by Eric Bower
Perhaps I look a bit different, now that I’m no longer paralyzed by your evil invention!”
P and I whipped our heads around, and saw, hovering right in front of the open doorway of the time machine, none other than Werbert Turmerberm. He looked quite comfortable floating in midair, his legs crossed underneath him while he fanned himself with his notebook, the light stream of steam continuing to pour from the end of his powerful pen.
“Well, hello there, Werbert!” my father cried happily, as he stepped forward and extended his hand to shake. “It’s lovely to see you again, my old friend! It’s been far too long. Would you care to sing the old college song with me? I still remember all the high harmonies.”
Werbert Turmerberm wordlessly pulled out a gun and pointed it at P. I could tell by the look in the madman’s eyes that he’d feel no remorse over pulling the trigger, and I immediately hoped my father wouldn’t do anything foolish—or at least, not anything excessively foolish.
“If you sing that insufferable song or mention anything else about that college, I will make your last moments on earth very painful,” Werbert warned. “I have nothing but foul memories of that dreadful place, where you and that smug bandit Doc Holliday transformed my life into a nightmare! I was going to be the greatest dentist who’d ever lived! Don’t you see? I was going to be the next Pierre Fauchard! Do you hear me? The next Pierre Fauchard! And then you ruined it!”
“Are you sure you don’t want to sing the first couple verses of the dental college fight song?” P asked hopefully. “I can start it for you if you like, in case you’re feeling a little shy. Oh, a tooth is a tooth, and that’s the truth, but don’t forsooth the truth if the tooth is loose, and you can bet your caboose if the tooth is loose that—”
Werbert fired the gun into the air, causing my father to abruptly cease his singing. I sighed in relief. Werbert was right. It was a pretty bad song.
“What did I tell you, McLaron?” Werbert growled, his eyes glowing with an upsetting combination of rage and insanity. “I told you that I would make you pay for what you did to me, and I have! I told you I would ruin your life, and even though you don’t realize it, I have managed to ruin it even worse than I’d originally planned! I have been erasing all of your loved ones from existence, one at a time, while making other terrible changes to your life as well! Just as you saw fit to make terrible changes to my life when you got me kicked out of school and spoiled my reputation in the dental community forever! In return, I have erased your annoying sister-in-law, and erased your lovely wife—I then made sure you were married to the most annoying person in Pitchfork, just for a laugh. Hahaha! I’ve just now erased Rose Blackwood, your former assistant, who was probably the last person on earth who might have been able to save you from me. And now that I’ve had my fun, I’m going to erase you, McLaron, as well as your bumbling son, forever!”
“You leave my bumbling son alone!” my father shot back.
“Bumbling? Don’t you think that’s a bit harsh, P?” I said, feeling slightly hurt. “Sure, sometimes I’m a bit klutzy, and I do suffer from some unusually bad luck, but I don’t think that it’s accurate to call me bu—”
I was unable to finish my sentence because a duck inexplicably crashed into my face. The duck had been flying through the sky without a care in the world, when it had suddenly made a wrong turn and ended up in the time machine. It hit me hard, stunning me and knocking me to the ground. The duck looked around the time machine, quacked twice in confusion, before spreading its wings and gliding back out in search of its companions.
Werbert Turmerberm looked down at me in disgust, rolling his bitter eyes before jotting something down in his notebook—the plume of smoke pouring from the end of the pen began to darken. The light in the time machine flickered, and there was a shower of sparks that erupted from the ceiling. I heard a deep rumbling noise, which I could feel vibrating throughout my body like a chili supper that wasn’t sitting very well. Apparently, Werbert had just done something drastic to me with his special pen, and now I had no choice but to sit there and wait for it to happen. Luckily, I’m quite good at sitting there and waiting for things to happen. It’s one of my hidden talents.
