by Eric Bower
In the end, I’d foiled B.W.’s evil plot, and tied him up before placing him on an eastbound train with a pair of tone-deaf hobos to serenade him for the entirety of the trip. It was a rather cruel revenge that I’d inflicted upon him (the hobos were literally the worst singers on the planet—they sounded like a pair of tortured cats, only not quite as melodic), but sometimes, bad people needed to be punished for doing bad things. Not to mention the fact that B.W. would be less likely to harm me if he were located all the way across the country.
Anyway, those are all the reasons why B.W. hasn’t been around lately (people who threaten to one day destroy you as they’re carted away on a high-speed train don’t often stop by for tea), but there wasn’t enough time to explain all of that to P, and he likely wouldn’t have listened to the entire explanation anyway.
“Erm, I’ll be sure to invite him over for supper next Sunday,” I said. “Let’s go, P. Before Werbert strikes again.”
“Right,” said P, and he quickly went to the control panel mounted on the back wall of the time machine, in order to set the time, date, and location to match the changing pages in his Baron book. “Hang on, everyone. To the not-so-distant future!”
“But, the door—” Rose began, but it was too late.
P had already set the brass knobs and the iron levers, and pressed the final copper button and glass switch. There was another flash of light, and a rumbling buzz that reverberated throughout the entire room like a really bubbly burp. The invention released its surge of energy in a suffocating puff of steam, and while the blinking rooftop of the machine began to crackle and spark, every organ in my body did a 360-degree spin as the tremendous Baron time machine took off.
Traveling through time is uncomfortable enough in a confined time machine, but traveling through time in a time machine with a door that was dangling open was about two hundred and fifty-eight times worse. We felt as though we were rattled and flipped by every tiny bump or twist or spin that the time machine experienced during the journey. We kept seeing the literal winds of time whip past us at blinding speeds, brightly colored streaks of history smearing across our sightline like wet paint as the force of our travel pinned us to the ground. Every inch of my skin felt like it was prickling with static electricity. My nostrils and eyes tingled and itched, and my teeth felt as though they were rattling around in my mouth like loose marbles in someone’s pocket. I thought I’d felt terribly sick during our maiden voyage of the time machine, but it was nothing compared to traveling with an open door. Occasionally the dangling door would be hit with a gust of wind and slam against the empty frame, splintering and cracking the door jam, and hurting our ears from the sheer volume.
“Shut the door!” P shouted. “Were you raised in a time traveling barn? Rose, it’s not safe to travel through time with an open door!”
“I tried! I told you! It won’t shut!”
“Why didn’t you tell me about that earlier?”
“I did! I told you three times!”
“No, you didn’t! I would have remembered that! I always remember things that are told to me thrice!”
“Mr. Baron, with all due respect, you have the memory of a tired goldfish!”
“What? A tired goldfish? If I could remember what we were just arguing about, I imagine that I’d probably be quite offended by that remark!”
As P and Rose continued to quibble, shouting over the uniquely loud and confusing sounds of time travel, I did my best to keep a lookout for Werbert. Even though I was pinned to the floor, I found that if I closed one eye and squinted the other, while looking down and out of the time machine doorway, I could sort of see the places and events in time that we were passing. I couldn’t see them with any great clarity, but I could see them well enough to recognize some of them, particularly the events that I had been a part of. I managed to watch the rest of our adventure that had begun in the submarine and ended in the desert, when we defeated a notable conman who had claimed to be the Vice President of the United States. He and his accomplices had eventually been crushed by a creature that had been enlarged by one of my father’s brilliant inventions, dragging them all the way down to the far ends of the earth.
It was a pretty great moment in the history of the Barons, a moment where my family had come together to successfully defeat an evil conman, and then return a chest full of stolen pirate treasure to its rightful owners across the world. If I were keeping score, I would have to say that it was one of the adventures that I was proudest of. A smile spread across my face as I stared down at the scene dreamily, watching with great interest while it was replayed on the ground below me—
—though even as I stared down at the scene, watching my family as we decided to fly to Europe in order to return the pirate treasure to its rightful owners, something appeared to be slightly wrong. Much like my parents’ bedroom back at the flying Baron Estate, something was a bit “off,” a bit “weird,” a bit “unexpected and incorrect”—it was sort of like taking a bite of a chocolate chip cookie, and finding that had been baked with salt instead of sugar. If that makes any sense.
The time machine moved a bit further down our timeline, and I then watched my family as we traveled the globe, returning the pirate treasure to its rightful owners in wonderful and beautiful countries like England, Spain, Sweden, and Belgium. We flew across the continent in our unique flying machine—which P had named an Air, Oh! Plane, stopping in several other places in order to takes photographs or pick up unique souvenirs. My memories of the European trip came flooding back as I watched them a second time, though I must say that I was very confused as I watched my furious and muffiny mother shout and squawk the entire time about how foolish it was for us to not keep the treasure for ourselves. She insisted to every king, queen, and nobleman we met that the treasure was actually owed to us, as proper payment for all of our troubles, and that they were essentially stealing it from us by not offering it back as a reward—which made no sense. It was very embarrassing for everyone. P, Rose, and I were forced to make regular excuses for her, apologizing to the royals who spoke our language and offering blushing shrugs to the ones that did not.
