It started with a noise.
A completely strange noise, yet oddly familiar. What was that noise? Where was it coming from? It was a sort of whooshing noise, with a whale cry and loud thump at the end of it. I was groggy and half-asleep still, and thought it must be my neighbors watching something on the television with the volume turned up too high. But then other noises followed – running, scuffling, shouting in the street. Not the usual shouting from the angry homeless man who likes to rage at God at three o’clock in the morning, but a different kind of shouting. Purposeful. Coherent. British.
I stumbled to my open living room window, intent on telling whoever was making this noise to button it. Instead, I saw large, muscular reptilian creature holding a tall, skinny man in a suit over his head in what was soon to be a body slam onto the curb. The skinny man held aloft a small glowing sphere, keeping it as far from the creature’s reach as possible. As if by magic, his eyes caught mine and he yelled, “Take this!” and hurled the glowing sphere toward my open window. I caught it and he yelled, “Run!” as the muscular creature dropped him on the sidewalk and headed for my apartment building’s front door.
“Oh shit,” I thought. I slipped on the nearest pair of shoes I could find, grabbed my keys, and ran for the back door, forever grateful that I had recently moved into an apartment that had both a front and a back door. I heard the creature rampaging up the front stairs as I bolted down the back and out the door. No sooner had I emerged onto the dark city street than a hand grabbed mine and again yelled, “Run!” We were off down the alley.
It wasn’t a long run, which was fortunate as the shoes I put on were not built for cross country sports. Also because what I saw before me made my knees buckle and I skidded and crashed to the ground. “Come on, get inside,” shouted the skinny man as he helped me to my feet and into the large blue box.
“It can’t be…” I stammered.
“It is,” he replied with a knowing smile.
“But…but…that’s a television show. It’s not real.” I could feel tears of joy and confusion and fear and anger welling up behind my eyes. Somebody had to be playing a trick on me. There was no possible way I was standing in the control room of a spaceship disguised as a police box with a tall, skinny man in a suit who had just told me to run. “Who put you up to this?”
“Up to what?”
“This. Who put you up to this, and where did they get one of these that is actually bigger on the inside?”
“It is actually bigger on the inside. It’s the chameleon circuit…”
“I know your chameleon circuit is broken. Everybody knows your chameleon circuit is broken. What I want to know is which of my friends thought it would be a fun joke to wake me up in the middle of the night to stage something like this, and how did they make the alley look so much like the alley with this thing inside it?”
“Oh, you’re a feisty one aren’t you?”
“No, really, where did they get the drops to hide the rest of the set?” I went for the door to take a look around and see how this marvelously cruel practical joke had been staged.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he warned.
“Why not?” I opened the door to the sharp teeth and hammer hands of the large, muscular reptilian creature.
“That’s why.”
I shut the door again and promptly fell on my butt, sobbing because I couldn’t not anymore.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hey there. You’re okay. You’re safe in here. The assembled hoardes…”
“…of Ghengis Khan couldn’t get through those doors, and believe me they’ve tried.” We finished his sentence together. I had heard it a million times before, and here I was saying it along with him.
“Are you really him?” I asked.
“Oh yes.”
“But you don’t look like him. I mean, not the him I’m used to.”
“Well, they had to get an actor to play me on television, didn’t they? I’m rather busy most days.”
“So how much of it is real?”
“All of it. Well, most of it. Well, some of it. They have to employ a bit of a creative license from time to time, and some names have been changed to protect the innocent, and that bit that was leaked on the internet about me hating pears is completely false – it’s rhubarb I’m not a big fan of – but beyond that, I’d say it’s mostly pretty accurate.”
“And that thing outside?”
“Nasty fellow. Do you have the object I threw to you?”
I produced the glowing sphere from my tightly clenched fist. I hadn’t realized I was holding it so tightly that my fingernails cut small half-moons into my palm. “What is it?”
