Mario flailed his arms and legs wildly, not aware of what was going on. All he understood was that the time machine had vaporized him and reformed him sometime in the past. He had dropped out of the air and had not opened his eyes to see that he was already on the ground. When he finally did peek one open, he stopped his flailing, sat up, and looked around.

"Umm...where am I?"

Mario looked around and saw that he was in some sort of forested area. When he looked behind him, he saw a shack that looked familiar to E. Gadd's. Maybe he hadn't gone back in time, after all. He stood up and walked into the house to see...

"Ah! Who are you!?"

Mario took a closer look at the man. He had extremely unkempt white hair and a white mustache. He had dark circles under his eyes after staying up all night working on some new invention.

"You're Einstein, aren't you?"

"Pardon me, sorry! Always I am mistaken for Prof. Einstein."

Mario looked even closer. "Yes, you are Einstein. I know it. Listen, I'm not here to tour your sh...uh, house, or ask for your autograph, or ask you to prove a theory. I came here from the future, odd as that seems, and I need to know how to get back."

"I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."

"Not mine, it doesn't!" Mario shouted. "I'm a hundred years in the future! I'll be dead by the time I find Luigi again!"

Mario sat down on the ground and sighed. How could he have gone back in time? How could he have hit a button exactly, pulled a lever exactly, and wound up where he was now via an unfinished time machine? It was almost as if some stupid author was writing everything up. Surely that sort of thing couldn't happen in real life.

"I have never met this fellow Luigi," Einstein said to Mario, "but I can assure you he is fine."

"I am not fine!" Luigi responded to Prof. Gadd. "My brother just got sucked into another time! I may never see my older brother again!" Shaking the professor violently by his shoulders, Luigi shouted, "Fix it!"

"I can't!" Prof. Gadd said. Luigi released him. "As a matter of fact, I don't even know how the time machine worked. It never worked on any of the test subjects. He pressed the buttons and levers in the right sequence, I can assure you that, but I don't know how it works. In fact, I haven't developed a way to bring anyone back..."

Luigi knew this already, but all the same he nearly fainted at the answer. "Please, get cracking! We need to bring him back!"

Mario sat slumped in a chair beside a table in Einstein's house. Einstein offered him a cup of tea, which Mario accepted despite the fact that he didn't like tea much. He sipped it, spat it out when it scalded his tongue, and apologized to Einstein.

"Sorry. Hot."

Einstein said nothing, but simply set the teapot back down and sat down in a chair of his own. "You say you came from the future. I have heard of this thing spoken many times in tales, but never have I been able to comprehend something as scientifically advanced as a time machine."

Mario carefully sipped some more of the tea, then set it down and replied. "Some distant future relative of yours named Elvin Gadd created a time machine--beats me how he did it--and I accidentally fell in, activated it, and wound up here. That's it in a nutshell." Mario sighed again. "And to top it all off, I don't think either of us has any knowledge at all as how to get me back."

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

"Not when you're stuck in the 1800s!"

"The year is 1947."

Mario was about to yell more, but paused and looked at Einstein. "Fine. Whatever. But no matter how much I imagine a little exit to the future, it ain't gonna appear." Mario drank the rest of his tea, forgetting about the heat of it, and nearly passed out when he did remember--which it was too late. "You don't mind if I stay here with you in the meantime, do you? With all this craziness going on...?"

"You may most certainly stay in my house," Einstein replied. "However, I daresay it may be a little noisy when I experiment."

Mario felt a little sickening feeling in his stomach, but said nothing. One of these days, he would go back. He was positive of that.