The time machine accelerated, and we left that moment in space and time to move on to whenever it was that Werbert was hiding. But my mind still couldn’t shake the obnoxiously persistent thought that what I’d just seen in our timeline was wrong, utterly wrong, preposterously wrong. I wasn’t the fastest bat in the cave, but I knew when something wasn’t right with my family. P had mentioned that Werbert possessed the ability to change things in our life without us knowing about it, but at that moment I knew that he had done something to my mother. Don’t ask me how I knew it—I just did. Maybe it’s because my brain was a bit different than everyone else’s, maybe it was a bit too bruised or a bit too lumpy or a bit . . . I don’t know, too squishy, from all my accidents? Anyway, I didn’t know what it was, but there was something about my mother that wasn’t right, and that made me madder than I’d ever felt before. How dare this lunatic do something to my mother, and why, just because of something stupid that had happened with my father in college over twenty years earlier? That was no excuse. We’ve all accidentally done things to others that we later regretted. That was just a part of life. People accidentally hurt and upset other people all the time. That is what people do. If you don’t like it, then I suggest you try being something other than a person, like perhaps a chameleon (I’ve heard they’re remarkably warmhearted for cold-blooded creatures). It was certainly not an acceptable reason for erasing other people from existence and transforming perfectly innocent mothers into mean, miserable, misanthropic, maleficent, malicious, miserly, mingy, and muffiny monsters.
As I continued to glower, the anger bubbling and brewing in my belly, I happened to spot something interesting that suddenly appeared directly outside of the open time machine doorway. Floating along the smeared and confusing lines of time, was a tiny little man with a wispy frizz of brown hair. H
e had tiny spectacles pinched onto the very end of his nose, and he wore what looked to be the single most uncomfortable suit that I’d ever seen a human being wear—it was simultaneously too tight and too loose, and the material bore an uncanny resemblance to the material they use to make onion sacks. It had roughly two hundred and sixteen tiny little buttons on it, all of which had to be fastened for the suit to stay on. I would honestly rather go around in my long underwear than be forced to wear such an awful piece of clothing.
Perhaps the most curious thing about the man was that he appeared to be hovering in midair, flying through time at roughly the same speed as the Baron time machine. His legs were crossed, and he was crouched over a little notebook in his lap, which he was writing in with a very unusual looking pen. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that the pen was an absolute marvel. It looked a bit like a shotgun shell; long and thin, it was made of copper and wood, with little wires and blinking lights running down the sides, and a steady stream of steam billowed from the top as he wrote. The stream of steam also formed what appeared to be a sort of shield around him, which protected him from the quickly whipping winds of time. It was clearly no ordinary pen (if my description still hadn’t already made that clear to you), and it took me only a few moments to realize that the floating man was Werbert, and that the pen was his time machine. That was how he had been doing it, traveling through time and making dramatic changes, writing terrible books about the Barons while literally rewriting all of our lives. With a time traveling pen.
It was absolutely brilliant: a time machine tiny enough to fit in the palm of your hand! That had to have been the greatest invention I’d ever seen, and I’d seen some pretty marvelous inventions in my time. I realized then how dangerous a villain Werbert really was. My family had faced many different villains during our adventures, but never one as clever as P’s mortal enemy. Werbert had invented something that had surpassed P’s inventing talents by a great margin, which meant that the Barons were truly at a disadvantage for the very first time since I could remember. Without the power of science on our side, could we defeat this lunatic? Could Werbert ever be stopped? What could we do?
“P!” I called, pointing to Werbert as the skinny man began to pick up speed and flew farther ahead. “It’s Werbert! I just saw him! He’s flying up ahead! His time machine is a pen! And I think I know how he’s been ruining our lives! He’s literally rewriting them! It’s an absolutely brilliant invention, and I don’t know if we can stop it!”
“What’s that?” P called back to me, pointing to his ear. “It’s very loud, but I thought I heard you say something about a brilliant invention, so I’m assuming you just complimented me! Thank you! Yes, I am quite brilliant! You’ll have to tell me why you were complimenting me later, though! Everyone, grab ahold of something!”
“Why?” I screamed.
And then I learned why a split second later. The time machine came to an immediate stop midair, and when it did, I was suddenly hurled across the enclosed space, missing Rose and P, but crashing into the edge of the doorway, face first. One of the hinges squeaked as the door shook and rattled, and then the entire thing began to fall from the time machine.
“Catch that door!” my father cried.
Rose lunged forward and caught the door moments before it dropped to the ground far below, grunting in pain as her ribs scraped the edge of the doorway.
“I’ll help you with that, Rose,” I said. I crawled forward on my belly while peering over the edge at the familiar Pitchfork Desert below.
