Disjointed

"The crisis of today is the joke of tomorrow." – H.G. Wells

* * *

Busigo, first baseman of the Red Sox, hit a homer off Galarza, the rookie Yankees pitcher.

"That's it!" Carson took a drag from the joint and handed it over to David. "That's a sign that this is going to be excellent, dude."

David inhaled deeply and blew out a cloud of smoke. "What's going to be excellent?"

"This--this! I've wanted to do this since I was a kid." Carson stuck the roach in an ashtray filled with cigarette stubs and cellophane candy wrappers, then picked up the device. It looked like a cardboard paper towel roll, except with buttons and an LED display on one end that glowed faintly. It was even the same light brown.

"What is it?" David asked, his eyes glued to the tube. Not the one in Carson's hand, but the one that was showing the Yankees losing. Badly, as usual.

"It's a TM."

"ATM?" David didn't look up. "Where's the money come out?"

"Dude." Carson shook his head. "It's a TM, not ATM."

"That's what I said!"

"No, like, T-M. TM kind of TM!"

"Ohhhhh. A TM? You're kidding." David dragged his attention away from the TV, but then again, the game had just gone to commercial. He took the device out of Carson's hands and shook it next to his ear. Why people thought shaking a piece of electrical equipment would reveal something otherwise unnoticed, Carson had no idea. "If that's a TM, then I'm a gorilla's uncle. That doesn't look like it'd transport you five feet from your chair, let alone five years into the past. Although it would probably make a really great bong…"

Carson snatched the device away from David before his friend started drilling a hole in the side. "Don't you dare."

David laughed, lighting a cigarette. "Those things are illegal. Like, really illegal."

"Illegal is a state of mind, man. Time machines aren't illegal. Time travel is. But if no one knows…"

David mouthed the word, Okay, then said out loud, "Where'd you get it anyway?

"I picked it up real cheap, in a junk shop. Nine ninety-nine, ninety-nine. Even came in the original packaging."

"Holy crap, how much did you pay for that?"

"Nine ninety-nine, ninety-nine."

"Nine ninety-nine… A thousand bucks? You got had." David opened up the ratty pizza box on the wobbly coffee table and grimaced at the green and fuzzy slices. He closed the box and settled back on the ratty plaid sofa.

"Nah, dude--there's a thirty-day return policy. A quick zip back in time to see a few things, meet a few people, and I can bring it back to the shop. No harm, no foul." Carson propped his boots up on the coffee table, which groaned under the weight. "I kept the receipt and peeled the tape back real slowly. See? You can't even tell it's been opened. Didn't tear the cardboard."

"Clever."

"Genius, I tell ya. So you wanna come with?"

David rolled his eyes. "That's dope bravado, but doobie stupidity. Thanks, but no thanks, genius. I'll pass."

"You're missing an opportunity of a lifetime. Several lifetimes, in fact." Carson grinned.

"I bet. But, no, I have to get going. I've got to go take care of my cat."

Carson smirked. "You need to wax it?"

"Wax my cat? What the heck are you talking about?"

Carson snorted with laughter while David rolled his eyes.

"Ooookay." Carson picked up the controller. "Here goes nothing." He double-checked the display. August 15, 1969, Bethel, NY. Perfect. He pressed the red button.

David's eyes were fixed on Carson, who was still sitting in his beanbag chair. The room hadn't dematerialized around him and reappeared as the soggy hills of Woodstock. Women wearing nothing but mud in pivotal places at the most pivotal moment in music history hadn't snapped into place around him.

"Are you sure you know how to work that thing? Or have you already been and come back?" David grinned.

"Shut up." Carson waited for one more second. Pressed the button again. Jabbed his finger up and down. "Okay, it's not working."

"Well, what did you expect?" David rose to his feet, stretched, and ambled to the door of Carson's studio apartment. "Better go find that receipt."

"Yeah," said Carson glumly as the door shut behind his friend.

