Short story – “Ben’s Time Carriage”

“Ben’s Time Carriage”

“Where is he?”

Alexander turned to the man sitting in a frail wooden chair.  “My dear James, how am I supposed to know?  But, if you believe the word of the good Doctor, then it should be difficult for him to be–”

A brilliant flash of blue light filled the room, and both men raised their hands to their eyes.  When they lowered them a portly, older gentleman stood before them in a metal cage.  He opened a door, took a staggering step and began to fall, but Alexander caught him. 

“Benjamin, are you all right?” James asked.

“Yes, yes,” the man replied.  He laughed.  “Traveling through time leaves one … dizzy, for a few moments.”

“So you have done it then?” Alexander asked looking at the cage.  “Built a … time carriage.”

“Oh yes,” Benjamin replied, “and the things I have seen.”

James sighed.  “Were you able to do as we asked, or did you spend your time impressing the women in every century?”

Benjamin smiled.  “If you do not make time for the ladies, they will not make time for you.”

Looking in the cage, Alexander asked, “Did you memorize everything?  I expected you to return with countless books.”

“My dear Sir,” Benjamin replied, “do you think I would return empty handed?” Reaching into his coat pocket, he pulled out what looked like a thin glass rod.  He held it up and said, “Gentlemen, all of the books in all of our libraries would fit on this, with plenty of room to spare.”

“Surely not.” Alexander held out his hand and Benjamin placed the object in it.  Holding it up to his eye, he asked, “Did you find some minuscule printing press?”

“No, no, it’s …” Benjamin scratched his head.  “It is something that even I don’t fully understand.”

“How are we to read these … books?” James asked squinting at the rod.

“With this.” From another pocket Benjamin took out an object about the size of a small book made of a strange material.

“What is that?” Alexander asked.

“It is called,” Benjamin answered, “a computer.” Setting this computer on a table, Benjamin lifted the top and flipped it back with a click, so it was now twice the size but half the thickness.  He did this three more times until he had a stiff object about the size of a newspaper. 

“Amazing,” James said.

Benjamin held his hand out to Alexander who returned the rod.  “First we turn this on,” he said, touching the upper right corner of the computer.  There were a few musical tones that made the other two men jump.  “I’m sorry, I should have warned you.  It makes … odd noises at times.”

The surface of the computer had been a dull, bluish-gray, but now it turned black before it was replaced by an image in bronze of Benjamin himself.  Benjamin laughed.  “I couldn’t help myself.  This is … an instant painting of a future bust of me.”

Benjamin inserted the rod in a slot along the side of the computer and told the two other men, “Don’t worry.  This is a very …” He paused and mumbled, “What was the phrase?” to himself.  “Oh yes,” he continued in his normal voice, “this is a very ‘user friendly’ model.  I’ll be able to talk you through using it in only a few minutes.”

An hour later, both men were finally able to use the computer to read the information on the rod.  Once he was sure they understood how to use it, Benjamin told them, “Now, gentlemen, you have access to all the important historical events for the next three centuries.  With this you will be able to foresee all the difficulties this new nation will face and write the perfect Constitution for it.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an engagement I wish to attend.” He opened the door to the cage and stepped inside.

Alexander turned from the computer and asked, “Where is … or should I say, when is this engagement?”

“To answer both questions, Philadelphia in 2006.  They are having a 300th birthday party for me.  Courtesy requires that I attend.” With that he closed the door of the cage, and in a flash of red light, was gone.

***

I first wrote this story in 2008 as part of my 30 Stories in 30 Days Challenge I used to do.  I updated it for my 2012 collection Political Pies.  But I was reminded of it recently by all the talk of Originalism in regards to all the problems certain groups aren’t allowing us to fix, and figured I should repost it so I can share it easily. 

The original reason for this story, is every time I hear some schmuck say we shouldn’t do something because it “wasn’t the intent of the Founding Fathers,” I want to ask if the Founding Fathers had a crystal ball with which they could foresee all the problems the country would face, and thus write the solutions into the Constitution?  Don’t get me wrong, the Founding Fathers were some of the brightest minds of the Eighteenth Century.  Of course, we live in the Twenty-First Century where we have things like indoor plumbing and cyber terrorism.

Random Story – Quick stories from school

These are just odd little stories from my life.

Speeling

I was a terrible speller back in school. I can’t remember which grade it was, maybe 7th or 8th, but the English teacher gave a weekly spelling test. She said she would continue giving them until everyone in the class had received at least one 100%. I was the second to last person in the class to get a 100%, and I remember it happened on my birthday, which is in February, so it took me awhile. The other thing I remember is that when I took out a sheet of paper and put my name on it, I wrote “speeling test” on it. (That’s why I put that as this blog title, it’s not a typo!) The teacher said she wasn’t sure if my 100% should count because of that, but I think she wanted to stop giving the tests, so nothing more was said.

The reason I brought this up, is that my spelling has greatly improved over the years. The best reason I can think of is my writing. Yes, I do count on the spellchecker to catch mistakes, but most of the time it seems like I use it for words I don’t know how to spell. I just get something close, then pick the correct one out of the spellchecker options. But I was surprised the other day when – for a story – I spelled aneurysm correctly. (And I just did it again!) Back in high school I’d probably spell it anyourism. If my high school English teachers could see me now.

Not doing my calculus homework.

I can’t remember if it was in pre-calc, or calc class, but one day I show up and the teacher says something about checking our homework.  And I had completely forgotten that he had assigned a dozen or so problems the day before.  So I sat there for twenty or so seconds almost crapping myself because A, I couldn’t believe I had completely forgotten to do my homework, but also B, we had a homework grade.  I wasn’t in any danger of failing, but I was a good student who didn’t want the teacher – who was pretty cool – to think I was a slacker, or whatever.

Well, the way he checked our homework was to walk around to see what we had done and if we had any questions.  Fortunately, for me, the first girl said that she had trouble with the last problem.  Thinking quick, I turned to a blank page in my notebook, and copied down problem 12, or whatever.  I started working on it, and I got to a part and got stuck. 

So I’m trying a couple things on this problem a minute or so later when I notice the teacher standing next to me.  I look up and say, “I’m just trying to figure out this last one.” He nods and moves on to the next student.  Sometimes, being known as a good student pays off.

An Elon Musk Joke

About a week ago, I came up with a little joke about Elon Musk.  To tell the joke, I’d need to slightly photoshop four images.  The problem, while I could easily find two of the images, I had a hard time finding appropriate ones for the other two.  I guess I don’t know how to search for anything now.  Years ago, I’d do an image search for fire and get a bunch of images of flames.  Now I search for fire, and I get images of … glasses of water.  Anyway, after spending twenty or so minutes not getting anywhere in my image searches, I thought the images could just be cartoons.  But my cartooning skills are way worse than my poor photoshopping skills.  So I could write this joke, but I couldn’t illustrate it.  Which brings us to this blog.  I will lay out the joke, and if anyone has the modicum of skill needed to illustrate it, go for it.

This joke has four panels, and is called, “What I imagine it is like working at Tesla.” The first panel show Elon on some stage saying, “And … ah … in six months, we’ll have … ah … flying cars.” The first version of the second panel had some frantic engineer screaming, “Will you shut the fuck up!” but I think a funnier version has a group of Tesla engineers in a conference room all with their heads in their hands and someone saying, “Will someone please take the microphone from him.” The third panel says “Ten years later” and shows a smoking, car-sized crater in the desert.  The fourth panel shows a deranged Elon saying, “Gimme $60 billion for my genius!”