Title: Two Fans And A Temporal Displacement Device
Author: Kleenexwoman
E-mail:
Rating: PG-13 for slight swearing and some mentions of S-E-X and for some slash. Not Beatleslash, sorry, don't get your hopes up, but there is some slash in here. And Beatles. Just not slash and Beatles together.
Disclaimer: None of the rock stars belong to me. Yoko Ono belongs to, I guess, whoever the hell she wants to belong to. But she can take that damn boxcar thing with her.
The PT Cruiser doesn't belong to me yet. Daniel used to belong to me but he doesn't anymore.
Notes: I originally wrote this for Daniel, my boyfriend. I promised him an orgy with David Bowie for his very own and a time travel story with the Beatles. Unfortunately, we broke up before I finished the story, but I had most of it done and I wanted to see what happened at the end.
This story in no way says anything at all about our relationship, so if you know me please don't go looking for clues. Thank you. And I don't feel this way about Yoko Ono. Really. Stop looking at me like that.
Paul is not dead, so pay no attention to the DJ behind the curtain. And the future comes no matter how much you scream…
This chapter's official song: William Shatner's version of "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds"
It was a mistake, all right? We were both seventeen and bored and curious. The parents weren't home and we were sure it was pretty safe. He and I were mature enough to handle it. We had been ready for this moment forever, but we weren't sure that it was ever going to happen before—now we knew, and there was no turning back.
And anyway, I really wanted to visit the 24th century.
What did you think I was talking about? Of course it's time travel. It's been a dream of teenage geeks for ages. Not up there with sex, of course, but…on the whole, actually, I would take the time travel. I don't know about Daniel, of course. He doesn't say very much on the subject, which is pretty cool. It leaves more time for us to talk about more important things, like how to apply the theory of relativity to gym class.
It was actually surprisingly easy to build the time machine. Daniel is an utter genius with computers, and I was weaned on Stephen Hawking and H.G. Wells. We designed the circuits together. I "borrowed" some of the machinery from my uncle's university (he teaches history, but I snuck into the science lab and managed to liberate a few things).
We built it into the PT Cruiser my dad bought for me. I had never driven it because I ride my bike everywhere, so I thought it would be a good idea.
Daniel grinned at me. "This is gonna be great."
"Uh-huh." I stuffed a pack of Kleenex into my backpack. "Okay, I think that's all we need."
"You got the water purification pills?"
"Check," I said.
"The Time-Life 20th Century Timeline book?"
"Also check."
"Packets of Gummi Bears?" Daniel is a diabetic, which means that if his blood sugar gets low, he gets sick and starts acting weird. It's really bad because he might go into a coma. Also, he needs to take insulin every so often. I didn't carry that in my backpack; Daniel's got an insulin pump and a blood level monitor he clips onto his belt.
"Check, although they might melt and stick together. You sure we shouldn't take PEZ instead?"
"That," said Daniel, "is an excellent idea. Plus, we can impress people with the dispensers."
I climbed into the passenger seat of the Cruiser. (I don't have my driver's license, but Daniel does. Which is odd, because out of the two of us, I happen to be the one that does NOT drive like a hyperactive badger.)
Daniel turned on the ignition. "Ready to plumb the depths of time and go where no teenagers, except for that annoying kid in the Back To The Future series, have gone before?"
"Yeah yeah yeah. Turn on the damn thing and let's go."
"Where do you want to go first? Beatles?"
"Well, that was originally the plan…" Daniel and I are both Beatles fans. The original inspiration for our project was that we would go back in time and keep John Lennon from being shot. Well, that was Daniel's idea, anyway. I thought that it was a good idea for us to go back to 1963 and keep JFK from being shot. It sort of cascaded from there, and we finally decided to improvise.
In retrospect, I guess we should have done a little more research on the consequences. It's the famous chaos effect. A butterfly flaps its wings in China and there's a rainstorm in the Amazon. (It's really a lot more complicated than that, but the butterfly example is the one that everybody always uses. Maybe that's why during a rainstorm, I keep seeing people running around trying to kill butterflies.)
But we were young and idealistic and didn't know what the hell we were doing. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I strongly urge you not to try this at home.
Daniel switched on the time travel device and stepped on the gas. The car made a nasty grinding sound.
"Why isn't it working?" he wondered.
"It's in Park," I said. We had hooked it up so that the machine was hooked to the gas. The speedometer showed how many years we went back or forward, and the odometer showed the date. Drive meant going forward and Reverse meant going back. We had originally wanted Neutral to mean being frozen in time, but the natural logistical problems had presented themselves, and we couldn't manage it anyway.