* * *

Carson fiddled with the dial, spinning it up and down to its preset dates and locations. He actually recognized most of them. In theory, at least, he was still a world history major. In practice, he would have to stop sponging off his parents and actually attend class once in a while to qualify. Two things that seemed more unlikely to him than the possibility of the government giving out free weed with every tax return. Not that he'd ever paid taxes, but he understood the theory…

November 22, 1963, Dallas, Texas. July 14, 1789, Paris, France. 1725, Dublin, Ireland.

As the last date spun into place, all of a sudden there was a horrendous shriek. The controller writhed in his hand. He tried to drop it, but it was as if the device had fused to his skin--no matter how much he shook his fingers, he couldn't let go.

The ground dropped out from under him, and his screams echoed the machine's. How long it lasted, he couldn't say afterwards. His lungs were frozen and he burned with the need to breathe, to inhale.

The ground spanked his ass hard. The controller dropped from his hand and rolled away, stopping in a pile of dung just in time to avoid getting crushed under a horse's hooves.

"Hey, eejit, get owt o' tee road!" bawled a voice from overhead. Football-sized hooves thudded around him. Carson spun through the dirt and muck until he bumped up against the solid wall of a building. But then that he realized he'd left the time machine sitting in a pile of horse crap.

Of course, he was also now liberally covered in the stuff himself. With a grimace, he darted into the road, grabbed the controller, and headed back to the general safety of the building before he got run over.

Across the street were two-story grey stone houses built into one another like jigsaw pieces. He glanced up from where he was standing and realized he had taken shelter against a cathedral. The building rose several stories up into the air, with a towering clock tower crowned with crenellations and rocket-shaped windows. On the very top of the pointed roof was a cross.

"Great. A cathedral. I wonder if they have a shower," he muttered, edging away from the road. He quickly climbed the steps and went through the carved wooden doors.

Inside was as splendid as the outside--vaulted ceilings, mosaic floors in complex geometric designs, and velvet-cushioned seats. "What's this place?" he asked a man who was standing just inside the doors. The man was wearing a green patterned robe with tassels.

Wow, had clothing styles changed. Carson didn't think he had the figure to pull off that look, so it was a good thing that fashion had progressed.

The man raised eyebrows. "Saint Patrick's Cathedral, sir."

"Saint Patrick's Cathedral? In Dublin?"

"Yes, sir."

"This is where Jonathan Swift is! I love him. Eating babies, man."

The man's eyebrows were nearly to his hairline. "Eating babies, sir?"

Carson waved a hand. "Never mind. Where is he?"

Without a word, the man led him past rows of pews and into a darkened corridor near the back. Down the corridor, then into a small room where a man sat at a desk, dipping a quill into ink. When they entered, the man glanced up.

"I towt I sait not to be disturbed. And who is tis?"

"Begging your pardon, sir," said the robed man.

"I'm Carson," Carson said. "I love your writing."

It was Swift's turn for raised eyebrows. He waved a hand in dismissal, and the other man left the room. As Carson approached the desk, Swift brought a white cloth to his nose – a handkerchief. Carson looked down at himself, remembering his incident with the horses.

"How can I help you, sir?"

"I just came to thank you. I'm from the future." Boy, would David get a kick out of this.

"The future? And what, pray tell, are you tanking me for?"

"Well, the idea about babies. Brilliant. Our main food source."

After an awkward silence, Swift merely repeated, "Babies?"

Carson grinned. "Yeah, your essay, 'A Modest Proposal,' where you suggest that people eat the babies of the poor, because they aren't really contributing to society anyways. Some people thought you were just being satirical, but most of us thought the idea was genius. Babies are great eating, especially with barbecue sauce. Without you, we never would have thought of it."

Laughing at Swift's expression, Carson walked back outside. In the doorway, he nearly tripped over a young girl covered in rags. "Sorry!" he mumbled automatically, then really looked at her. She said nothing, merely held out a well-worn wooden bowl.

