0 comments/ 20758 views/ 0 favorites The Time Machine Ch. 01 By: smilodonwriter The Time Machine Voyage One - Going Greek The Professor was quite mad, of course. I believe he was an archetype rather than a stereotype but ‘what the hell, Archie,’ as Mehitabel was wont to say. I met him in the local supermarket. He was pacing the aisles muttering to himself. Now I’m one of these people who can’t help but look at what other folk are buying. It fires my imagination sometimes. You see some little round housewife type with two bottles of gin and a tube of KY jelly hidden among the cornflakes and already you can envisage the party to come. See what I mean? And it never fails to crack me up when I see some crusty old Colonel buying sheer stockings. I bet he’s a wow down at the club! The Professor’s trolley was full of unrelated odds and ends. Bottled water, about a dozen packs of needles, tins of beans, chocolate, fuse wire, frozen fish fingers, a disposable camera in a sickly shade of yellow, athlete’s foot powder and that stuff for sticking your false teeth in so tight you can bite into a crisp apple without the embarrassment of leaving the old gnashers embedded while your gums slap together. If he hadn’t looked like a Mad Professor I would probably have just dismissed as some old fart living on his own. Anyway, to cut a long story shortish, he caught me gawping at him and fixed me with his eye. He had the regulation number of eyes but only one of them seemed inclined to obey him. The other kind of kept wandering off to survey the shelves or the ceiling. It was slightly disconcerting. I don’t know if he thought I was one of the supermarket drones or whether he just thought I might be the type to know because he suddenly lunged towards me. “Where do they keep the rheostats in this place? Can’t find ‘em anywhere!” I was now rapidly forming the opinion that the old boy was off his trolley, despite the fact that he was clearly pushing one. I decided to humour him. “I think they’re between the voltmeters and the pickled cabbage.” He laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. It was the kind of laugh that you hear from someone who isn’t used to finding anything funny. A kind of cross between a rusty gate and a flatulent donkey. “You must think I’m mad,” he said. I didn’t contradict him. He put his liver-spotted hands on his scrawny hips and thrust his wattled chin towards me. He looked like nothing so much as an oven-ready vulture. He was wearing one of those khaki safari shirts on top of a pair of ancient, faded blue shorts that reached just below his knees. Odd, thigh-length socks and Jesus sandals completed the ensemble. No fashion plate, then, our Professor. I could tell he was appraising me with his one ruly eye. Its unruly partner was now carrying out a detailed survey of the inside of his head. “What’s your name, boy?” “Jonathon, although most people call me Jonty.” “Right, Jonty. Do you believe in time travel?” I shrugged. My face must have given me away because he made the farting donkey noise again. “Quite right. Healthy scepticism, that’s what I like to see and that’s just what I need. I have a proposition to put to you, my lad. Meet me in the coffee shop in ten minutes.” I still don’t really know why but I agreed. I finished my shopping – typical bachelor – ready meals, deodorant and several bottles of wine, and made my way to the coffee shop. There was the usual crowd of aged crones sucking the ersatz cream out of sticky buns and mothers with small jam-smeared children that howled when denied another donut. I remembered then why I always avoided the place like a lazaretto. The Professor had grabbed one of the few tables and was sitting waiting for me. He’d even bought me a cup of the unidentified brown fluid that was the speciality of the house. “Right, Jonty. What do you do for a living?” “Not a lot, at present. I used to work for the local radio station.” “Doing what?” “Bits and pieces. It’s not the BBC. You have to turn your hand to anything. I did research, read traffic reports and weather forecasts and stood in when someone was too pissed to show up.” “And why did you leave?” “I was too pissed to stand in for someone who was too pissed to show up. I made the mistake of showing it, though.” “Oh, that was you, was it? You’re the one who invited the Lady Mayoress to show you her tits at the Agricultural Show! Ha, haven’t laughed so much in ages.” I shrugged. One of the perils of live broadcasting with a stand-in presenter who is absolutely mullahed. The pompous old trout had got up my nose but I hadn’t realised that my mike was still live when I muttered: “Shut up, you old bat, and show us yer tits,” in the middle of her toe-curling opening speech. Three thousand odd attendees and all of our dozen listeners heard this little aside. Unfortunately, so did the Mayoress – well, she couldn’t have missed it – and the owner of the station, who just happens to be her husband. It was no good protesting that I wasn’t even supposed to be working that afternoon. I was just wandering around in an alcoholic stupor when the producer grabbed me. “Jonty, Big Mel hasn’t shown again. Get up there now and introduce the dignitaries.” I honestly tried to get out of it. I was almost incoherent anyway, but he wasn’t listening or he couldn’t understand my slobbering attempt at an explanation. Well, that’s history