Daniel sighed and shifted it into Drive. "Twenty-fourth century, right?"
"The future!" I raised my fist. "At last, we shall see whether the predictions made by the prophet Gene Roddenberry shall be true. My guess," I added, "is that they will."
As Daniel stepped on the gas, the speedometer flashed. I looked out the window. The tree outside shed its leaves and sprouted them, grew a few inches, then grew some more. Days flashed by and turned into a blur. My house sank and then disappeared, to be replaced with a metal tank and then a rather pretty statue of some kind of bird.
"September first, 2347," Daniel announced. "Everybody out."
I hopped out first and took a big breath of the air. It smelled weird, like it had been recirculated through a musty house several times. "Ew," I announced.
Daniel sniffed the air. "That is a little weird. I guess the air has a slightly different composition, though. Maybe they've discovered a new type of fuel, and we're just smelling the emissions."
"Could be," I said. "Shall we explore?"
The 24th century was not that impressive. My subdivision had been replaced with a park, and the park near my house was a swoopy-looking apartment building. We walked around for a while until Daniel got tired.
I spotted a row of vending machines near the bench he was sitting on. "Wait here. I'm going to get something to drink."
I examined the options available. There was mineral water, something called Zorzamora that I figured was some kind of health drink, starfruit juice, coffee, and Coke. I dug out a buck and fed it into the machine, then pressed the button for a Coke.
The machine beeped. "Unauthorized material inserted in slot." It slid the dollar bill out, where it fluttered to the ground at my feet. "Please insert personal identification credit card."
"But I don't have one!" I protested. "These stupid machines. Why can't I just pay in cash?" I grumbled.
The machine beeped again. "Lack of personal identification credit card sensed. Please stay where you are."
"What? Shit." I looked around to see if anyone had noticed.
Someone tapped me on the shoulder. "Pardon me, miss. Is there a problem?"
"Yeah, the dumb machine won't take my money…" I turned around to face what I assumed was a policeman. He was wearing a brown jumpsuit and a dour expression.
"Ma'am, where is your personal identification credit card? You know you're supposed to have it with you at all times."
"Um…I left it at home."
"That is a finable offense and I am going to have to ask you to come with me."
The future was worse than high school. What had I gotten myself into? "Listen, I was just out for a walk with my boyfriend. I didn't think I'd need it."
The policeman frowned. "Your boyfriend, eh? Where is he?"
I pointed to where Daniel was sitting. "He's over there."
The policeman frog-marched me over to where Daniel was sitting. "Sir, do you know this young lady?"
Daniel stood up. "Yes, she's my girlfriend. Is there a problem?" To me, he whispered, "What the hell did you do?"
"I just wanted a Coke," I muttered.
"I'm going to have to see your relationship permit," the policeman interrupted.
I crossed my legs and shifted on the bench. "This sucks."
Daniel was staring straight ahead. "Next time, I think we ought to go through the future a few years at a time."
After we had failed to produce a relationship permit, we had been hauled off to whatever passed for a police station. The future wasn't so crass as to have anything as obsolete as a holding cell. Instead, we had to sit on a hard plastic bench that was covered by a force field.
"Hey, it was you that originally said the future was going to be just like Star Trek," I said.
"Well, I didn't know that we'd have to apply for a license to kiss!" Daniel slumped on the bench.
The force-field flickered, and a woman dressed in a wrinkled red leotard stepped in. "Are you the two that were caught without a relationship permit?"
"That's us," I muttered.
The woman smiled broadly. "Well, I have good news for you both. The judge is letting you off on a first offense! Our records show that you're both upstanding members of the community, so we think we can let it slide. The pictures on file don't look anything like you, though…"
"So we can go?" Daniel asked hopefully.
"Goodness, no. You've got to apply for a relationship permit! It only costs forty credits."
I stood up. "Uh, no thanks. We decided to break up."
"Things just weren't working out between us," Daniel chimed in. "Nope, no permit. We're just going to go back home now and never see each other again."
The woman wrinkled her forehead. "But…"
I brushed past her. "Thanks anyway. Gotta go."
We waited until we were both safely in the car to breathe.
"I think it would be a very, very bad idea to ever go to the future again," I said.
"I agree. So where do you want to go now?" Daniel gunned the motor.
"Don't do that!" I shrieked. "You're going to use up all the gas and we'll be stuck here."
"Listen, I know what I'm doing." Daniel gunned the motor again. "We have plenty of gas."
"Just don't do it anyways, okay? It's not good for the engine."
"Fine, fine." Daniel turned off the car. "Let's decide where we want to go before I start up the car, okay?"
"You mean when we want to go. I think we should go home for now."