A Horrible Commotion

Time-tested turbulence suffocates the innermost recesses of our cavernous history, this lurid lexicon of woe and foe, birth and mirth, the prophet's tale carried by heaven's gales. This gentle soul knows not what he endeavors for, and for good reason! To think, if he understood the stakes, how weak his knees might get!

~

Before me an untested capsule, heart-shaped and built of cumbersome copper, lies in wait. A loaded toolbelt and a hipbag full of yummy snacks are all I have packed for the journey. I cycle seven prayer-infused breaths and activate the time machine. The sounds it emits are ethereal and haunting, like a pod of whales in the deepest blue.

The gauge is still in the red, charging. My patience invites me to sit on the floor and meditate on the developments that led to this intrepid success.

"What a waste of time, wake up to reality already!" laughed my father.

"This mighty contraption dares unlike any other!" beamed the local papers.

"The madlad has done it again!" screams a close friend.

"See how the veil of time is to be pierced by the God-guided hand of man!" proclaims the pastor of a local church.

"Lord in heaven, my dearest Dawn Star, please spare my journey of foe or famine" whispers the spirit within me.

My mind wants to race, but I do not permit this.

The top of my head twitches twice, divine instinct, and I look up to see the gauge has cycled from red to green.

As I take a seat, my derriere is met by the firmness of decadent faux leather, inlaid with intricate runes of various faiths. The interior walls are lined with posters, poems, pictures of loved ones, and a single three-string guitar that hangs on a secured hook. There is enough water stored beneath the seat to last me for several weeks, but I do not intend to linger past a few moments, as every second of my presence heralds potential timeline collapses.

My, how dreadful to think that stepping on the wrong Jurassic mammal could change us all into possibility soup! But prehistory is not the destination, anyhow, and man's history is rarely important enough to alter the fate of our realm, so the stakes are much lower.

I chuckle and share a deep look of intimate affection with my blue-skinned friend, an ancient Djinn who's name I have been cautioned not to share. He flashes me a gentle smile, well aware of the implications of this farewell.

Friendships never last, for the tempest of time is ever scattering us to farflung fates, and so it would be foolish of me to feel sorrow.

Yet I weep a foolish tear, for I am human.

Monks forgive me, for I have expressed the pain of attachment.

My heart screams one last time as the gates of the copper vessel slam shut around me. A crude airlock hisses as the capsule is pressurized, and a single dial emerges from the brass console in front of my seat.

The console has little else but my personal sigil, a latitude and latitude selector with precision knobs, and a rotary temporal selection dial that bears twelve single-digit numbers, two of which are quite unknown to man.

I dial 733AD, take a deep breath, and pull the slender bronze lever at my left, taking great care not to press the gold button on the top of the handle.

~

"It was an absolute horror, a horrible commotion" regales a neighbor.

"He shall be sorely missed, the poor chap" sighs my financial patron.

The Djinn sits in silence and waits, quite aware of the scorched crater that now sits in the center of my living room. His heart rumbles twice and he chuckles, for he knows full well that this confirms my safety.

~

On the other end of the Djinn's rumbling heart, a time traveler emerges from a copper vessel.

Outside of this time-scorched capsule, the Arabs are battling the Byzantines, the king of Dal Riata has passed away, and a noblewoman in Japan is pregnant with their future emperor.

I pay little mind to these events, announced triumphantly by the news ticker that sits just above the console, and at once step out from the capsule. My gaze confirms that I have arrived at the correct destination.

As my boots meet the fresh sunset coast of Avalon, I feel my sigh of deep relief get carried away by a coastal gale. I turn towards the wind to find my capsule precariously perched on the edge of the storied alabaster cliffs. Following the wind, my gaze is met by a furtive forest, completely undisturbed save for a single hut of crude design. My heart beats three times in confirmation, and I recognize at once that we have found our mark.

As for the time machine, no concealment will be necessary, for the capsule is shielded from stray gazes by the rocky outcroppings surrounding it. What fortune that we did not land in an open field, or half a meter closer to the edge!

Confirming my solitude with a studious surveillance of my environment, I sprint across the field, keeping my knees lightly bent and my back lowered so as to reduce my silhouette.

On arrival, I catch my breath and knock twice at the door of the hut, but am met by silence. A few more knocks produce no results and, resisting the urge to intrude by force, decide to step away for a brisk walk through the forest.

"I must be careful not to be seen by any interlopers" I think to myself as I crunch down on a granola bar, my tangled beard catching a stray crumb or two.