Carson patted his pockets. Empty. He glanced down at his wrist and saw his Homer Simpson watch. "Here," he said, unfastening and dropping the watch into her bowl. "I expect that back in the year 2055. Just have one of your descendants bring it to Boston--that's in America--and look up Carson O'Connell. It's magic and will bring you great fortune." Whistling, he went down the rest of the steps.

At the bottom, he turned the dial of the time machine. "The past blows. Okay, now for a look into the future…"

Scream, falling, choking, then the ground punching his ass again.

Wheezing, he sat up. Looked around.

Grass. As far as the eye could see. And trees in the distance.

"What the heck?" He shook the time machine, but the date and place remained fixed. 2500, New York City.

Suddenly, he heard a terrible hooting behind him. Out of the trees streamed a bunch of people… naked.

From their apparent ages and love handles, not a pleasant sight. When they spotted him, they made a terrible outcry, but Carson couldn't understand a word they were saying. But before he had a chance to ask, they ran off.

"That was weird," he said.

The ground rumbled. A group of gorillas sprang out of the forest and came running towards him. They seemed to be wearing clothes. No--monkey suits. Of the black tie variety. And they didn’t look happy.

"Oh oh." Carson tried to move the dial, but it was stuck. He knelt down and pounded the machine on the ground. He glanced up. The gorillas were close enough he could see the whites of their teeth as they roared.

Carson flicked at the dial with his thumb. "Come on, come on," he said, sweating. Without warning, the dial shifted, and dates flew by in an unending stream of numbers and letters. He closed his eyes without looking and pressed the button…

…and the ground smacked him again. He lay there for a moment, groaning, staring up at skyscrapers reaching for the night sky. Their lights twinkled peacefully, and he couldn't tell if he were back to his present time or years ahead or behind. Either way, it seemed gorilla-free. "Must remember pillows next time," he muttered before sitting up.

"There won't be a next time," he heard in bad, Austrian-accented English. He looked up. And up. And sideways a bit, too.

The voice came from a man so stacked he looked like a bodybuilder who snorted steroids the way normal people breathed air. His square face was distorted with a muscly emotion. "I am daking you in for breaking da law," the man said.

Carson held up his hands. "Okay, okay. I get it. You're just doing your job. You a cop?"

"A dime cop," the man said.

"A dime cop? What does… oh, a time cop. Okay. What's the punishment?"

"Depends. You have a permid?"

"A permit. Yes, I do. Wait just a second." Cautiously, Carson lowered his hands and patted his pockets. "It's here somewhere. Just wait a second, I'll get it…" Quickly, he spun the dial on the time machine and pressed the button. "Hasta la vista, bab…" he managed to say before the traveling space stole his breath again.

His apartment materialized around him. He glanced around for a moment, but it seemed the badly accented time cop hadn't followed him.

"Whew," he said, glancing at his clothes. The incinerator would be too kind for them. Too bad, it was his favorite shirt. He put down the controller and went off to take a shower.

Just as he stepped out, the doorbell rang. Carson wrapped a towel around his waist, but spent a moment dithering by the front door. It could be David, come back to laugh at him. It could be the time cop.

Finally, he pulled open the door.

An old woman stood outside. If she appeared surprised by his wet, undressed state, she did well to hide it. "Are you Carson O'Connell?"

"Yes?" he said.

She smiled and tears came to her eyes. "Finally! This has been handed down in my family for generations. Without its magic, my ancestors would've starved. But it brought prosperity and happiness." She reached into her purse and pulled out an item, now scarred and marked by time. "I was told to bring it to this place and this time, or the magic would fail us."

Homer Simpson peered out from beneath the grime and scratches of the beat-up watch face.

He took the timepiece from her trembling hand. "Uh… thanks," he said. She nodded and bobbed her head at him, and he slammed the door before she started tugging on her forelock, too.

The watch had stopped long ago, and he shook it in that futile attempt that all people make when faced with a broken watch. "Cheap piece of trash," he said. He turned and tossed it towards the waste bin. "Score!" He threw his arms up in the air.