“That, my darling girl, could fix all of the Earth’s energy problems.” He rolled it around between his thumb and forefinger and looked at it with the reverence one might show a holy relic of old. “It is a dwarf sun from the Fizzigypsun System, encased in Midnight diamond. All of the power of a sun – the solar energy, wind energy, hydroelectric energy that can be produced from the natural nuclear reactor that is a sun’s core – in the palm of your hand. You could terraform a new planet with that thing, or plug it into your electrical grid here on Earth and voila! Free, clean renewable energy for everyone! Nice catch, by the way.”
“So what does Mr. WWF out there want with it?”
“There are two sides to every nuclear reaction. He prefers the side that goes boom, and I’m not about to let him blow up a planet of innocents.”
“How are we going to get rid of him?” I asked.
“Already done. Take a look outside.” The skinny man’s eyes twinkled in a way no human eyes can. The anticipation of seeing something familiar through a new pair of eyes had him as excited as a child on Christmas morning.
I walked back to the door and opened it slowly. A brilliant, lavender light met my eyes, momentarily blinding me as I stepped from the relative dark of the blue box onto what could only be foreign ground. The smell of lilacs danced on the breeze, which was cool yet comforting. Blades of soft blue jasmine grass brushed at my ankles, tickling me ever so slightly. A brilliant orange sun hung in the lavender sky, and in the distance, I could see mountains unlike any I had seen before.
“This is Fizzigypsun Six,” said the skinny man as he stepped out of the blue box. “The dwarf sun you are holding belongs here. It was taken by the Schlanglinial to be used as a weapon against the Fizzigyps, and you have helped me return it to its rightful place in the Universe.” He took my hand and squeezed it gently. “Come on,” he said as we walked toward the distant Fizzigypsun mountains.
Within just a few moments, we were greeted by a small fuzzy creature with six legs, four arms, and giant anime eyes. The skinny man introduced us, and then handed over the sphere. The fuzzy creature thanked us, bowed deeply, and then threw back its head and shouted a rainbow into the air that fell down upon us in a gentle mist of flower petals. The skinny man took my hand once more and gently led me back to the blue box.
“Thank you,” I squeaked out, once again holding back tears of joy and astonishment.
“Thank you,” replied the skinny man. “You were brilliant.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Oh, but you did. If you hadn’t come to your window, the Fizzigyps might have never gotten their sun back. You saved a whole planet, a whole species.”
“I just heard a noise…”
“You were brilliant. And now, you’re home.”
“Home?”
“Yup. Right outside your apartment, just moments before I landed, so your front steps should be in order.”
“Okay, but with time travel, doesn’t that mean you’re going to show up again in a minute and the whole thing will happen all over again?”
“No. When we returned the dwarf sun to the Fizzigyps, we returned it moments after it was taken. My chase with the Schlanglinial all over the Universe never happened.”
“So what happens to me, then?”
“When you step out of those doors, the paradox of you traveling back on your own timeline will collapse in on itself and this version of you will cease to exist. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“But I don’t want to stop existing. I don’t want to forget what I saw and the way the air smelled on Fizzigypsun Six! You can’t take me on a journey through time and space and then take it all away from me again!” I protested as hot tears of anger and disappointment began to spill down my face. “And what about the rest of reality, as my paradox falls in on itself?”
The skinny man approached me slowly, and gently took me in his arms. “Take this,” he said as he placed a small amulet around my neck. “This will keep the paradox limited to you, so the rest of reality will be unharmed. You will meld back into your past self, and you won’t miss what you never knew happened.”
“I don’t want to go. I’ve wished for so long that you were real and now you’re here and I have to forget about you.”
He held me for a moment longer. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He wiped away my tears and looked at me with those brilliant alien eyes, reflecting my sorrow and regret and loss and disappointment.
“Take me with you,” I pleaded softly.
“I can’t. Not this time,” he replied, stepping back to arm’s length. “This is how it has to go.”
He walked me to the door, and held my hand as I stepped through. “You were brilliant,” he said with a smile as my hand fell away from his. “Absolutely brilliant.
