Chapter 2
Isabella's time machine arrived in a cluttered laboratory workshop. There was a crushing sound as it landed on scattered parts and tools. Off to one side was another time machine that looked identical to hers.
"I've been lucky so far," Isabella thought. "I'll be careful in the future where, or rather when, I put the time machine."
The inventor rushed into the room, "My goodness! Who are you? You have come from the future with my completed time machine to show me?"
"Hello, Mr. Onassis," Isabella said. "I'm Isabella Garcia-Shapiro. No, this isn't your time machine. Yours was never completed. My friends and I built this one with information from the Fireside Girls Handbook, along a few notes and drawings of your machine. Well, at first it was a tie machine, but we quickly fixed the spelling error and made it work."
"I'm glad my machine will be of some use, even though I never finish it," Mr. Onassis said. "I was about to give up and leave the country. I've written out a document leaving my incomplete machine to science, and asking that they found a science museum on this spot. That happened by your time, I hope?"
"Yes, yes it did," Isabella said.
"Excellent. Now, what may I do for you while you're here in the past?"
"I came for help in fixing my time machine. The lever is stuck and I can't get all the way back to the future. I went into the far past first and brought back this Viking helmet and this wooly mammoth tusk. But the tusk got stuck in the gears and jammed them."
She produced the two time souvenirs and he took them for a closer look. He looked at both with a magnifying glass, especially inside the helmet. Then he rushed the helmet over to his wood stove and dropped it into a pot of boiling water. After a thorough boiling he returned the dripping helmet to her.
"Why did you do that?" Isabella asked sharply.
"I'm afraid I have bad news," he said. "There are small pieces of skin on the inner rim of the helmet that show signs of smallpox. If you've been carrying it around with you there's a high likelihood that you're infected."
"That could be bad, right?"
"Very. Smallpox can kill you, or scar you for life. They have just begun vaccinations for it in my time. Hopefully in your time you've been inoculated."
"I'm afraid not. Smallpox was eradicated in my time, so they don't inoculate for it any more." Isabella said. She had learned this fact while earning her Knowledge of Eradicated Diseases Achievement Patch.
"Then you must travel to a time where they have the vaccine and get some immediately."
"I will, once you help me fix my time machine."
"I'd be happy to help, but I would like a couple of things in return."
"Yes?"
"First, a chance to look at your Fireside Girls Handbook. I'm curious how to make a time machine that really works."
"Well, normally only Fireside Girls are allowed to look at it... but they haven't been founded yet so I can make you an honorary member. What's the second thing?"
"Please bring me some lunch while you're in the future. Inventing is hungry work."
With the tools and parts available in the workshop the forward gears were quickly repaired. Isabella swore in Mr. Onassis as an honorary Fireside Girl and taught him the song: "We're Fireside Girls, one and all, and together we belong..."
"Now you can read the Time Travel section while I go get the vaccine," she said. "And lunch."
Mr. Onassis nodded, deep into his reading. "Aha! Ingenious. I wouldn't have thought of that..."
Isabella timed her return to the museum carefully. It was the day they first traveled in time, before she and the other Fireside Girls saw the message written in the fossilized dinosaur footprint that told them Phineas needed to be rescued. At that point the other time machine wasn't in the museum and there was no danger of crushing it.
Isabella moved cautiously through the museum to avoid being seen by her past self, heading for the Medical Exhibit. Just as she remembered, there was a test tube containing a sample of smallpox vaccine there. She looked around to make sure no guards were watching, then she took it. She felt bad about stealing from a museum exhibit, but it wasn't as serious an offense as yelling. She planned to return it again once she used it.
Next stop was the museum's Slushy Dawg stand. "Hi Jeremy," she said to the young man operating the stand.
"Hi Isabella. You haven't seen Candice, have you? She was acting a bit weird and I'm worried about her."
"No, not recently. I'd like two Slushy Dawgs, please." (She was starting to get a bit hungry herself.)
"Coming right up," Jeremy said.
Isabella arrived back at the workshop of Mr. Onassis with the familiar swirl of colors and sound effects.
"Hi, Mr. Onassis. I have the vaccine and the food."
Mr. Onassis looked up from his work. "Thank you, Isabella."
He took a Slushy Dawg and ate it with gusto. "This is scrumptious! What do they call these delicacies of the future?"
"Corn dogs."
"I would very much like to go to a time where these corn dogs are available. And thanks to you, I can."
"What do you mean?"
"Using the information from your Handbook I have completed my own time machine. What would be a good date in the future to visit? How about the day you started from?"
"That would work, if you go there after we're gone."
Isabella gave him the date of the tool-getting mission, and a time after which they should be gone.
"You won't land on the exact spot where my time machine was anyway," she said. "Yours is off to the side of mine."
"I could if I wanted to," Mr. Onassis said. "My machine can move in both space and time. Actually, it's harder to make a machine that stays in the same spot. The Earth rotates and moves through space, you know."
Mr. Onassis showed her the hidden controls for moving the machine in space. Just for fun, he set his machine to appear in the same place hers was now. He got into the machine.
"There's a little trouble with the calibration of the lever for backward hops," he said. "If a person doesn't know what he's doing he'll arrive one month later than expected. But that's not a problem because I don't intend to return."
"What?" Isabella asked. "B-but..."
"I want to live in a time where they have those delicious corn dogs," he told her. "Ta-ta now!"
With that, he pulled the lever and vanished.
Isabella was horrified. She had messed up time. With no old time machine in the museum, what would happen to the time-travel she had already experienced? What was she going to do now?
