they’d been swiped from a visiting alien. But I don’t think any of his older inventions could compare to the strangeness of his time machine.
“It’s an outhouse,” Rose said, looking very disappointed.
Yes, it looked like an outhouse. A nice and big outhouse, which could probably fit a half dozen people at once (though why you’d want to fit so many people into an outhouse is a gross mystery that I’d prefer not to solve), but an outhouse nonetheless. It was large and wooden and rectangular, slightly splintered and musty, with a half-moon shape carved into the door. There wasn’t even a proper door handle on the outhouse; it was just a length of rope that you had to pull to open, like the old and filthy outhouse behind the Pitchfork jailhouse. I don’t recommend using that outhouse.
“It’s not an outhouse,” said P. “It’s a time machine.”
“It looks like an outhouse,” I told him.
“No, it doesn’t. It looks like a time machine.”
“McLaron, I’m pretty sure that’s just an outhouse.” M said gently, while patting my father on the shoulder. “Why did you build an outhouse in the work garage? Have you been working too hard lately? Have you been feeling stressed because of those terrible books? That could explain these strange new thoughts about time travel that are floating around your pointy head. I’ve also noticed you haven’t been struck by lightning lately, which might be why your mind is acting a bit funny. Perhaps you should go stand outside in a rainstorm while wearing your hat with the big metal spike at the top. You always feel right as rain after a good lightning storm, even if it does make you smell a bit like BBQ.”
P rolled his eyes and exhaled in an exhausted manner.
“You people,” he muttered to himself, “sometimes you’re absolutely ridiculous.”
He pulled the rope and opened the outhouse door.
This time, even I was able to gasp properly.
The moment the splintered door was open we were bathed in a rainbow of bafflingly intense and powerful light. The inside of the time machine was fitted with what looked to be a hundred thousand little lanterns, and yet none of them were larger than a penny. The tiny lanterns blinked and flickered with multicolored life, buzzing and humming and blipping, creating a cloud of static electricity that made my nose tingle and made the hair on top of my head stand up as straight as P’s. On the back wall of the time machine was a rectangular glass screen covering a delicate looking panel, which depicted a long line marked with seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, and centuries. Beneath the panel was a series of brass knobs, buttons, and switches meant to control the direction of the time machine. One button was labeled “WHERE” and another was labeled “WHEN”.
With its secret grandness exposed, the time machine appeared to be radiating with an unbelievable amount of power and energy. It was like staring directly into the face of a shooting star. I was so awed and impressed that all I could do was stand there and stare, with my jaw dangling loosely from my astonished face as a rainbow of energetic light tickled my cheeks and chin. I didn’t have to look at Rose and M to know that they were doing the same thing.
“See?” P said in a satisfied tone. “Time machine.”
We all quickly crowded into the glowing time machine as Rose and M began to spit question after question at my father.
“Does this really work?”
“How does it work?”
“Yes, what’s powering the time machine?”
“Have you tested it before?”
“Did you go back in time or into the future?”
“Is it safe?”
“Is it dangerous?”
“Is it even a good idea to travel back in time?”
“Yes, what if we accidentally do something that changes the present?”
“Is it possible to alter future events?”
“Couldn’t we be responsible for ruining the world if we aren’t careful?”
“What are the rules about this?”
“Can we travel back in time to last Thursday when we had that delicious rhubarb pie?”
That last question was actually mine. It might not sound that important to you, but it was a really good pie. It had whipped cream on it.
“One question at a time, please,” my father said, holding up his hands to shush us. “Actually, forget that. None at a time. There is no time for questions.”
“Sure there is,” I said. “We have a time machine. We literally have enough time for everything.”
P scratched his chin.
“Good point,” he admitted. “Alright. Ask me all of your questions. I’ll answer them the best I can. Then, once you’re all satisfied, we’ll travel back in time to this very moment, and get started right away.”
One Hour Later
Sort Of.
I Guess?
No?
Well, We Were Back in the Present after Having Traveled Back in Time for an Hour. So, It Was an Hour Later, Though It Was Actually Still the Same Time as It Was Before We Left.
Does That Make Sense? A Little Bit?
Are You Confused? Okay, I’m Confused Too.
Let’s Just Move On with the Story, Alright? Alright.
“All of your answers make perfect sense. I guess you’ve thought of everything,” M admitted to P. “I suppose it’s time for us to get started. W. B., please be careful. You’re dripping whipped cream onto the time machine.”
“Sorry,” I said, finishing the last of my rhubarb pie. “Does anyone mind if we quickly travel back in time again so I can have seconds? And maybe have a glass of milk too?”
“There’s no time,” P said then scratched his chin again. “Actually, there’s plenty of time, but I’m still saying no.”
I sighed, but I didn’t put up an argument. It was probably for the best. After all, the W. B. from last week looked pretty angry when I showed up and stole his pie. Sucker . . .
“Where are we going first?” Rose asked. “You said that Werbert is currently spying on us and meddling with our past. But that means he could be anywhere.”
“He could be anywhere or anywhen,” M added.
My father lifted a finger to silence us and then quickly flipped through the pages of several of the Baron books, finally stopping when he found what he’d been looking for. He held up his copy of the first book: The Hilarious Mis-Adventures of the Ridiculous Baron Family.
“I know where and when he is,” said P. “He’s currently spying on us during our first major adventure, when we entered the flying Baron Estate into a race around the country. All we need to do is read through this bo
ok and pay attention to which lines are changing, and then travel back in time to when those moments actually happened. When the lines in the book are no longer changing, then that means he’s traveled elsewhen, and we’ll have to read through the other books until we find him.”
“Is that really logical?” Rose asked doubtfully. “I mean, why would the pages of the book change just because Werbert is changing events from the past? Wouldn’t the book just disappear? Wouldn’t Werbert need to rewrite them in order to change them? And why would he do that? None of that makes sense.”
“Rose, you’re asking for logic while we’re standing inside of a steam powered time machine,” I told her. “Maybe you should accept the fact that there are some things in life that just aren’t going to make sense to you. That’s what I do. Life is easier that way.”
M took the book from my father and opened it. After scanning through the first dozen pages, she stopped when her eyes spotted a sentence that was beginning to grow fuzzy. Without looking up, she reached out and adjusted the knobs and dials on the panel of the time machine. That’s how clever M is; P hadn’t even told her how to set and use the time machine, and she’d already figured out how to do it perfectly. When she had set the time machine to the point in time described by the changing paragraph in the book, my father flipped a switch.
The tremendous Baron time machine flickered and sparked, before disappearing from the present in the blink of an eye.
Traveling through time is very much like falling down a hill (and trust me, I have a lot of experience with both). It’s very confusing, slightly nauseating, you can’t really see anything very well, often you’re screaming, your head hurts, you sometimes lose a shoe, you feel like an idiot for having done it, and you often wonder if you might die at the end.
It makes you feel as though your brain and stomach are trying to trade places with each other, but none of the other parts of your body are willing to move out of the way in order to let them. The feeling is so intense that you begin to wonder if you’re suddenly sick with almost every known illness in the world. In fact, as we traveled back in time, I felt as though I had the stomach flu, an earache, chicken pox, pinkeye, tennis elbow, hysterical pregnancy, whooping cough, and an amputated knee, all at that the same time.