now; and so was I thirty seconds after my last live broadcast. Back to the Professor: “I would like to hire you.” “You what?” “I said, I would like to hire you. Allow me to explain.” And he did. He told me that his name was Professor Gerald Humphreys, formerly Head of Quantum Physics at the local university. He’d retired two years before and had spent the intervening period perfecting a time machine. He’d worked on it for over thirty years and now it was finally ready. He needed an assistant, mainly to act as an objective observer but also to do any heavy donkeywork. I fitted his bill. I was young, fit and pretty well built. I was also a sceptic, which made me ideal. With nothing better to do I agreed. I figured he was potty anyway and I might as well earn a couple of quid as sit around watching daytime TV. We arranged to meet early the following morning. He told me to dress for travelling, whatever that meant, and to be at his place at seven am sharp. We parted company at the door. His last words to me were: “They don’t sell rheostats in supermarkets.” I had nothing to add. I presented myself at the Prof’s pad at seven the next morning, as instructed. He was his usual picture of sartorial elegance clad in a green brocade smoking jacket, threadbare jogging pants and flip-flops. He grabbed my arm with a scrawny claw and dragged me through to his workshop. What little floor space there once had been was taken up by a large silver dome-shaped affair. It looked a bit like one of those Buddhist dagobas you see in the Far East and was emitting a low humming sound that was almost, but not quite, below the human audible range. “Ah, I see you are looking at my Temporal Interface Terminal. Beautiful, isn’t it?” It was certainly unusual. The closer I looked at it, the harder it was to see, somehow. The surface of the machine appeared to swirl in and out of focus leaving me with an impression of what I was looking at, rather than an image. The air in the workshop seemed charged with electricity. I could feel the hair on my forearms standing on end and experienced a weird tingling sensation all over my skin, like ants crawling all over me. “What does it do?” “Exactly what the name suggests, dear boy. It provides an interface – a gateway, if you will – between the present and other parts of the temporal multiverse.” “Multiverse?” “Yes, of course. Schrodinger’s cat, my boy. You don’t seriously imagine that this is the only reality, do you?” “I’ve never been that strong on quantum theory. I just kind of thought that this was it, if you know what I mean.” “Limited intelligence often goes hand-in-hand with limited imagination, Jonty. Don’t concern yourself. You don’t need to understand how or why it works; you need only accept that it does. Once we enter the T.I.T., we are stepping outside this version of reality. We may then choose to journey either forwards, backwards or sideways, as it were.” “Sideways? You mean like to a parallel universe?” “Crudely, yes. There is an almost infinite combination of reality states, each one slightly out of phase with the next. Under normal conditions we are totally unaware of their existence.” “OK then, Professor. What happens when you go back in time? Do you go to back to ‘our’ past or one of these alternates?” “I’m sorry to admit that I really don’t know, my boy. You see, I have done all the laboratory testing but, well, I haven’t actually attempted a full voyage as yet.” “Whoa! Are you saying that you don’t know if this thing works?” “Of course not! It works but I haven’t yet made the maiden voyage, that is all.” “Now hang on a minute. You’re suggesting we climb into that thing, press the tit and hope for the best?” “Crudely put, but essentially accurate.” I was on the verge of backing out of this little game but he grabbed me and propelled towards the machine. There was no door apparent but somehow we kind of glided through the outside and I found myself staring at the strangest ‘room’ I have ever seen. It was a combination of chrome and chintz. A kind of cross between a 1950’s coffee bar and a down-at-heel Victorian country house. Knobs and dials and VDUs were everywhere. Two overstuffed armchairs slouched on a moth-eaten fake Turkish Carpet and one wall was covered in the most tasteless flock wallpaper ever seen outside of an Indian Restaurant. A little posy of flowers sat in a glass jam jar on top of part of what looked like an old mainframe computer, complete with ticking magnetic tape spools. The whole effect made me dizzy. “Fuck a rat! What is this supposed to be?” “Oh, just a few home comforts. I thought it would be less disorienting for you to have a few familiar touches.” “Uh, thanks, Professor. Jesus Henry Christ! It looks like a very bad set design for ‘Doctor Who.’ Are you absolutely sure it works and I’m not going to end up with my head in tomorrow and my todger back in a week last Tuesday?” I’ve always had a real horror of having my atoms scattered about the space/time continuum. He gave his donkey fart laugh again and told me to take a seat while he twisted dials, turned knobs and thumped keyboards. The T.I.T. kind of wobbled and I felt faintly sick. There was none of that reassuring mechanical retching noise you always got with the Tardis and no whistling theme music. In fact, there was no noise at all. Just this gentle wobbly feeling. The sensation seemed to last for a few minutes yet the second hand on my watch registered less than fifteen seconds. The wobbling stopped and the deep hum returned. “Where are we, Professor?” “A more apposite question might be when are we, my boy. Unfortunately, we have a malfunction in the Combined Location In Time array.” “What does that mean in English?” “The C.L.I.T.’s fucked.” “Oh, right. You don’t know where or when we are.” “Approximately, we are somewhere in ancient Greece, sometime around the end of the 7th Century, BC or possibly the beginning of the 6th. I can’t be entirely sure.” “That’s comforting.” “No need for sarcasm, Jonty. We’ll just have to go and see. Do you speak ancient Greek?” “No, sorry, they didn’t teach it my school. We were more into PSE.” “What on earth is that?” “Buggered if I know, Prof, I used to skive off.” “No matter. Take this Compact Universal Neural Translator.” It looked like a Walkman. It was a Walkman, or at least it had been. The battered case still bore the Sony lettering. I shoved the headphones into my ears and turned it on. I got one hell of a shock. Two probes rammed through my eardrums and slammed into my brain. The pain was excruciating. “You cunt!” “I do wish you’d stop using these abbreviations. If you must shorten it, call it ‘the translator,’ if you please.” We made our way outside and I experienced that weird sensation again as we passed ‘through’ the wall of the T.I.T. and into the bright sunshine. I looked around. We were on a low promontory overlooking the proverbial wine-dark sea. Behind us was a neat villa with lime-washed walls. We decided to go and ask the occupants precisely where we were. “Hello, strangers/guests” A slightly built woman with a pile of dark hair was sitting in the garden of the villa. A small girl sat in the dirt by her feet, playing with clay animals.” “Greetings, Lady.” The Professor’s education did extend to ancient Greek, even if he had missed out on PSE. “What a weird accent! Oh, sorry, didn’t mean to be rude.” “My apologies, Lady. I am unfamiliar with your language. Would you be so good as to tell us where the railway station is? No, bugger! Wrong word. Um, what is this place called?” “Which place?” “Where are we?” “Oh! This is the Island of Mytilene, also called Lesvos. Are you shipwrecked, then, to not know where you are?” “In a manner of speaking, Lady. Allow me to present my companion, Jonty. He doesn’t speak your tongue but can understand it, thanks to that C.U.N.T. on his head.” “The what? Forgive me. I am Sappho, wife of Cholon, the Merchant. This is my daughter.” “Sappho? Not THE Sappho, the great lyric poetess?” “I suppose so. Has my fame spread so far, then? I’m honoured.” “Lady, this may be hard for you to understand but we have travelled back here from far in the future. More than two and a half thousand years from now, you will be still famous. So much so that women who, um, prefer women, if you understand my drift, will be known as Lesbians. They will be described as Sapphic, even.” “Oh really. Why?” “Because of your poetry in adoration of women, of course.” Sappho burst out laughing. “You mean to say, people will think I fancy other girls?” “Yes, of course.” “How hysterical!” “Hysterical, but why?” “Code, sir, code! I have to put women’s name in the verses so that old goat I’m married to doesn’t catch on. Mind you, there have been times when I’ve resorted to a bit of sisterly affection with one of my pals, but that was when we spent a year in Thebes. Have you ever been there? It’s a dreadful place, full of Nancy boys. A red-blooded girl can’t get herself laid if she stands naked in the agora. No, they’ve got the wrong island entirely. It’s Naxos you want for the rug-munchers.” “I think that news is going to burst a bubble or two, Prof.” “What did he say? Oh, never mind. If he doesn’t speak the language he can’t tell, can he? Do you mind looking after the brat for a bit, Prof, is it? Strange name. I like the look of young Jonty. Are you sure he can understand me? Hey, Jonty, I’m horny as bitch in heat, d’you fancy a quick tumble before Cholon gets back?” I will draw a veil over what happened next. Suffice it to say my mother taught me never to refuse a polite request from a lady. Sappho was a gracious hostess in more ways than one. Her slaves brought us lunch, goat’s cheese, bread, olives and wine. The Professor made some quick calculations and decided that we’d missed his target, which turned out to be Athens, circa 390BC, by about 230 years and a few hundred miles. He considered this wasn’t too bad in the circumstances. I said I didn’t mind where we went as long it wasn’t Thebes. Sappho assured me I would be equally popular there, which wasn’t the best news I’d heard that day. After lunch we took our leave of the fair Sappho. The Professor looked on enviously as she hurled herself against me and tried to probe my tonsils with her tongue while her hands did delicious things inside my jeans. I was just about to ask for a re-match when the Prof grabbed me and pushed me bodily back inside the T.I.T.. “Where to now, Prof?” “Athens, my boy. The cultural epicentre of classical civilisation.” “Fair enough.” The wobbling started again and, this time, lasted only for the time it takes to draw breath. Then we were outside again. “Spot on, my boy. Now all we need to do is find Socrates.” “Oh, him. All right, then let’s go.” We found the great philosopher without difficulty. He was sitting in a shady spot at the edge of the agora, a bunch of young guys at his feet. I could hear him talking as we approached deferentially: “So the actress said to the High Priest, ‘I’m not sure what you’re doing with that sheep, but it doesn’t look like much of a sacrifice!’ Ha ha!” The young men around him fell about laughing. We had obviously just arrived while they were on their break. The old man looked up at us and said: “What are you two gawping at? Fuck off!” “Pardon me , sir, but are you Socrates, the world’s greatest philosopher?” For some reason this had everyone in stitches all over again. “Philosopher? What the fuck’s one of them? I’m Socrates all right and you’re interrupting the matinee performance. Now sit down and shut up or fuck off out the way, you’re putting me off. And, Zeus! Where did you learn to speak Greek, in an Egyptian knocking shop?” “My apologies, sir, I appear to have got the wrong Socrates. Can you tell me where I might find the other one, the great philosopher?” “Someone’s been pulling your plonker, stranger. I’m the only Socrates in Athens and I’m a stand-up comic. Now bugger off, if you don’t mind, I’m trying to do a gig.” “But I don’t understand. You are renowned throughout the world as a great teacher and scholar. Plato wrote of you!” “Oh, that explains it. Plato, you young bastard, have you been taking the piss again?” A thickset, spotty youth peered guiltily at the great man from the back row. “Sorry, boss. I was only having a laugh.” “Not at my expense, shagnasty. Looks like I’ve got a vacancy for an apprentice. On your chariot, matey, and take these two barbarians with you.” We walked away with a disconsolate Plato. The Professor was shaking head, a man clearly in a state of shock. Plato kicked the cobbles and mumbled to himself, something about the old git having no sense of humour. The Prof turned to Plato. “Why did you do it? How could you write such things about that horrid old man?” “The old bastard was asking for it. Anyway, all I said was that he asked questions about the human condition. I didn’t really want to be a comic. What I really want to do is be a critic, write reviews of the other acts. It’s so hard to think up original material and I don’t want to do what he does – nick other people’s best jokes and re-work them. My dad’s going to kill me, getting fired again.” We made our way back to the T.I.T. in silence. The Prof set the controls for home and the wobbling lasted longer. I was mighty grateful to see that we were back in the Prof’s workshop as we staggered out of the T.I.T one final time. “Sappho, well I could vaguely understand, Jonty, but Socrates! How could the world be so wrong about him?” “I think I can explain, Prof. You said you didn’t know whether we would go back to ‘our’ past or some other parallel universe. Well, now I believe we know the answer.” “Great Scott, boy! Of course. Now why didn’t I think of that? That explains everything. I can see that you are going to be a really valuable assistant. Same time tomorrow?” “Suits me, Prof.” But, of course, that’s another story… The Time Machine Ch. 02 The Time Machine Voyage Two – Roman in the Gloamin’ Cleopatra was a chubby little tart with something of a moustache. She had a single eyebrow that seemed to be crawling across her forehead like a demented millipede and a bloody great nose. In short, she was the kind only a brother could love – but that was the Ptolemys all over. Yes, you’ve guessed it: the Prof and I were at it again. We spent a few days working on the Temporal Interface Terminal - T.I.T. for short. Well to be honest, the Prof did all the real work – I just supplied the muscle. I might not be very clever but I’m good at lifting things. He fiddled about with coils and inductors and I humped large metal objects back and forth and endured a stream of sarcasm. It came as quite a relief when he pronounced himself satisfied. “Well, Jonty, my boy, I think we’re ready. The Q.U.I.M. appears to be functioning perfectly.” “Quim?” “Quantum Universe Indicator Matrix. It will tell us if we stay in this branch of the continuum or go elsewhere. Look here, I’ve calibrated it so this universe is number one. The one where we met that odious version of Socrates is provisionally number two, although the Q.U.I.M will eventually determine its true relationship to the baseline.” “But how many are there?” “Oh, infinity minus one, I should hazard a guess, but I could be wrong.” I have trouble getting my head around numbers as big as my bank overdraft so I just looked suitably impressed – or tried to. The old Prof squinted down his nose me and inquired if I was suffering from a bad case of gas. There’s no pleasing some people. Anyway, I duly presented myself at the Prof’s pad the following day. The mad old bastard had surpassed himself in the sartorial stakes yet again. He was wearing a wretched polyester safari jacket in a shade that I can only describe as dog-shit brown. Actually ‘wearing’ doesn’t quite cover it. It was several sizes too large so he was more walking around inside it. The shoulders of the jacket seemed to change direction a few moments after he did. It gave the impression that his head could perform 360-degree rotations – like he’d just escaped from the set of The Exorcist. I was expecting projectile vomiting at any second – on my part! It was the bilious yellow