Outta Time Chapter 11: The Unbelievable Conversation, a don't starve fanfic

Chapter 11, everybody! In which the writer needs to get back on track and yet wonders how knowing who the president is in the future is any evidence of it….

Wilson slowly walked back to the Carter residence, turning over his delivery in his head. The longer he thought about it, the slower his pace became.

How, in the name of Einstein, Newton, and Galileo, was he supposed to explain time travel to someone who hadn't even invented it yet?

Wilson reached the back entrance to their garage and sighed. There was no way to explain it without sounding ridiculous. And to be honest, he wasn't looking forward to being committed in 1955—if memory served, they still found electroshock therapy acceptable.

He heard the back door open—curious, he eased around the side of the garage.

"It's ten o' clock!" Charlie chided.

"I'll only be a minute!" Maxwell said.

"At least put some ice on that!"

"I'll be fine!"

Ice?

I was hanging up a clock in the bathroom, slipped, fell, hit my head—

That was it!

Wilson went across the street and sat on the public mailbox—no need to interrupt the man while he was inventing the only way for Wilson to get home.

As he waited, he couldn't help but marvel at the neighborhood. The Carter residence was the only one with lights still on, for one. The lawns were all manicured, the streets were all clean…Wilson couldn't help but recall Happy Days again, and reflected that if he ended up stuck in 1955, it wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

Except that Willow wasn't here.

He couldn't help but worry over that—if he failed to get to 1985, how would the space-time continuum handle his absence? Would Willow simply think he had bailed? How long would it take to find Professor Carter's body? When they found it, would she think the worst? Or would she think the worst of him?

The clock tower bonged—wow, he could hear it from here. He wondered how the neighbors felt about the noise.

He counted it out as it bonged the hour—eleven. He had been sitting there for about an hour. Professor Carter was probably finished.

Wilson hopped off the mailbox, jogged across the street, and banged on the door next to the garage door.

After a few moments, he tried again. Professor Carter couldn't have gone to bed already—

The door opened and Professor Carter stuck his head out, wearing his usual look of irritation.

"What?" he snapped. "Oh wait, it's you—come to break another mug?"

It took Wilson a moment to recover—he had been expecting Professor Carter's hair to be darker and his face to be less lined, yes, but he hadn't expected him to be close to his height when he was a head taller in 1985. "No, actually—"

"What then? Oh wait, let me guess—you're with the Coast Guard."

Wilson glanced down in irritation at his vest—again with the sailor thing? "No—"

"Then what possessed you to knock on my door in the middle of the night? Don't you know that Shanter's the city that always sleeps? Go bother someone else."

Wilson stuck his foot in the door before Professor Carter could slam it shut. Regrettably, that meant that he slammed it on Wilson's foot instead.

"Do you have a death wish or something?" Professor Carter asked, opening the door again so Wilson could extricate his foot.

"No," Wilson hissed, resisting the urge to clutch his foot and hop up and down—he had seen that on the telly, and he wasn't sure what possible purpose it could serve. "I'm here to see you. I came here in a time machine that you invented, and I need your help to get back to the year nineteen-eighty-five."

He was prepared for disbelief, or irritation.

He was not prepared for laughter.

"Okay, that's a good one," Professor Carter chuckled. "And the delivery—I've never seen anyone give a joke that straight-faced."

"It's not a joke—"

"Really? Then tell me: who's president in 1985?"

"Ronald Regan—"

"The actor? Is Jerry Lewis the secretary of defense? No wait—Dean Martin is."

"How about a look at my driver's license then?" Wilson asked, fishing it out and handing it over. "Look at the date—I'm not even born yet!"

"Do you have any idea how easy this is to fake?"

"Then tell me how easy this is to fake—"

"I'm going to bed," Professor Carter declared, shaking his head and flicking the license back at Wilson. "Goodnight, future-boy."

"No wait!" Wilson yelled as the door slammed in his face. "I know how you got that bump on your head! You were putting a clock up in the bathroom, fell, hit your head, and when you came to you had the idea for the flux capacitor! The very thing that makes time travel possible," he trailed off, when it became evident Professor Carter wasn't going to open the door again.

He was ready to turn and leave when the door did indeed open again, and Professor Carter stuck his head back out, disbelief etched on his face.

"How did you know that?"

Got it.

"I'll show you."