Enter the Becker
by Matthew Atanian
©2000 by Matthew Atanian
by Matthew Atanian
©2000 by Matthew Atanian
Jon Becker was walking down the road minding his own business, listening to a new CD he’d gotten for Christmas. It was a PlayStation game he’d gotten from Matt Swett. What he was listening to would sound to most people like that annoying loud screech that you get when you put any kind of computer CD into an audio CD player… but to Becker it sounded like sweet, sweet music.
Cars careened wildly by honking their horns madly as they swerved like mad to avoid hitting the young man. Becker, who was still walking down the road (Did we mention that he was walking down the road, and not down the side of the road?) noticed none of this. His eyes were closed so that he could concentrate on his music without visual distraction.
He felt a whoosh of a fast moving object going closely by him and he opened his eyes to see what it was. His next words were not at all polite, and were in fact of a type that would be most offensive to sensitive readers, as he noticed a car heading right for him.
He leapt out of the way, most annoyed when his sudden movement caused his player to skip, and came to a halt near a rather ordinary looking house. A flash of movement in the house’s doorway caught his attention, but when he looked he saw nothing there.
He then noticed two bicycles down the road riding away, and was somewhat surprised to recognize the riders as Kirstin Porter and Matt Atanian. He was about to call out to them, but they turned a corner and disappeared.
He looked back at the house.
It was perfectly average looking in every respect, except that the yard seemed a little too neat… but still something about it intrigued him.
Kenny smiled as he recalled the day’s events thus far. It had been a rather interesting one. Most productive.
The device had worked as well as could be expected, and with some minor adjustments the remote control would be able to function flawlessly. No more random jumps.
The only thing he still needed to work on was a better power source. After all, they had almost been killed when they were stuck on the Red Dwarf. What could he possibly do to prevent that?
He had an idea. He took out the remote and pressed a button. A few minutes later, the Macross Valkyrie had reformed before him. As soon as it had solidified, he was inside it, examining its power source.
“This is perfect!” he exclaimed. If he’d been a lesser person, he’d be drooling with delight. “A few modifications to this design and I can integrate it into the remote’s existing configuration with little difficulty! Now, where did I put that hydrospanner?”
“Is this it?”
“Yes, thank you…WHAT!?!” Kenny spun around in alarm, surprised to not be alone.
Jon Becker stood there, looking somewhat forlornly at the headphones grasped in one hand. The magnetic field present in the Laboratory of course renders ordinary portable audio equipment non-functional.
“Mr. Becker,” Kenny said, confused. “May I ask how you got in here?” There was no malice in the question, just concern. After all, Kenny had thought his Laboratory impenetrable to unauthorized persons.
“The door was open.”
“It was?”
“It was.”
“Now you mean the front door, of course. But how did you open the door to the stairway?”
“It was open.”
“It was?”
“It was.”
This is not supposed to be someplace you can just walk into… Kenny brooded. Oh well, as long as he’s here…
“Welcome,” he said,“to my Laboratory!”
“Yeah,” Becker said, semi-impressed. “Nice place.”
Nice place? Kenny thought. The most advanced scientific Laboratory on the planet, full of wonders that most people couldn’t even begin to fathom, and he says “nice place”?
Kenny smiled thinly.
“So what do you think?” Kenny asked.
“Cool. Hey, a Robotech plane! Can I have one?”
“No.”
“How ‘bout that Stargate?”
“No.”
“What about that over there? What’s that?”
Kenny smiled as he looked at the shape under the large sheet. “Ah, that is something I’d been working on for some time. It’s actually near completion. I was going to do some tests on it later today.”
The two walked towards it as Kenny spoke. Kenny pushed a button on a nearby panel and the sheet rose up to reveal…
“Isn’t that an Edsel?” Becker asked.
Indeed, it was a 1958 Edsel Pacer 2-door convertible, banana yellow in colour, the chrome on it shining like new.
