It was a casual saturday afternoon in the city of Elmore. Gumball and Darwin had nothing to do and were quite bored, so they decided to play in the backyard today.
Darwin sat on the ground, drawing a bunch of stuff in his notebook, while his brother Gumball was building something out of cardboard.
"Dude, check it out" said Gumball with a smirk on his face.
Darwin put pen and paper aside and looked over to him.
"I call it the time box! Pretty cool, huh?"
He raised an eyebrow, inspecting his friend's creation.
It was an old, crumpled cardboard box, nothing too fancy. Time box was crudely written with permanent marker on one side of it.
"We should totally try it out!" Darwin exclaimed eagerly, hooked by the idea to have finally something to do today.
The boys got into the box. Gumball took the marker and drew a bunch of buttons on the inside, explaining that they could now use it.
"So were should we go?" Gumball asked and Darwin took a few seconds to contemplate.
"Let's go back to the past. I wanna see some dinosaurs."
Gumball shook his head. "Oh come on, man. That's boring. We should go to the future, it's way cooler than dinosaurs. Besides, I don't want to get eaten alive."
"Fair point." Darwin agreed. "We'll go to the future then."
Gumball pressed one of the buttons, imitating an engine noise for a few seconds.
"Alright, we're there." He said, getting out of the box.
"The future looks pretty... normal?" Darwin raised an eyebrow, looking around the backyard.
"Pft, the future is just too advanced for you, dude. There's new stuff all around us." He picked up a rake, prentending to have a sword fight with it. "See? This is like a future sword or something." Gumball then pointed at the trashcan. "And this is probably a future armor-thing."
"It's a rake and a trashcan. I don't think we are in the future, dude."
"You're just too naive to see it!" Gumball replied angrily. "Are you implying my time machine didn't work?"
"Well, doesn't seem like it did." Darwin said sarcastic. "Did you really believe it would?"
"Of course!" Gumball stormed off. "Well I'm gonna have some fun in the future without you then."
"Whatever, dude." Darwin took his notebook and continued his drawing.
Gumball entered the house, making his way to the front door.
"You leaving? Be back before supper, sweetie." Nicole said while hoovering the house.
"What are you doing here?" Gumball asked shocked. "This is the future, I'm like an adult now. Isn't this my house?"
Nicole raised an eyebrow. "...What? Honey, this isn't the future." she chuckled.
"Oh really? Maybe that's what you want me to think." He paused for a second to inspect her. "There was probably some kind of robot uprising and they brainswashed everyone into believing this."
"Gumball are you feeling alright?" She raised an eyebrow.
"I'm fine, but can you say the same about yourself?" He slowly walked backwards outside. "I was never here."
"Well, uh, have fun, I guess?"
Gumball dashed over to his girlfriends house, knocking furiously until Penny opened the door.
"Oh, hi Gumball!" She said cheerfully. "Are you alright? You don't look so good."
"Penny, you have to come with me. I'm going to get you out of here." He said, still trying to catch his breath.
"What are you talking about?" Penny replied, crossing her arms.
"Penny, I know this will come as a shock to you, but there was a robot uprising and they brainwashed everyone. And I'm from the past."
There was a long awkward silence for awhile.
"That's crazy. But I guess you wouldn't lie to me, would you?" Penny replied baffled. "Alright, I will come with you."
Both of them returned to Gumball's home. To his shock, the box was gone. He panicked and looked around the backyard. "Darwin, were is it?" He exclaimed troubled.
"What? You mean that old cardboard box? Mrs. Mom got rid of it because it was trash."
Penny looked over to Gumball. "Cardboard box? Is this some kind of joke?" She crossed her arms and looked angrily.
"No, it was a time machine. They probably brainwashed him too. This means they're onto us, we have to hide."
Darwin sighed and kept drawing. "Whatever, dude."
Gumball took Penny by her arm and dragged her along to his room. He closed and locked the door, and they hid under his desk.
"Well, this is weird." Penny said.
"We're trapped. There is no way out of this without my time machine." He sighed.
"How can you even build something like that? Last time I checked you couldn't even solve a simple math question in school." She raised an eyebrow and looked at him.
"Was pretty easy actually. I took a cardboard box and permanent marker and then-"
"Hold up for a second. So it really was a cardboard box? Are you kidding me?" Penny began to get mad. "I should've known this was way too crazy to be true."
"But it totally worked. Didn't you see the cool future stuff in the backyard?" Gumball said tauntingly.
"What? It was just a normal backyard... I'm outta here." Penny walked to the door and sighed. "Could you unlock this please?"
Gumball got up and sat on his bed "So this isn't the future?"
Penny sighed and sat dwon next to him. "Alright, look, just because you drew a bunch of stuff on a box doesn't make it a working time machine. Got that?"
"Huh, the more you know." Gumball shrugged.
"You're not really the smartest, no offense, so we will just act like this never happend, okay?"
"Deal." He said sheepishly.
After Penny left, Gumball returned to the backyard.
"You done with this future stuff?" Darwin asked.
"Yep, It was pretty dumb. By the way, sorry I thought robots brainwashed you, dude."
"No big deal. What are you gonna do now?"
"Building an actually working time machine this time. Are there any other boxes left?"
Darwin sighed and went back into the house.