“Now, say goodbye, McLaron,” Werbert cackled. “I’ve spent the past twenty years mastering the art of engineering, inventing, and time travel, and I created the most brilliant time-related invention in history, which is capable of doing the impossible, as well as the unbelievable, and even the unthinkable! And now I’m going to use my prized invention, the time eraser, to make you suffer beyond belief ! You see, I couldn’t think of a better way to destroy an arrogant inventor than by inventing something even more impressive than all of his puny inventions combined, and then using it to rip him from the pages of history forever. I’m going to enjoy watching you fade away, McLaron. In fact, I’m going to enjoy it a lot.”
After making a few adjustments to the buttons on his marvelous pen (which buzzed and gonged like an activated alarm), Werbert quickly jotted something down in his notebook. Another flash of light filled the time machine, briefly blinding us. When my eyes had recovered, I looked over to P. My father was staring in wide-eyed wonder at his body, which was slowly beginning to fade. It began with his hands, but then it quickly spread up his arms like a rash, taking my father away, inch by inch, limb by limb, until there was no more of McLaron Aaron Baron left in existence. As the last of my father disappeared into nothingness, I could hear him softly say:
“I was right. I really hate not existing.”
LIKE A HOT KNIFE THROUGH BUTTER
It was down to Werbert Turmerberm and me. For some reason, that seemed to surprise the evil failed dentist. “What are you still doing here?” he demanded, looking both furious and utterly shocked. “I just erased you from existence, kid. You should have faded away long before your father did. But you’re not fading at all. All of you is still here!”
I looked down at my feet, legs, torso, hands, and arms. He was right. They all still appeared to be there. Not an inch of me had faded in the slightest, and I was checking myself pretty thoroughly to be certain. I was in the awkward process of checking the back of my neck for signs of fading when Werbert Turmerberm suddenly reached out and grabbed me forcefully by the wrist.
“What’s the matter with you?” he spat, as he knocked me over the head with his notebook and pen. “My time eraser is a perfect invention that has never failed. It is the most sophisticated and clever invention in history! I don’t just use it to travel through time, I use it to change time, by writing where and when I would like to go, and what I would like to have happen when I get there. Do you understand how incredible that is? I can erase an entire war from history with nothing but a few squiggles of this scientifically modified pen. I can bring back the dinosaurs just with a few doodles. I can make the Dark Ages darker, I can thaw the Ice Age, and I can build Rome in a day, just by applying a tiny bit of special ink to paper! I can do anything with this invention! Look! I wrote, right here in my notebook, that you, Waldo Baron, were never born, which means you cannot exist. So why haven’t you disappeared? Huh? Why are you still here? You’re making my incredible invention look very bad, and I don’t appreciate that one bit!”
Truthfully, I felt a bit guilty about that. I didn’t mean to make the man’s invention look bad. I even apologized.
“Sorry, Werbert. I guess I’m just a bit persistent when it comes to existence. It’s the only thing I really know how to do. I’m certain if you use your invention—what’s it called again, the time eraser?—I’m sure if you use it again on me, I’ll fade away nice and quietly.”
“You’d better,” he warned, as he once again activated the device.
As he did, I dove forward and ripped the gun from his other hand. He hadn’t been expecting that. Werbert Turmerberm had assumed that I’d be as daft and cowardly as the W. B. character from those awful books he’d written. Yes, I could be a bit klutzy and cowardly at times, but I w
as clever and brave when it mattered. Usually. Sometimes. Occasionally. Twice. At least one-and-a-half times.
“Well, well, well,” I said as I stepped forward, waggling the gun at Werbert to show him who was in charge. “It looks like the shoe is now on the other foot, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes, I do,” Werbert Turmerberm replied, as he looked down at my feet. “Did you get dressed in the dark this morning?”
I looked down and realized that my shoes actually were on the wrong feet. I do that sometimes, accidentally switching up my left boot with my right boot. Werbert was right; it is what happens when I get dressed in the dark, when I’m not really paying attention to what I’m doing.
What a smart fellow Werbert was. No wonder he learned how to manipulate space and time.