“It is more than just an Edsel. It is… a time machine!”
“You made a time machine out of an Edsel?”
“Yeah, well,” Kenny mumbled, “I originally wanted to use a Delorian, but then I heard someone had already used that idea.”
Becker noticed something odd on the back of the car, where the trunk would normally be.“What’s that?” he asked. “Some kind of weird fusion device that you can put even normal garbage in and get an unlimited supply of power?”
“No,” Kenny said.“That is a blender. I thought it’d look cool there.”
“Oh…” Becker said.
Kenny had an idea.“You know,” he said, “The test would go a lot better if I had a human subject.”
Most people would probably refuse. Who in their right mind would want to be a human guinea pig in a crazy time-travel experiment in a completely untested machine? Fortunately for Kenny, like most of the rest of Troop 192, Jon Becker was not in the right mind.
“Sure!” he said with a stupid little grin on his face.
“Excellent,” Kenny responded, tapping his fingers together, in an unintentional but perfect imitation of Montgomery Burns. A thought then occurred to him. “Um… do you know how to drive?”
Becker smiled an innocent smile as he climbed in and buckled his seatbelt. “Of course not,” he answered.
Kenny despairingly rested his forehead in the palm of his hand for a moment. “Hold on, I’ll be right back.” He walked off, only to reappear a moment later with a syringe. It was not a terribly small one. In fact, it looked like one you might use on a horse.
“Um… what are you going to do with that?” Becker asked.
Kenny pulled a pair of headphones out of a pocket and tossed them into the car. Becker’s eyes lit up like the star on the top of a Christmas tree as he lunged after them. His back was turned to Kenny when he felt a sharp pain in his spine.
“God damn it!” Becker exclaimed.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Becker,” Kenny said.
“You’d better be sorry!” Becker held up the headphones that a moment ago had been in flight.“These aren’t connected to anything! That’s a dirty trick! Oh, and by the way, did you just happen to stab me in the back with a rather large syringe?”
“Um, yes,” Kenny said.
“May I ask what for?”
“What does it mean when there’s a double yellow line in the middle of the road, one side solid and the other broken?”
“The cars on the side with the broken line can pass if it is safe to do so.”
“Which peddle is the gas?”
“That one,” Becker said, pointing.
“True or false: if you are sliding on the road you should immediately hit your brakes.”
“False. Hey, I know how to drive!”
“Yes,” Kenny said, smiling. “You do.” He leaned into the car. “I think for our first trip we should try something small. Say, back five hours? You flick this switch,” Kenny flicked the indicated switch, ”to activate the temporal circuits. When the temporal circuits are activated, propelling the car to speeds equal to or in excess of forty-two miles per hour will activate the temporal warp. The warp itself should seem instantaneous to you, and you’ll be a five hours in the past. Take this.”
Becker took what looked like a walkie-talkie from Kenny. “What good will this do?”
“This is a trans-temporal communications device. We can keep in contact with this. Any other questions?”
Becker looked around the lab, which was immense but rather cluttered. “How am I supposed to get up to 42mph in here?”
Kenny walked over to a control console and pushed a button. The Edsel began to rotate, apparently on a turntable flush with the floor. The car came to a stop facing a wall. With the push of another button by Kenny, a large section of the wall raised up to reveal a long, paved track.
“Ah,” Becker said.
“Ready?” Kenny asked.
“Ready,” Becker responded, pulling the door shut.
Becker’s foot hit the gas peddle, and the car sped off down the track. The speedometer rose quickly, passing 40, and then 41, and then…
There was a bright flash and Becker hit the brakes. He looked around.
“Huh,” he said, getting out of the car, “nothing’s changed.”
He turned around, looking back the way he’d come.
The large section of wall was down over the far end of the track where he’d first entered.
“That’s odd,” Becker said. “He must have closed it for some reason after I went through.”
He made his way back to the wall, concerned how he was going to get through. He was relieved to see a small door in the wall when he got there which he made use of.