Lycra cycling shorts that did it. With his skinny little legs, he looked like a variegated turd on stilts. I won’t even mention the sandals with socks. “OK, Boss, where’re we going this time?” “Ancient Egypt, Jonty. I have a mind to establish once and for all precisely how the Pyramids were built.” Who was I to argue? He screwed that damned C.U.N.T. (Compact Universal Neural Translator) into my ear again and we entered the T.I.T. as before. I eased myself into one of the over-stuffed armchairs and leapt out again with a yelp. “Whatever is the matter you with now, Jonty? If I had known you were going to be such a fidget I would never have taken you on.” I didn’t say a word but gave him a very pointed look as I removed eight inches of rusty upholstery spring from my posterior. “Well I’m buggered!” “No Prof, I am.” The T.I.T wobbled and I felt that now-familiar nausea. The Prof was working like a one-armed paperhanger as he dashed from one side of the control console to the other. I sat back and watched him - from a different armchair. There was a strange moment when the T.I.T seemed to bounce suddenly and then everything returned to normal. The Prof stared angrily at a blank VDU and then smashed his palm down hard on the top of it. Some fuzzy writing emerged, flickered briefly, blazed brightly for a nanosecond and then disappeared leaving a blue screen on which the words ‘Windows general protection fault, press any key to continue,’ appeared. “Bollocks, balls and balderdash! The C.L.I.T.’s still playing up.” “Come again?” “The Combined Location In Time array. I set it for the time of Cheops and when do we go? Bloody Ptolemaic Dynasty, that’s all. It really is too bad, Jonty. Bloody Microsoft!” “Oh, come on, Prof. You surely can’t blame Bill Gates for this one?” “Of course I can. I wrote the programme using all the redundant bits from Windows 98. Bloody thing has never worked properly.” “That’s what you get for using Princess Di software.” “Princess Di?” “Yeah, you know, consumes masses of resources and very prone to crashing.” “Jonty, sometimes I find your taste very questionable indeed.” I didn’t mention the Lycra shorts. Unless your idea of meat and two veg is a cocktail sausage and a couple of frozen peas… We stepped out of the T.I.T. into blazing sunshine. My ears were assaulted by a babble of voices; peddlers, pimps, drunks, curses, laughter, threats – you know, the kind of thing you can hear any Saturday night in the West End. Except this was Egypt around 46 BC. I like it when we go BC – it makes me feel less of a heathen if JC hasn’t been born yet. What the locals made of us I hate to think. How would you feel if a silvery dome suddenly materialised in the middle of your used donkey lot and two strangely dressed apparitions just lurched out of the walls? The citizens of Alexandria reacted in the predictable way of big city folk at any time or place. They ignored us, stepping out of our way with a slight shrug as if we were just another pile of camel poo on the pavement to be avoided. Not so the local goon squad. Policemen everywhere must take ugly pills along with lessons on how to be obnoxious and aggressive without raising a sweat. I felt like an ethnic minority. Before you could say ‘knife’ we were taken down town and banged up in a cell with an evil looking goat molester and a confused menopausal Alexandrian housewife who’d been caught stall-lifting in the local bazaar. The professor was trying to make his protests in what, he assured me was ancient Egyptian but wasn’t getting very far. I haven’t had too many brushes with the Long Arm of the Law but even I know that saying “ Oi, monkey-cunt! We got rights. My grandmother was a hippopotamus God while yours wore army boots,” isn’t going to exactly endear you to the local fuzz. The Prof assured me that what he actually meant to say was that we were very important people and should be taken to see someone in authority. It was fortunate that the locals could barely understand his accent and contented themselves with giving us a good kicking - I’d have hated the Prof to have made them angry. We spent a sleepless night getting acquainted with the resident micro-fauna – fleas, to the likes of you and me – before being dragged up before the Beak next morning. He turned out to be a decent sort and suspended the sentence of castration with a rusty razor. Fortunately he was Greek so we didn’t have any trouble making ourselves understood. Apparently the charge was ‘making the place look untidy,’ they obviously had the same reaction to the Prof’s outfit as I did. The Magistrate must have thought we were vastly amusing and he sent us up to the palace to entertain some visiting bigwigs. The Prof was going to protest until I reminded him of the alternative by stomping hard on his besocked foot. We hung around in an anteroom for a while. The Prof made a big deal of studying the murals while I ogled a couple of serving girls. It was very frustrating not being able to chat them up. The C.U.N.T only allowed me to understand what was said, not to speak anything other than my native English, although the Prof disputes that I do that with any fluency. I was getting on OK. I had at least, by dint of sign language of the ‘me Tarzan, you Jane’ variety, established that one was called Charmione and the other Iras. I was trying to work up the courage to ask the Prof what the Greek was for ‘fancy a shag, darling?’ when we were summoned to the presence. I’ve already told you my first impressions of old Cleo. The others present were obviously Romans and the Prof became ecstatic, rattling away in Latin and having a right good laugh. I’ll say one thing for Cleo, she was a bright lass. She told the Prof she was fluent in nine languages, which put his snout out of joint a bit, as he could only muster eight. The Prof jauntily dismissed me as his body-servant. I couldn’t let that go. “I’ve never served your fucking body in my life and well you know it!” “What did he say, Magus? What language was that – if such a barbaric tongue can even be called a language?” “Ah, that was British, Your Majesty. A small Island off the coast of Gaul.” One of the Romans piped up: “Ooh, I’ve been there. Horrible place, wet and cold and they all paint themselves blue. You there! Why aren’t you painted blue?” “I know who you are, bastard. You’re Julius bloody Caesar. You’re the one who called us weeny, weedy and weaky.” You can see I know my History. The Prof looked exasperated. “He was speaking Latin, Jonty. Vini, vidi vici. It means, ‘I came, I saw, I conquered.’ Really, your ignorance is truly appalling at times.” He turned to apologise to Caesar but the bald old bastard was grinning happily and nodding his head. On the strength of that, we got invited to dinner. I ended up sitting next to a bloke called Marcus Antonius who was a right laugh. He drank like a fish and kept up a ribald commentary on his Boss and Cleo, whom he thought was a real fright. I thought it was pretty rich, knowing what was in store for him in few years! Still, I dredged around in my memory and found a couple of words of Latin that had been left there from some book I once read. I tried them out on him. “Canis major, Tone, don’t you think?” He fell about laughing and had to be helped back onto his couch by a couple of Nubian slave girls. He took his time over it. He then bellowed to all his Roman mates that I thought the Queen was a big old dog and they all fell off their couches. The ones served by the eunuchs got back on pretty quick; can’t say as I blame them for that, though. Old Tone then regaled me with a blow-by-blow account – and I do mean blow-by-blow - of his erotic progress through the Roman Empire and expounded the theory that world domination was only an excuse to get to try out loads of exotic pussy. He was modest enough to admit that if it had been up to him, he’d probably have stopped at the German border – all those hairy armpits kind of turned him off. “What’s the totty like in Britannia, then Jonty?” I gave him the thumbs up and sketched a shapely figure in the air. He gave me a wolfish grin. Our Tone was something of a sex maniac, it seemed. “Still, how do you find it if they’re all painted blue?” I shook my head and pointed at my own unpainted flesh. “Old Caesar’s telling porkies again, then, is he?” I nodded. A bloke called Brutus looked sharply interested for a moment or two and then went back to brooding, as he had been doing all evening. Tone took another gallon of wine from a passing slave and grinned at me. “Well, we’re all off for a nice cruise up the Nile tomorrow with his nibs and the Queen. From what I heard, you and your master will be joining us.” The rest of the evening passed in an alcoholic haze. I had to be carried to my bed by a couple of hefty slaves and don’t remember much else. I was awoken by the Prof at the crack of sparrow-fart. I could tell the old boy was really excited. My head was thumping and my mouth felt like the crotch-piece of an Arab’s underpants so I wasn’t in the mood. “Jonty, my boy, don’t you see? This is the chance of a lifetime!” “Gerroff! Oh fuck! My head hurts. Prof, do something useful and fetch me a priest. The last rites are in order.” “Serves you right. I never indulge in strong liquor and look at me today.” I gazed at the double image of the Prof that swam in out of focus in my bleary vision. At that point it became necessary to park my custard in a convenient lay-by. When I finished throwing up I felt marginally better than spoonfuls of warmed-over death but totally unprepared for a romantic cruise with the bald bullyboy and his big-nosed trollop. Mark Antony looked even worse that I felt and even Brutus was a little tattered around the edges. We boarded the royal barge and set sail, if one can still sail in a bloody great rowing boat, up the Nile. Caesar and Cleo were hidden away in a pavilion at the stern. The rest of us lay about on the decks. Only the Prof was still full of piss and vinegar and he kept up a running commentary on everything and everyone we saw. Eventually, old Tone had enough of the Prof’s ramblings and offered to help him lose twenty pounds of ugly fat instantly – by cutting the old wind-bag’s head off. Silence returned and I fell asleep. I woke to the sound of leather thwacking into flesh and a recurring pain in my ribs. Someone was kicking me in the side and demanding that I get up as it was ‘time for the show.’ There stood one of Caesar’s henchmen glaring at me like I was something he just scraped off his boot and was none too thrilled about it. The Prof was already up and looking as happy as the man who killed his father. I struggled to my feet and shambled over to him. “What gives, Prof?” “Jonty, my boy, I hardly know how to tell you this but they seem to believe we are some variety of mountebanks and insist that we perform for the Queen and Caesar. I really don’t know where to begin.” “Leave it to me, Prof. You just translate what I say. I’ve had to do a bit of stand-up in my time.” Precisely three minutes and fourteen seconds later there were two hefty splashes in the Nile. I think it was the one about ‘what do you do if your husband has a fit in the bath? – Throw the washing in and save on the electricity.’ Of course, it could have been the Prof’s translation, because that one normally goes down a storm in the Pub. Anyway, how was I to know that Caesar was epileptic? I towed the old boy to the bank before the crocodiles could get indigestion and we squelched our way back to Alexandria. He belaboured me all the way for my ‘execrable taste and shoddy humour.’ I took it as a compliment – at least I was better than Socrates. We made it back to the T.I.T. ahead of the Alexandrian goon squad and that familiar stomach-churning wobble began and then all the lights went out. The T.I.T. bounced and the Prof and I were flung around like a couple of rag dolls on speed. We came to a stop with a pronounced thump. I had ended up in the corner with the Prof on top of me, his arse on my face, which, by the way, is not a fate I would wish on my worst enemy! I heaved the old boy off and staggered to my feet. There was smell of burning and a faint trail of blue smoke was coming from one of the panels. “Oh dear, oh dear, Jonty, my boy. I fear we are, to use a highly technical term, in deep shit.” I could only agree. The T.I.T. had taken on a drunken angle and seemed to sag. The Prof fiddled around in one corner and emergency lights flickered into life. There wasn’t much I could do but rearrange the furniture as the Prof started ripping open panels and poking about with a voltmeter as he tested the circuits. He gave a cry of triumph and leapt back. He was dangling a newly fried rat by its tail. “Here’s the culprit! Little sod chewed through the insulation. Nothing I can’t fix.” “But, Prof, if I might make so bold as to ask, where and when the fuck are we?” “Haven’t a clue, old boy! But first things first, what?” He stripped away the melted wiring and replaced the worst of it. I’ll give the old boy credit; he could work quickly when he wanted to. Twenty minutes later, power was restored and he moved to the keyboard. “By God! There’s a slice of luck, Jonty, we’re in Rome. If I remember my history aright, Caligula is the Emperor.” “If I remember my movies aright, Prof, he was nasty little bastard who either screwed you or killed you and sometimes did both.” “Oh, pish and tosh, my boy. I’m sure his reputation was grossly exaggerated by his political enemies.” We staggered out of the T.I.T. into another world. We must have arrived at the imperial palace smack on orgy time. All around I could see heaps of naked bodies. The place stank of spilt wine and overpowering cheap perfume. There was also a strong smell of fish. Nobody paid the blindest bit of notice to the two strange figures that suddenly materialised in their midst. Nobody, that is, apart from a spotty looking individual in a purple robe with a golden laurel crown sitting somewhat askew on his low forehead. He looked like the worst kind of teenager – all pimples and attitude. He muttered something to a couple of armoured bruisers and the next thing we knew we were thrown at his feet. He was obviously drunk and he’d spilt half his dinner down the front of his robe. Somehow, he reminded me of the Prof. “Who the fuck are you? Assassins, eh, come to murder the emperor?” The Prof started rattling away in Latin. It was obvious that the possibility of time-travel hadn’t yet occurred to the world’s greatest empire. The spotty little lunatic looked at us as if we were barking mad. I suppose, in the Prof’s case, he had a point. The Prof gave up on the complicated stuff and settled for telling young pizza-face that we had come from Britain. “Liar! Great-great-uncle Julius went to Britain and he said you all painted yourselves blue. You’re not blue, are you?” “Um, we’ve rather given up on the technicolour skin, Your Excellency.” “I think you’re more of those bastard Christians. They all smile and grovel all the time. Well, I just so happens they have a few vacancies on their team for the next games. What’s their record this season, Bilius?” “Played six, lost six, sir.” “And how are the Lions doing?” “Top of the league sir, played six, won six.” “There, I told you the Christians could do with a bigger squad.” The little shit was starting to amuse me and before I could stop myself I burst out laughing. Caligula turned his watery gaze on me. “What’s so funny?” “Prof, please translate for me. It’s like this, your nibs, I am not and have never been a Christian and I certainly wouldn’t be any good against the Lions. If I get anywhere near cats I start to sneeze and break out in a rash.” The Prof faithfully translated my words and Caligula seemed to ponder what I’d said but it could be he just went vacant. Bilius, the head guard expressed his sympathy, he was allergic to cats too and also added that the lions stank something awful. Caligula’s face suddenly lit up and a mad grin stretched across his spotty features: “How about bears? Bilius, don’t we have some bears?” “Uh, no, Excellency. If you remember, that little Greek