I woke up in my bed to the sound of my alarm, my cat gently nuzzling my arm. I stretched and yawned, preparing myself to face whatever this Friday had to bring. A quick look at my phone, though, showed me it was Thursday, not Friday. I was sure it was Friday, and as my hand reached up to rub my tired eyes, I felt a small amulet around my neck…
A completely strange noise, yet oddly familiar. What was that noise? Where was it coming from? It was a sort of whooshing noise, with a whale cry and loud thump at the end of it. I was groggy and half-asleep still, and thought it must be my neighbors watching something on the television with the volume turned up too high. But then other noises followed – running, scuffling, shouting in the street. Not the usual shouting from the angry homeless man who likes to rage at God at three o’clock in the morning, but a different kind of shouting. Purposeful. Coherent. British.
I stumbled to my open living room window, intent on telling whoever was making this noise to button it. Instead, I saw large, muscular reptilian creature holding a tall, skinny man in a suit over his head in what was soon to be a body slam onto the curb. The skinny man held aloft a small glowing sphere, keeping it as far from the creature’s reach as possible. As if by magic, his eyes caught mine and he yelled, “Take this!” and hurled the glowing sphere toward my open window. I caught it and he yelled, “Run!” as the muscular creature dropped him on the sidewalk and headed for my apartment building’s front door.
“Oh shit,” I thought. I slipped on the nearest pair of shoes I could find, grabbed my keys, and ran for the back door, forever grateful that I had recently moved into an apartment that had both a front and a back door. I heard the creature rampaging up the front stairs as I bolted down the back and out the door. No sooner had I emerged onto the dark city street than a hand grabbed mine and again yelled, “Run!” We were off down the alley.
It wasn’t a long run, which was fortunate as the shoes I put on were not built for cross country sports. Also because what I saw before me made my knees buckle and I skidded and crashed to the ground. “Come on, get inside,” shouted the skinny man as he helped me to my feet and into the large blue box.
“It can’t be…” I stammered.
“It is,” he replied with a knowing smile.
“But…but…that’s a television show. It’s not real.” I could feel tears of joy and confusion and fear and anger welling up behind my eyes. Somebody had to be playing a trick on me. There was no possible way I was standing in the control room of a spaceship disguised as a police box with a tall, skinny man in a suit who had just told me to run. “Who put you up to this?”
“Up to what?”
“This. Who put you up to this, and where did they get one of these that is actually bigger on the inside?”
“It is actually bigger on the inside. It’s the chameleon circuit…”
“I know your chameleon circuit is broken. Everybody knows your chameleon circuit is broken. What I want to know is which of my friends thought it would be a fun joke to wake me up in the middle of the night to stage something like this, and how did they make the alley look so much like the alley with this thing inside it?”
“Oh, you’re a feisty one aren’t you?”
“No, really, where did they get the drops to hide the rest of the set?” I went for the door to take a look around and see how this marvelously cruel practical joke had been staged.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he warned.
“Why not?” I opened the door to the sharp teeth and hammer hands of the large, muscular reptilian creature.
“That’s why.”
I shut the door again and promptly fell on my butt, sobbing because I couldn’t not anymore.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hey there. You’re okay. You’re safe in here. The assembled hoardes…”
“…of Ghengis Khan couldn’t get through those doors, and believe me they’ve tried.” We finished his sentence together. I had heard it a million times before, and here I was saying it along with him.
“Are you really him?” I asked.
“Oh yes.”
“But you don’t look like him. I mean, not the him I’m used to.”
“Well, they had to get an actor to play me on television, didn’t they? I’m rather busy most days.”
“So how much of it is real?”
“All of it. Well, most of it. Well, some of it. They have to employ a bit of a creative license from time to time, and some names have been changed to protect the innocent, and that bit that was leaked on the internet about me hating pears is completely false – it’s rhubarb I’m not a big fan of – but beyond that, I’d say it’s mostly pretty accurate.”
“And that thing outside?”
“Nasty fellow. Do you have the object I threw to you?”
I produced the glowing sphere from my tightly clenched fist. I hadn’t realized I was holding it so tightly that my fingernails cut small half-moons into my palm. “What is it?”