He re-entered the lab and found there was no one there. “Kenny!?” he shouted. “Where’d you go?”
He heard a noise. It was coming from the direction of that Stargate he’d seen earlier. He walked over to it and was surprised to see Bill Hughes slumped unconscious over a control panel.
“What the… Hughes?”Becker responded. His fellow Scout reeked of an odd smell… like orange juice and alcohol. Hughes made no response to Becker’s inquiries.
Suddenly the Stargate burst to life. The vortex opened on it and Becker dove for cover, hiding behind a large sheet covering something car shaped.
When the vortex was fully formed, three figures leapt from it. The first through was Kirstin Porter, followed closely by Matty Hayes and Kenny. Becker noticed a squirrel in Matty’s hands and some clothes (including a dirty red Troop 192 hat) that Kirstin carried.
“We did it!” Kirstin exclaimed, excited. “We’re home!”
Hughes stirred and slowly rose from where he had been slumped unconscious. He rubbed his head gingerly. “I miss anything exciting?” he asked.
The squirrel chittered something and held up his small dry-erase sign. On it was written, “Go back to sleep, Hick Boy.”
Hughes obliged.
A half hour later, Matty had disapeared but now Matt was there, Mike had seemingly arrived with him, and Hughes had returned to being sober.
“Thank you for coming, all of you,” Kenny told them in the still quiet but more confident voice he used in his Laboratory.
“Aagh, do you have to yell so loud?” Hughes asked, clutching his throbbing head.
“Oh, come on,” Matt said to Hughes, dragging him along.
“And don’t worry,”Kirstin called out as they left, “we won’t tell anyone about this. Your secret is safe.”
A few minutes later a voice came through Becker’s walkie-talkie. “Mr. Becker, are you there? Did you live through the time-transfer?”
Becker spoke through the walkie-talkie. “Time transfer? I’m right where I started. I didn’t go anywhere. And how did you do that?” Becker asked. He was looking over at Kenny as he spoke. “How do you talk through this thing to me when I don’t see your lips moving, and you don’t even have your walkie-talkie?”
“That’s not me you’re looking at. That’s me a few hours ago. Of course you didn’t go anywhere, you went anywhen.”
Becker regarded the sheet covered object he was hiding behind. He peaked under the sheet and discovered a 1958 Edsel Pacer 2-door convertible under it.
He scratched his head.
“Oh,” he said. “I get it.”
Deep in his underground lair, the genius sat. He was looking at his chronometric disturbance indicator. It was still fluctuating a bit. A little over a half hour ago, it had gone off the scale.
He turned around and regarded the invention he had been working on. To the average person, it would appear to be simply a 1976 Ford Pinto. But to him… it was a masterpiece. Or at least, it would be if he could ever get the one crucial circuit in the temporal flux generator to function properly…
“Blast eet,” he exclaimed, his voice in an indeterminate and probably fake accent. “Zomeone haz beeten me to it! But at lazt, I may have foound myzelf a worthy opponent!”
“So I shouldn’t try to talk to you?”
“No, for Sagan’s sake!” Kenny said over the walkie-talkie. “Do you want to cause a temporal paradox?”
“Is that bad?”
“Well, best case scenario, the past me gets very confused.”
“That’s not so bad.”
“Worst case is the end of Everything.”
“The end of headphones?”
“Are headphones part of Everything?”
“Um… yes?”
“Then yes.”
“That’s bad. So… um, what do you want me to do?”
“Well, look around a bit if you wish, but make sure you come back before the past you from the present leaves to become the present you in the past, or he’ll crash into your present car with his past car and you’ll both be history.”
Becker cocked an eyebrow and stared off into space for a moment trying to decipher what Kenny had told him. Finely he gave up. “Damn, this time travel is confusing.”
Becker put the walkie-talkie in his pocket and slipped past Kenny unseen. He made his way to the staircase and walked up it, a few hours later coming to the heavily locked door at the top. Fortunately, on this side of the door there was a rather large button that said, “Push to unlock.”