Almost as if summoned by the power of my wary thoughts, a lone horseman gallops across the field towards the forest where I am currently standing! Recognizing the danger at once, I dive into the tangled underbrush and hold my breath.

The horseman stops next to my hiding spot, puzzled by the tricks his eyes have played on him. He saw a creature dive into the bush, or so he thought, but three thrusts of his spear produced no sound, no death squeal.

"Shame", the horseman thinks to himself, "I was very much hoping to catch a wild boar off guard".

Chuckling at his delusion, he knocks his ankles against the chest of the mighty mare, a gorgeous black and brown beauty, and gallops deeper into the forest.

Inside the tangled bush, three fresh wounds have appeared: two deep scores in the soil where the spear struck the ground, and a third gash right through my chest, narrowly missing vital organs.

Clear of the rider, I stumble back to the time machine, hoping to make use of the medicinal kit stored beneath the console, but my efforts are rendered useless as my vision goes black, and I fall.

An old man watches my struggling body collapse onto the dusk-darkened fields of Avalon.

...

I awaken, much to my surprise, to the interior of the humble cabin. My body feels fine, save for a piercing pain in my side, and the prickly sensation of hay at my back, the source of which is the crude cot on which I have been laid prone.

My eyes perceive the following, in this precise order: Cascading plants hanging from crooked canisters, a pile of scrolls on a shabby desk, and crumbling shelves bearing many a mystic's possession: tools, vials, effigies, organs, bones, anatomical sketches, and a single blue lamp.

The host, shrouded by the shadows of his dimly-lit home, follows my gaze and chuckles. His eyes have followed mine to the lamp, and now all hope of discretion is lost.

His tangled beard reaches down to his chest, with ragged, wooly hair that barely passes his ears. He looks rather like a wolfhound, and at nearly two meters tall, has the size and power to match.

I bow my head in humility for the intrusion, two hands clasped together in gratitude for the bandages that are wrapped around my chest, and then point at the lamp with my head cocked to the side.

"How long have you had that lamp?"

He cackles, responding in an ancient tongue that I do not recognize, and shrugs his shoulders, then points at my belt, from which hangs a pair of binoculars. He cocks his head as I did.

I chuckle, suppressing the pain from my side in doing so, and hand these to him. The mystic hobbles outside, gasps in joy, then walks past the cabin's single window, peering at the distant seas and forests with incredible magnification.

Eventually he returns, amused and quite out of breath, and hands the binoculars back to me.

"Trade?" I say, as I hold my left palm against the binoculars and gesture once more to the lamp with my right hand. I hate to potentially poison the timeline, but have no other choice at this point, and gratitude compels me to compensate the man for his lamp.

Lesser men would have attacked as soon as his back was turned, but I am not a lesser man.

The mystic nods in understanding and hands me the lamp, which hums in recognition at my touch.

~

Back home, the Djinn smiles with great pleasure.

~

Stumbling away from the cabin, clutching the lamp in one hand and my side in the other, I gesture a farewell to the mystic. He watches me depart through a pair of powerful binoculars, smiling and waving, then retreats to the comfort of his home.

I collapse into the time machine, barely suppressing the fresh wound-pangs that my conscious mind struggles to block, and dial my home year into the centernconsole.

2133AD.

As I pull the lever, I receive another sharp wound pain, and in the throes of misery nearly depress the gold button at the top of the lever. What horror, to think that all of modern society could have been wiped out in an instant! At once, I pull a notebook from the storage bin to my right and sketch many improvements for the capsule, including a less-accessible placement for the gravity recompiler. Outside, the gentle hum of zippered time-space lulls me into a gentle sleep.

~

As soon as I arrive home, the Djinn releases a mighty roar of joy and dives right into the lamp. It feels significantly warmer to the touch now, and should not take long to recharge his abilities.

Gathering little more than a fresh outfit for the incoming change of climates, I step into the capsule, lamp in hand, praying that the Djinn's home allows him to withstand the change of temporal states.

Destination: Zabul, 484AD.

~

The newspapers did not know what to make of this next scene, for all they heard was two mighty explosions and a spectral howl, mere minutes apart. Many guesses were thrown around, but only those who predicted my success were correct.

Since the Djinn and I never returned, my home was eventually sold and later turned into a quirky museum of oddities.

To this day, people still talk about the ancient binoculars that are proudly on display at the Nova Avalonia Museum of Cultural Heritage, though no one knows quite how they came to be.