I recognized the scene below right away, as it was still quite clear in my memory. It was shortly after the last Pitchfork Fair, when Benedict Blackwood had posed as Rose Blackwood and entered an exploding pie into the fair’s baking contest. Rose was then arrested for the crime, and she temporarily moved out of the Baron Estate, which depressed my whole family. As I looked down from the floating time machine, I saw myself walking despondently through the desert, and I remembered feeling so sad, alone, and abandoned, thinking I would never see my good friend Rose ever again. Then I looked a little farther down the desert road, and saw something else, something that I hadn’t noticed several months earlier when I had been the one down there doing the despondent walking. It was B.W., crouched behind a cactus, waiting for me to pass by so he could jump out and strike me. He had a lead pipe in his hand, which must have been what he’d used to knock me over the head—afterward, he threw my unconscious body onto a high-speed train in order to get rid of me.
It’s pretty hard to sneak up on someone in the desert, so I suppose it was really foolish of me not to see B.W. coming. But I still found myself growing rather annoyed as I watched that little liar slowly creep up on me. I thought about calling down and warning myself about B.W., but I quickly thought better of it. I didn’t want to cause any trouble in the past if I could avoid it. I remembered Rose saying something about how changing the smallest things in the past can sometimes have a major effect on the future—a single crushed butterfly or shattered acorn or spilled cup of juice could be the start of something disastrous that would transform the future into an unrecognizable nightmare. That sounded pretty frightening to me, just the sort of thing I’d want to avoid. I didn’t want to warn myself about B.W. in the past and accidentally start an unexpected chain of events that would end up with me becoming my own grandfather or something. That’s a headache that I absolutely didn’t need.
I reached forward in order to help Rose grip the door, but as I did, something inexplicably strange happened; the lights within the time machine flashed, just like they had back at the flying Baron Estate, and then I heard a cracking noise that made me think of a terrible storm. As I shielded my eyes and leaned down farther to get a better grip on the door, Rose Blackwood suddenly disappeared. I mean she literally disappeared. One minute, she was lying there, holding onto the door to the time machine while gritting her teeth and cursing under her breath, and the next minute, she was gone. She had completely vanished, and without her help, the door to the time machine was suddenly falling to the ground at a tremendous speed. I looked down in time to see the door land on my head, knocking me from the past unconscious just moments before B.W. was able to. B.W. stared at the unconscious me from the past, before looking up at the floating time machine, and then staring at me in confusion. I shrugged down at him. He shrugged up at me. I shrugged again and so did he. P was right. It was rather nice to see B.W. again.
I turned back to my father.
“P, what happened? Did you see that? Rose Blackwood just disappeared into thin air!”
P gasped, bringing both of his hands to his mouth as he stared at the spot on the time machine floor where Rose had been not fifteen seconds earlier . . . but then a look of confusion fell over his eyes like a heavy veil. He blinked twice and stared at me strangely, as though I had just asked him to answer an impossible and nonsensical question. I then felt an invisible veil fall over my own eyes as well, and I suddenly knew what he was about to say to me even before he actually said it.
“Who’s Rose Blackwood?”
I tried to explain to my father who Rose was, but truthfully, I was already starting to forget. In my mind, I saw the slowly fading picture of a pretty and clever lady with a black hat and red boots, who had saved my life once, and then . . . and then . . . and then . . . and then what? What was it that I was trying to remember again? Something about a hat? My mind suddenly felt so tired and spinny from all the time travel, that I had the overwhelming urge to take a sixteen-hour nap.
“W. B.,” my father said slowly. “Who is Rose Blackwood? Why did you say that name?”
Huh? Had I just said the name Rose Blackwood? I didn’t remember that. Did I know someone by that name? Maybe it was the name of an old family friend, or someone from school, or maybe it was just a friend of a friend of a friend? It did sound vaguely familiar though, like a name I might have heard in passing. Or maybe my mind was just playing tricks on me. I’d certainly
taken a lot of hits to the head throughout my short and rather unfortunate life. In fact, I had literally just watched myself get bashed in the head by a heavy wooden door that fell from about three hundred feet in the air. That seemed like the sort of thing that might leave some long-lasting damage to the old noggin, doesn’t it? Maybe my mixed-up mind was just imagining people and names—Rose Blackwood. Huh. Interesting name. It sounded slightly evil. Maybe it was a character from a book that I’d read long ago, or maybe it was from a dream I’d once had. But I supposed it was nothing that I should waste too much time thinking about, not when we were busy chasing a mad villain through space and time, with only a terrible series of poorly written books to serve as our guide.
“I don’t know, P,” I admitted. “Sorry, I thought I knew someone by that name, but I guess I was wrong. Should we continue to check the Baron books to see if we can find exactly where and when Werbert is?”
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” a snide and nasally sounding voice that I didn’t recognize responded. “Now that you’re no longer a threat to me, I think the time has finally come for us to meet again, face-to-face. Hello, McLaron. It’s been a long time. Do you remember me?