He pushed it and after five minutes the sound of locks undoing themselves came to a stop.
He walked through trough the door, made his way to the door leading outside, and walked through that one as well. He blinked as he looked up at the sky.
There was a beeping in his pocket. He took out the walkie-talkie. “Um, hello?”
“Mr. Becker, where are you?” Kenny said into the walkie-talkie. He looked up at the time-elapsed display on the wall. “You should probably be starting back soon.”
“I’m standing just outside the house,” Becker’s voice responded. “I just had to look outside and see if anything was different.”
For crying out loud, Kenny thought, he’s only a few hours in the past. What’s he expecting, a biplane to fly overhead with one of the Wright Brothers waving hello? Or perhaps the Hindenburg to float by and explode for his delight? “I really think you should get back here. If I’m right, your past self should be arriving at my house any minute.”
Becker looked down the street and saw Matt Atanian and Kirstin Porter riding away on their bicycles. He looked down the street in the other direction and saw himself just avoid getting hit by Mrs. Quadrozzi’s car.
“I think I’ll come back now,” he told Kenny as he dashed inside.
“Good,” Kenny responded. “And make sure you close the door to my laboratory behind you.”
Becker looked behind himself at the door in question, left slightly ajar as he made his mad flight down the stairs. “Um… it’s closed,” he lied.
A few hours later, mad out of breath, Becker burst into the Laboratory and ran across to the door leading to the track. Luckily, Kenny didn’t notice him as he was intent on the futuristic fighter craft reforming before his eyes.
Becker ran down the track and hopped into the car. After a quick three point turn, he was facing back in the direction of the lab.
“Here goes nothing,”he sad, jamming his foot down on the gas.
There was a blinding flash of light as the Edsel reappeared and came to a halt perfectly positioned on the turntable where it had started.
Kenny smiled. “It took a human through time and returned him alive,” he said. “It works!”
Becker opened the door and stepped out, tossing the walkie-talkie to Kenny.
“That was fun,”Becker said. “You ever think of putting a CD player in this thing, though?”
Kenny was about to answer, but was interrupted by a beeping sound coming urgently from a console marked, “World Super-Genius Hotline.”
“That’s odd, who’d be calling at this hour?” Kenny wondered aloud. He walked towards the console, followed by Becker, and pushed a large red button upon it.
A large screen on the wall lit up with an image. It was a computer generated image that looked like something of a cross between Albert Einstein and Max Hedroom.
A voice came from the speaker, and the image’s lips moved in sync with it.
“Whoo are yew to have maztered the zeekrets of tyme traveel?” the voice asked. “I know it waz yew, I tracked ze temporal imizionz bach to yeor lokation! WHOO ARE YEW!!!”
“Um… my name is Kenneth E. Pendrell,” Kenny said. “And you?”
“Ah. Zo Kenneeth Ee. Peendreall iz ze name of mye arrch nemeeziz!”
“Your what?” Becker asked.
“Myee arrrch nemeezizess!!!” the voice said, attempting to speak clearer but actually making it more difficult to understand.
“Come again?” Becker asked.
“My arch nemesis!”the voice exclaimed suddenly.
“Oh,” Becker said.
“But I don’t need an arch nemesis,” Kenny said. “I’m doing quite well without one.”
“Vell zat ees too bad, yew zilley perzon! Yew are ze onlee wan I kan fiend zat even aprochez mye brilyanz!”
Kenny sighed. “Well, Mr. Arch Nemesis, sir, can I at least know your name?”
The voice laughed slightly, a disturbing laugh. “Vy, ovcourze! Mye naime is… Profezer Snarfinkle!”
Kenny and Becker looked at each other, dumbfounded.
The voice began to laugh once again.