“That, my darling girl, could fix all of the Earth’s energy problems.” He rolled it around between his thumb and forefinger and looked at it with the reverence one might show a holy relic of old. “It is a dwarf sun from the Fizzigypsun System, encased in Midnight diamond. All of the power of a sun – the solar energy, wind energy, hydroelectric energy that can be produced from the natural nuclear reactor that is a sun’s core – in the palm of your hand. You could terraform a new planet with that thing, or plug it into your electrical grid here on Earth and voila! Free, clean renewable energy for everyone! Nice catch, by the way.”
“So what does Mr. WWF out there want with it?”
“There are two sides to every nuclear reaction. He prefers the side that goes boom, and I’m not about to let him blow up a planet of innocents.”
“How are we going to get rid of him?” I asked.
“Already done. Take a look outside.” The skinny man’s eyes twinkled in a way no human eyes can. The anticipation of seeing something familiar through a new pair of eyes had him as excited as a child on Christmas morning.
I walked back to the door and opened it slowly. A brilliant, lavender light met my eyes, momentarily blinding me as I stepped from the relative dark of the blue box onto what could only be foreign ground. The smell of lilacs danced on the breeze, which was cool yet comforting. Blades of soft blue jasmine grass brushed at my ankles, tickling me ever so slightly. A brilliant orange sun hung in the lavender sky, and in the distance, I could see mountains unlike any I had seen before.
“This is Fizzigypsun Six,” said the skinny man as he stepped out of the blue box. “The dwarf sun you are holding belongs here. It was taken by the Schlanglinial to be used as a weapon against the Fizzigyps, and you have helped me return it to its rightful place in the Universe.” He took my hand and squeezed it gently. “Come on,” he said as we walked toward the distant Fizzigypsun mountains.
Within just a few moments, we were greeted by a small fuzzy creature with six legs, four arms, and giant anime eyes. The skinny man introduced us, and then handed over the sphere. The fuzzy creature thanked us, bowed deeply, and then threw back its head and shouted a rainbow into the air that fell down upon us in a gentle mist of flower petals. The skinny man took my hand once more and gently led me back to the blue box.
“Thank you,” I squeaked out, once again holding back tears of joy and astonishment.
“Thank you,” replied the skinny man. “You were brilliant.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Oh, but you did. If you hadn’t come to your window, the Fizzigyps might have never gotten their sun back. You saved a whole planet, a whole species.”
“I just heard a noise…”
“You were brilliant. And now, you’re home.”
“Home?”
“Yup. Right outside your apartment, just moments before I landed, so your front steps should be in order.”
“Okay, but with time travel, doesn’t that mean you’re going to show up again in a minute and the whole thing will happen all over again?”
“No. When we returned the dwarf sun to the Fizzigyps, we returned it moments after it was taken. My chase with the Schlanglinial all over the Universe never happened.”
“So what happens to me, then?”
“When you step out of those doors, the paradox of you traveling back on your own timeline will collapse in on itself and this version of you will cease to exist. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“But I don’t want to stop existing. I don’t want to forget what I saw and the way the air smelled on Fizzigypsun Six! You can’t take me on a journey through time and space and then take it all away from me again!” I protested as hot tears of anger and disappointment began to spill down my face. “And what about the rest of reality, as my paradox falls in on itself?”
The skinny man approached me slowly, and gently took me in his arms. “Take this,” he said as he placed a small amulet around my neck. “This will keep the paradox limited to you, so the rest of reality will be unharmed. You will meld back into your past self, and you won’t miss what you never knew happened.”
“I don’t want to go. I’ve wished for so long that you were real and now you’re here and I have to forget about you.”
He held me for a moment longer. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He wiped away my tears and looked at me with those brilliant alien eyes, reflecting my sorrow and regret and loss and disappointment.
“Take me with you,” I pleaded softly.
“I can’t. Not this time,” he replied, stepping back to arm’s length. “This is how it has to go.”
He walked me to the door, and held my hand as I stepped through. “You were brilliant,” he said with a smile as my hand fell away from his. “Absolutely brilliant.
I woke up in my bed to the sound of my alarm, my cat gently nuzzling my arm. I stretched and yawned, preparing myself to face whatever this Friday had to bring. A quick look at my phone, though, showed me it was Thursday, not Friday. I was sure it was Friday, and as my hand reached up to rub my tired eyes, I felt a small amulet around my neck…