quack told you that bears’ pizzles were a potent aphrodisiac and, well, they didn’t survive the donor experience.” “Bugger. Well I can’t him have sneezing and scratching himself all over the arena, it would make me a laughing stock. Haven’t we got any thing else?” “We did have some wild horses, Excellency, but unfortunately, uh, let’s just say that your experiments to cross them with lions weren’t a complete success.” “Oh, what a pity! I like horses.” The emperor fixed his gaze on me once again: “D’you know, I made my favourite nag a senator?” “I think I heard that, Your Worship, I bet he always voted neigh.” This seemed to crack Bilius up. “Ha ha, do you get it? Voted neigh, oh that’s good.” Caligula rolled his eyes. He did that rather too well for my liking. “Oh well, allergies or not, it will have to be the lions.” So it was that I found myself armed with an oversize dinner fork standing about in the middle of the arena with a bunch of sorry-looking individuals all awaiting our fate. Even a tumble with Cleopatra was looking appealing by comparison. The other victims were supposed to be Christians but after exchanging a few words with them, it soon became clear that they were nothing of the sort. The Time Machine Ch. 02 “It’s that mad bastard Caligula,” one told us. “All the bloody Christians moved out years ago but he wants to keep the league going so the bloody Lions can win the series again. Anyone he doesn’t fancy ends up here on the Christians’ team. It’s so humiliating!” Just then, there was a huge roar from the crowd and I didn’t have to look round to know the lions had made their entrance. But I looked round anyway. Five large dun-coloured beasts were making their way into the arena. They didn’t prowl, they didn’t bound; they minced. I tell you no lies, those lions wafted into the place in a sort of limp-pawed way that would have made me laugh out loud if I hadn’t been the first course on their menu. As they got closer, I became aware of something very odd indeed. They looked distinctly moth-eaten and really quite un-feline. The biggest of them approached me and I gesticulated with my dinner fork. “Oooh, you’re the butch one! Look at this one, Hideus. Don’t wave your thing at me like that, ducky.” My chin hit my chest. It’s not everyday that you get spoken to by a lion but a camp lion? Incredible. “Oh, I know! They haven’t let you on the secret have they, sweetie? The real lions disappeared years ago. The Emperor’s bodyguard, Bilius sold them to a travelling circus from Barnum. Old ‘Little Boots’ up there is as blind as a bat and can’t see anything more than a couple of paces away from the end of his big nose. So we got rounded up to stand in for the big pussies. He doesn’t know the difference” “What?” “Oh, yes, it’s quite true. Me and Hideus and the rest of the girls were on our way to a Saturnalia fancy dress when we got grabbed by the beast-master. Didn’t we, Hideus?” There was a grunt of acknowledgement from the lion’s back end. “Hideus is sooooo lucky! He always gets to be at the back. Anyway, don’t you be a silly girl and watch what you’re doing with that trident. All you have to do is scream in pain and panic when Hideus and I jump on you. The beast-master’s assistants will come and drag you away to the dressing rooms and the Emperor will go home to his supper feeling lovely all over.” I didn’t have to simulate my screams of panic as the ‘lion’ jumped on me. Hideus and his mate were altogether too free with their paws for my liking. I don’t like being groped in public at the best of times but by a gay pantomime lion? Leave it out, Guv! I took extreme care not to drop the soap in the showers afterwards, I can tell you. As it happened, the gay lions turned out to be decent enough blokes and they helped us scurry back to the T.I.T as soon as it was dark. Another orgy was in full swing as we crept from pillar to pillar across the palace. The head guard, Bilius, spotted us and went white to the roots of his hair. He shot over towards us flapping his arms like he was trying to pre-date the Wright Brothers by a couple of thousand years. “What are you two doing here? If the Emperor sees you, he’ll have my guts for a toga!” I got the Prof to translate for me. “We won’t give away your little scam if you help us get into that machine we arrived in.” Bilius looked pissed off but agreed and we were back inside the T.I.T before you could say ‘Circus Maximus.’ The Prof, still badly shaken by his first ever encounter with the Roman counter-culture, whizzed around like a demented horsefly and before I had even had time to fasten my seatbelt, the T.I.T. gave its familiar lurch and wobble. The old boy was still a bit green about the gills when we stumbled out into his workshop. “Well, Jonty my boy, we made it home!” “That we did, Prof. Have you had enough adventures now?” “Oh, I think not. We might, perhaps, leave the ancient world to its own devices for a spell, though, what?” “Suits me, Prof. By the way, which continuum was that little lot in?” The Prof consulted the read out on the Q.U.I.M. “Bless my soul, Jonty. We stayed in our own reality all the time.” “So you mean, the Christians never really got thrown to the Lions, then?” “Black propaganda, Jonty, or so it seems.” “Same time tomorrow, Prof?” “Of course, my boy. I’ve a mind to see the New World.” I suppressed a groan as, like Elvis, I left the building.