Cars careened wildly by honking their horns madly as they swerved like mad to avoid hitting the young man. Becker, who was still walking down the road (Did we mention that he was walking down the road, and not down the side of the road?) noticed none of this. His eyes were closed so that he could concentrate on his music without visual distraction.
He felt a whoosh of a fast moving object going closely by him and he opened his eyes to see what it was. His next words were not at all polite, and were in fact of a type that would be most offensive to sensitive readers, as he noticed a car heading right for him.
He leapt out of the way, most annoyed when his sudden movement caused his player to skip, and came to a halt near a rather ordinary looking house. A flash of movement in the house’s doorway caught his attention, but when he looked he saw nothing there.
He then noticed two bicycles down the road riding away, and was somewhat surprised to recognize the riders as Kirstin Porter and Matt Atanian. He was about to call out to them, but they turned a corner and disappeared.
He looked back at the house.
It was perfectly average looking in every respect, except that the yard seemed a little too neat… but still something about it intrigued him.
Kenny smiled as he recalled the day’s events thus far. It had been a rather interesting one. Most productive.
The device had worked as well as could be expected, and with some minor adjustments the remote control would be able to function flawlessly. No more random jumps.
The only thing he still needed to work on was a better power source. After all, they had almost been killed when they were stuck on the Red Dwarf. What could he possibly do to prevent that?
He had an idea. He took out the remote and pressed a button. A few minutes later, the Macross Valkyrie had reformed before him. As soon as it had solidified, he was inside it, examining its power source.
“This is perfect!” he exclaimed. If he’d been a lesser person, he’d be drooling with delight. “A few modifications to this design and I can integrate it into the remote’s existing configuration with little difficulty! Now, where did I put that hydrospanner?”
“Is this it?”
“Yes, thank you…WHAT!?!” Kenny spun around in alarm, surprised to not be alone.
Jon Becker stood there, looking somewhat forlornly at the headphones grasped in one hand. The magnetic field present in the Laboratory of course renders ordinary portable audio equipment non-functional.
“Mr. Becker,” Kenny said, confused. “May I ask how you got in here?” There was no malice in the question, just concern. After all, Kenny had thought his Laboratory impenetrable to unauthorized persons.
“The door was open.”
“It was?”
“It was.”
“Now you mean the front door, of course. But how did you open the door to the stairway?”
“It was open.”
“It was?”
“It was.”
This is not supposed to be someplace you can just walk into… Kenny brooded. Oh well, as long as he’s here…
“Welcome,” he said,“to my Laboratory!”
“Yeah,” Becker said, semi-impressed. “Nice place.”
Nice place? Kenny thought. The most advanced scientific Laboratory on the planet, full of wonders that most people couldn’t even begin to fathom, and he says “nice place”?
Kenny smiled thinly.
“So what do you think?” Kenny asked.
“Cool. Hey, a Robotech plane! Can I have one?”
“No.”
“How ‘bout that Stargate?”
“No.”
“What about that over there? What’s that?”
Kenny smiled as he looked at the shape under the large sheet. “Ah, that is something I’d been working on for some time. It’s actually near completion. I was going to do some tests on it later today.”
The two walked towards it as Kenny spoke. Kenny pushed a button on a nearby panel and the sheet rose up to reveal…
“Isn’t that an Edsel?” Becker asked.
Indeed, it was a 1958 Edsel Pacer 2-door convertible, banana yellow in colour, the chrome on it shining like new.
“It is more than just an Edsel. It is… a time machine!”
“You made a time machine out of an Edsel?”
“Yeah, well,” Kenny mumbled, “I originally wanted to use a Delorian, but then I heard someone had already used that idea.”
Becker noticed something odd on the back of the car, where the trunk would normally be.“What’s that?” he asked. “Some kind of weird fusion device that you can put even normal garbage in and get an unlimited supply of power?”
“No,” Kenny said.“That is a blender. I thought it’d look cool there.”
“Oh…” Becker said.
Kenny had an idea.“You know,” he said, “The test would go a lot better if I had a human subject.”