When I leaned down to fix my boots, I accidentally stumbled backward and bonked my head against the control panel of the time machine, inadvertently pressing several buttons, twisting several knobs, flipping two switches, and activating the invention, inexplicably picking a precise time and place for us to travel to. As I did, Werbert Turmerberm slapped his hand against his forehead.
“Now I understand what’s happened!” he moaned. “It all makes perfect sense. You are so ridiculously clumsy, that you’ve actually managed to fall out of time. You’ve tripped and slipped and stumbled and bumbled so often, that the rules of time no longer apply to you. You can’t be erased, because as far as time is concerned, you don’t exist. Don’t you see? You have already fallen off every possible timeline, meaning my time eraser is useless on you. You are literally too clumsy to exist!”
Huh. I suppose that explained a lot.
Before I could respond to Werbert, the thousands of dime-sized lights embedded in the time machine suddenly flared at the same time, creating a palpably hot rainbow of energy, and we began to shoot forward in the time machine, moving faster than ever before. Werbert and I were thrown backward, and the gun was wrenched free from my grip. It fell out of the time machine and landed somewhere between 1895 and 1907.
All the buttons, switches, and dials I’d accidentally hit had sent the time machine far into the future, and we were headed there fast.
Since the door was still open, both Werbert and I were pressed to the time machine floor by the irresistible force of the winds of time, unable to move more than an inch. I could hear him yelling unpleasant things at me, and so I started yelling unpleasant things back at him, which turned out to be a really bad idea. When the time machine passed through the year 1915, there was an awful loud explosion from somewhere outside, which sent a cloud of dirt and dust into the open doorway of the time machine. The dust got inside my open mouth, and filled it with a terribly gritty and unpleasant flavor. I spat several times, wishing that I had a mint or a piece of chocolate to cover the unpleasant taste.
Which suddenly gave me the earliest stirrings of an idea.
The time machine began to slow down as we reached our unintentional final destination—the year 1965. The distant future. I’d traveled pretty far from home in the past, but this had to be a new record for me. I was suddenly farther away from everyone and everything I’d ever known than I’d ever been before. The world outside probably didn’t even resemble the world that I had left back in 1892. Everything was likely very different, and confusing, and shiny, and fancy, and futuristic. I pictured a lot of personal flying machines, and other amazing things like horses with mechanical legs, dogs with propellers for tails, and steam powered shoes. I briefly wondered if I could look up my old friend, Shorty, to see how she was doing in the future. I suppose I could invite her out for supper and ice cream, though she’d probably want to take her grandchildren along with her.
Normally, that random thought of ice cream would have had me drooling like a bear waking up from its hibernation, but not at that moment. Remember what I said before, about how the further you travel in time, the worse you’ll feel afterward? Well, that had proven to be devastatingly true. Werbert and I had just traveled over seventy years into the future, and the effect was truly horrific. I suddenly felt as though I’d developed full-body arthritis, a detached nose, a shattered scalp, cobbler’s shins, turtle flu, total skin failure, happy feet, angry knees, mildly annoyed bowels, a terrible throbbing in my gizzard, and a phantom pain from my nonexistent tail. My brain felt as though it was sloshing around in my skull like a ship caught in a storm, and the ceiling of the time machine looked like it was spinning in circles above me. It was a good thing my stomach was practically empty, otherwise I might have done something rather embarrassing and messy right there on the floor.
“You fool!” Werbert Turmerberm groaned, clearly feeling just as awful as I did, if not worse. “Our bodies aren’t meant to travel so far into time, at least not without some proper rest first. You’ll kill us both if you keep it up.”
“Then undo everything you did to ruin my life,” I told him through gritted teeth, as I staggered to my feet, “or I’ll keep doing reckless and foolish things, which will likely harm us both in irreparable ways. Trust me. I won’t even have to try very hard to do it. Bad things will just happen to us, I promise.”