Just then, there was another knock on the door, this one quite loud. He turned back around and opened it. "What do you want now--"

"I want to kill you," said the gorilla standing outside. "You have traveled across the Homo-Gorilla temporal border, which is punishable by death." The beast grabbed his arm.

"Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!"

Carson hadn't really thought sounding mean would work, but the gorilla let go of him.

Then it leveled a gun at his chest. By comparison, Carson thought, the paw wasn't so terrible.

The gorilla snarled, "By the power vested in me through the berengei-sapiens time alliance, you are sentenced to have a really bad day--"

Suddenly, the gorilla's hand was empty and the Austrian was there, judo-chopping all over the place. Despite its size, the gorilla was no match for the fury of a thwarted time cop, and it was flat on the ground with the cop cuffing it at lightning speed.

"I'll be back!" the cop yelled over his shoulder as he led the gorilla away.

Carson reached for the time machine. "Not if I have anything to say about it!"

Wham, bam, thank you, ground smacking his ass again.

Carson blinked at him. "Whoooah--what are you doing here?"

"Don't do it, man!" Carson yelled at the earlier version of himself. "It's a world of trouble! Just say no to time travel!"

"But I've always wanted to, ever since I was a kid," Carson argued. "And I got such a deal on this time machine! Only—"

"Nine ninety-nine, ninety-nine," Carson said in unison with his double. "I know. But aside from a few laughs, it's just a big pain in the ass." He got up, adjusted his towel, and rubbed his sore butt. "Literally."

"How do you know?" asked Carson.

"Because I'm you, you idiot!" Carson yelled.

"So what should we do?"

"Do what I do. Hold tight and pretend it's a plan!"

"Just so we're clear…"

Carson rolled his eyes, then reached out to smack the time machine from the earlier Carson's hands. It fell to the floor with a thud. He stomped down on it, hard, and the cheap plastic casing shattered instantly.

"There! Now you can't do it!" he said triumphantly.

"Except what about this one?" said the other Carson, picking up future Carson's controller. Then, "Ew! Is that poop?"

Exasperated, Carson grabbed the other controller and stomped on it, too.

"Dammit," he said, looking at the bottom of his foot. "I just took a shower, too."

"Aren't you supposed to disappear, man?" asked the original him.

Carson felt himself up and down, a process that sounded dirtier than it really was. Well, except for his crap-covered foot. "I have no idea," he said.

Just then, the door crashed open. The time cop stood in the doorframe.

"You're under arrest!" he yelled.

"Me?" said original Carson. "I didn't do anything."

"Then you're under arrest!"

"You can't prove I did anything, either. Look. Two time machines--destroyed. No harm done."

The time cop looked from one of them to the other, then scratched his head. "Vait, vhich vun of you broke da law?"

"Not me," the two of them said in stereo.

"Ah, screw it. I don't get paid enough for this." The man turned around and left. On his way out, he passed a guy coming in.

David.

Carson's friend stopped in the doorway when he saw the two of them standing next to each other. "Dude, what's going on?"

Towel Carson slumped down on the sofa and grabbed the remote. "Whatever you do, don't say 'I told you so.' "

"I told you so," David said automatically, then, "Dude!"

"Now what?" asked original Carson, settling on the other side of the couch from towel Carson.

Carson shrugged and flicked the Yankees-Red Sox game back on. After a second, David sighed and sat down between the two Carsons on the couch. "I could go for a pizza," said David.

"Hey! Me too! Baby and barbecue sauce? With anchovies?"

Towel Carson raised his eyebrows. "Are you kidding me?"

Original Carson shrugged. "Sure, why not?"

"That's gross," said Carson.

"What? It's good." Original Carson tapped the remote against his palm.

"Really?"

Original Carson laughed. "Just messing around with you. No anchovies."

Carson thought for a moment, then laughed. "Dude, you got me!" At a sudden cheer, he looked up at the TV. The Yanks had struck out. "At least one thing hasn't changed. The Yankees suck, no matter what time period I'm in."

David rolled his eyes as original Carson grinned and high-fived his double.

"Amen to that."