Most people would probably refuse. Who in their right mind would want to be a human guinea pig in a crazy time-travel experiment in a completely untested machine? Fortunately for Kenny, like most of the rest of Troop 192, Jon Becker was not in the right mind.
“Sure!” he said with a stupid little grin on his face.
“Excellent,” Kenny responded, tapping his fingers together, in an unintentional but perfect imitation of Montgomery Burns. A thought then occurred to him. “Um… do you know how to drive?”
Becker smiled an innocent smile as he climbed in and buckled his seatbelt. “Of course not,” he answered.
Kenny despairingly rested his forehead in the palm of his hand for a moment. “Hold on, I’ll be right back.” He walked off, only to reappear a moment later with a syringe. It was not a terribly small one. In fact, it looked like one you might use on a horse.
“Um… what are you going to do with that?” Becker asked.
Kenny pulled a pair of headphones out of a pocket and tossed them into the car. Becker’s eyes lit up like the star on the top of a Christmas tree as he lunged after them. His back was turned to Kenny when he felt a sharp pain in his spine.
“God damn it!” Becker exclaimed.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Becker,” Kenny said.
“You’d better be sorry!” Becker held up the headphones that a moment ago had been in flight.“These aren’t connected to anything! That’s a dirty trick! Oh, and by the way, did you just happen to stab me in the back with a rather large syringe?”
“Um, yes,” Kenny said.
“May I ask what for?”
“What does it mean when there’s a double yellow line in the middle of the road, one side solid and the other broken?”
“The cars on the side with the broken line can pass if it is safe to do so.”
“Which peddle is the gas?”
“That one,” Becker said, pointing.
“True or false: if you are sliding on the road you should immediately hit your brakes.”
“False. Hey, I know how to drive!”
“Yes,” Kenny said, smiling. “You do.” He leaned into the car. “I think for our first trip we should try something small. Say, back five hours? You flick this switch,” Kenny flicked the indicated switch, ”to activate the temporal circuits. When the temporal circuits are activated, propelling the car to speeds equal to or in excess of forty-two miles per hour will activate the temporal warp. The warp itself should seem instantaneous to you, and you’ll be a five hours in the past. Take this.”
Becker took what looked like a walkie-talkie from Kenny. “What good will this do?”
“This is a trans-temporal communications device. We can keep in contact with this. Any other questions?”
Becker looked around the lab, which was immense but rather cluttered. “How am I supposed to get up to 42mph in here?”
Kenny walked over to a control console and pushed a button. The Edsel began to rotate, apparently on a turntable flush with the floor. The car came to a stop facing a wall. With the push of another button by Kenny, a large section of the wall raised up to reveal a long, paved track.
“Ah,” Becker said.
“Ready?” Kenny asked.
“Ready,” Becker responded, pulling the door shut.
Becker’s foot hit the gas peddle, and the car sped off down the track. The speedometer rose quickly, passing 40, and then 41, and then…
There was a bright flash and Becker hit the brakes. He looked around.
“Huh,” he said, getting out of the car, “nothing’s changed.”
He turned around, looking back the way he’d come.
The large section of wall was down over the far end of the track where he’d first entered.
“That’s odd,” Becker said. “He must have closed it for some reason after I went through.”
He made his way back to the wall, concerned how he was going to get through. He was relieved to see a small door in the wall when he got there which he made use of.
He re-entered the lab and found there was no one there. “Kenny!?” he shouted. “Where’d you go?”
He heard a noise. It was coming from the direction of that Stargate he’d seen earlier. He walked over to it and was surprised to see Bill Hughes slumped unconscious over a control panel.
“What the… Hughes?”Becker responded. His fellow Scout reeked of an odd smell… like orange juice and alcohol. Hughes made no response to Becker’s inquiries.
Suddenly the Stargate burst to life. The vortex opened on it and Becker dove for cover, hiding behind a large sheet covering something car shaped.