In truth, I couldn’t really remember what my life was like prior to Werbert Turmerberm changing it with his brilliant invention. I remembered virtually nothing about my family or my home life. I knew that, logically, I must have had a mother and a father (biologically, it would be slightly difficult for me to exist without having at least one of each) and I vaguely remembered a couple of other people existing in my life as well. But that was all that I could really recall about them, other than the fact that I knew we had all been sent on a mission to stop Werbert, and to prevent him from changing the world with his time eraser invention. So even if I didn’t know why I was doing what I was doing, I would continue to do it anyway, if only because . . . well, what else was I supposed to do? I was a boy with no family, no home, and no life, only a mission to complete. I suppose that made me rather dangerous to Werbert. After all, I was a person with nothing to lose, who was immune to his dastardly weapon, and whose lone purpose in life was to defeat him and his evil scheme. Suddenly I felt a little less foolish and helpless, and a little bit more like a genuine hero.
Werbert Turmerberm snarled at me like a camel with a chronic sinus infection as he struggled to bring himself to his feet. The effects of the time travel had weakened us to such a dramatic degree that we both moved as though we were underwater. Once we were standing, Werbert and I began to shuffle as quickly as we could in the same direction. We looked pathetic, like a pair of elderly men with the stomach flu rushing to see who would get to use the outhouse first as we pined after Werbert Turmerberm’s time eraser.
The mechanical pen and the notebook had been thrown from our hands as the time machine traveled at an unexpectedly blazing speed, and both items had settled at the lip of the open doorway. Werbert was only a few feet away from the pen when he decided to lunge for it, which proved to be a mistake. Since I was younger and taller, as well as less sore from the time travel, I jumped when he did, fully extending my arms and legs. I reached over Werbert and grabbed the pen a split second before he could, and then I landed right on top of him. He grunted in pain as the full weight of my body came crashing down on him, crushing him like an old accordion. I snatched the notebook with my free hand, and though my body still felt awfully sore and discombobulated, I stood up and taunted Werbert Turmerberm with my happy dance, while dangling his brilliant invention over his head. It might not have been the most mature thing I’ve ever done, but when you’ve had a day as terrible as mine, I think you’re allowed to be a little bit obnoxious.
“Ha ha ha!” I called as I began my dance. “I’ve got the pen and the notebook! Now you’ll have to change everything back to the way that it was before, or I’ll . . . wait, what’s that?”
I pointed out of the open doorway at what appeared to be an incredibly large, impossibly heavy, and remarkably constructed flying machin
e, which was heading right for us.
It was the biggest flying machine I’d ever seen. In fact, it might have been the biggest “thing” I’d ever seen, period. I had only seen one similar flying machine in my life (I couldn’t quite remember where or when), but the one that was quickly approaching the time machine was nearly ten times its size. It looked as though it was capable of carrying at least two hundred passengers, and it was soaring through the air at an astonishingly fast speed. The flying machine was painted stark white, with a funny design embossed onto its tailfin, and the entire invention was shaped like a giant metal cylinder with a pointy nose, and a pair of thick metal wings protruding from the sides. I didn’t know what I’d expected the future to look like, but I certainly hadn’t expected it to look like that.
“I don’t know what that thing is,” Werbert Turmerberm breathed, as he looked from the giant flying machine, to the notebook and pen in my hand. “But it’s coming right for us. Give me the time eraser, and I swear, I’ll take us both to safety.”
“No,” I said, taking several steps back and holding the pen and the notebook high in the air. “I don’t trust you. I’ll take us to safety. Let me just figure out how to use this thing.”
“I should be the one to do it!” Werbert argued. “That’s my invention! You’ll probably screw it up in the weird way that you screw everything else up. I’m the only person who knows how to properly use the time eraser!”
“You said that all you need to do is use the pen to write down the time, date, and place, and then it’ll magically take you there,” I told Werbert. “How could I manage to screw that up?”
“I don’t know! But you always do! Give me the time eraser!”
“No! I don’t trust you!”
“What reason do you have not to trust me? What did I ever do to you?”