When the vortex was fully formed, three figures leapt from it. The first through was Kirstin Porter, followed closely by Matty Hayes and Kenny. Becker noticed a squirrel in Matty’s hands and some clothes (including a dirty red Troop 192 hat) that Kirstin carried.
“We did it!” Kirstin exclaimed, excited. “We’re home!”
Hughes stirred and slowly rose from where he had been slumped unconscious. He rubbed his head gingerly. “I miss anything exciting?” he asked.
The squirrel chittered something and held up his small dry-erase sign. On it was written, “Go back to sleep, Hick Boy.”
Hughes obliged.
A half hour later, Matty had disapeared but now Matt was there, Mike had seemingly arrived with him, and Hughes had returned to being sober.
“Thank you for coming, all of you,” Kenny told them in the still quiet but more confident voice he used in his Laboratory.
“Aagh, do you have to yell so loud?” Hughes asked, clutching his throbbing head.
“Oh, come on,” Matt said to Hughes, dragging him along.
“And don’t worry,”Kirstin called out as they left, “we won’t tell anyone about this. Your secret is safe.”
A few minutes later a voice came through Becker’s walkie-talkie. “Mr. Becker, are you there? Did you live through the time-transfer?”
Becker spoke through the walkie-talkie. “Time transfer? I’m right where I started. I didn’t go anywhere. And how did you do that?” Becker asked. He was looking over at Kenny as he spoke. “How do you talk through this thing to me when I don’t see your lips moving, and you don’t even have your walkie-talkie?”
“That’s not me you’re looking at. That’s me a few hours ago. Of course you didn’t go anywhere, you went anywhen.”
Becker regarded the sheet covered object he was hiding behind. He peaked under the sheet and discovered a 1958 Edsel Pacer 2-door convertible under it.
He scratched his head.
“Oh,” he said. “I get it.”
Deep in his underground lair, the genius sat. He was looking at his chronometric disturbance indicator. It was still fluctuating a bit. A little over a half hour ago, it had gone off the scale.
He turned around and regarded the invention he had been working on. To the average person, it would appear to be simply a 1976 Ford Pinto. But to him… it was a masterpiece. Or at least, it would be if he could ever get the one crucial circuit in the temporal flux generator to function properly…
“Blast eet,” he exclaimed, his voice in an indeterminate and probably fake accent. “Zomeone haz beeten me to it! But at lazt, I may have foound myzelf a worthy opponent!”
“So I shouldn’t try to talk to you?”
“No, for Sagan’s sake!” Kenny said over the walkie-talkie. “Do you want to cause a temporal paradox?”
“Is that bad?”
“Well, best case scenario, the past me gets very confused.”
“That’s not so bad.”
“Worst case is the end of Everything.”
“The end of headphones?”
“Are headphones part of Everything?”
“Um… yes?”
“Then yes.”
“That’s bad. So… um, what do you want me to do?”
“Well, look around a bit if you wish, but make sure you come back before the past you from the present leaves to become the present you in the past, or he’ll crash into your present car with his past car and you’ll both be history.”
Becker cocked an eyebrow and stared off into space for a moment trying to decipher what Kenny had told him. Finely he gave up. “Damn, this time travel is confusing.”
Becker put the walkie-talkie in his pocket and slipped past Kenny unseen. He made his way to the staircase and walked up it, a few hours later coming to the heavily locked door at the top. Fortunately, on this side of the door there was a rather large button that said, “Push to unlock.”
He pushed it and after five minutes the sound of locks undoing themselves came to a stop.
He walked through trough the door, made his way to the door leading outside, and walked through that one as well. He blinked as he looked up at the sky.
There was a beeping in his pocket. He took out the walkie-talkie. “Um, hello?”
“Mr. Becker, where are you?” Kenny said into the walkie-talkie. He looked up at the time-elapsed display on the wall. “You should probably be starting back soon.”
“I’m standing just outside the house,” Becker’s voice responded. “I just had to look outside and see if anything was different.”
For crying out loud, Kenny thought, he’s only a few hours in the past. What’s he expecting, a biplane to fly overhead with one of the Wright Brothers waving hello? Or perhaps the Hindenburg to float by and explode for his delight? “I really think you should get back here. If I’m right, your past self should be arriving at my house any minute.”
Becker looked down the street and saw Matt Atanian and Kirstin Porter riding away on their bicycles. He looked down the street in the other direction and saw himself just avoid getting hit by Mrs. Quadrozzi’s car.
“I think I’ll come back now,” he told Kenny as he dashed inside.
“Good,” Kenny responded. “And make sure you close the door to my laboratory behind you.”
Becker looked behind himself at the door in question, left slightly ajar as he made his mad flight down the stairs. “Um… it’s closed,” he lied.
A few hours later, mad out of breath, Becker burst into the Laboratory and ran across to the door leading to the track. Luckily, Kenny didn’t notice him as he was intent on the futuristic fighter craft reforming before his eyes.
Becker ran down the track and hopped into the car. After a quick three point turn, he was facing back in the direction of the lab.
“Here goes nothing,”he sad, jamming his foot down on the gas.
There was a blinding flash of light as the Edsel reappeared and came to a halt perfectly positioned on the turntable where it had started.
Kenny smiled. “It took a human through time and returned him alive,” he said. “It works!”
Becker opened the door and stepped out, tossing the walkie-talkie to Kenny.
“That was fun,”Becker said. “You ever think of putting a CD player in this thing, though?”
Kenny was about to answer, but was interrupted by a beeping sound coming urgently from a console marked, “World Super-Genius Hotline.”
“That’s odd, who’d be calling at this hour?” Kenny wondered aloud. He walked towards the console, followed by Becker, and pushed a large red button upon it.
A large screen on the wall lit up with an image. It was a computer generated image that looked like something of a cross between Albert Einstein and Max Hedroom.
A voice came from the speaker, and the image’s lips moved in sync with it.
“Whoo are yew to have maztered the zeekrets of tyme traveel?” the voice asked. “I know it waz yew, I tracked ze temporal imizionz bach to yeor lokation! WHOO ARE YEW!!!”
“Um… my name is Kenneth E. Pendrell,” Kenny said. “And you?”
“Ah. Zo Kenneeth Ee. Peendreall iz ze name of mye arrch nemeeziz!”
“Your what?” Becker asked.
“Myee arrrch nemeezizess!!!” the voice said, attempting to speak clearer but actually making it more difficult to understand.
“Come again?” Becker asked.
“My arch nemesis!”the voice exclaimed suddenly.
“Oh,” Becker said.
“But I don’t need an arch nemesis,” Kenny said. “I’m doing quite well without one.”
“Vell zat ees too bad, yew zilley perzon! Yew are ze onlee wan I kan fiend zat even aprochez mye brilyanz!”
Kenny sighed. “Well, Mr. Arch Nemesis, sir, can I at least know your name?”
The voice laughed slightly, a disturbing laugh. “Vy, ovcourze! Mye naime is… Profezer Snarfinkle!”
Kenny and Becker looked at each other, dumbfounded.
The voice began to laugh once again.
Disclaimer
This story borrowed a bit from Red Dwarf, Robotech, and Stargate again, but only in continuity references to the first Kenny’s Laboratory. The main source that this story borrowed from was, of course, Back to the Future.
And of course, as usual, Jusenkyo curses are borrowed without permission from Ranma ½ by Rumiko Takahashi.
You know, Snarfinkle’s dialogue is hell when spellchecking… Oh, well…
Have a nice day.
And of course, as usual, Jusenkyo curses are borrowed without permission from Ranma ½ by Rumiko Takahashi.
You know, Snarfinkle’s dialogue is hell when spellchecking… Oh, well…
Have a nice day.