My Time Machine

My time machine doesn’t work too well at the moment. It hurts my face now sometimes and gives me crushing headaches when I get back from the past and all I can do is lay in bed and wait for things to get better.

I made my time machine with transistors and other shit with wires and such. Burnt my fingers with a soldering iron at least five times. I put real sweat equity into this invention, if that’s the correct term.

The cockpit seat is from a 1970 Ford Thunderbird. It came out of my Daddy’s car.

I went back in time and stole it. Or salvaged it, if that’s a better word.

It’s pretty fucken cherry, his car is. Or was. I smashed it up with a maul from the garage so I could take the seat for my time machine. It’s a bucket seat my Daddy ordered special back in the day. He loved that car. Even more than his own family, not to get all maudlin, if that’s the right word.

I saw his face when he realized how thoroughly I’d damaged his car.

It was the sour expression of my dreams. He looked aghast, if that’s an actual word.

Last week, when I was in caveman times, I saw what you might call a tribe. They were all crouched in the dirt digging for roots or something.

The whole sky looked different back then. The clouds sort of glistened if that’s the right word. They looked wet hanging up there. Like sopping laundry dripping on a clothesline.

Time changes the world in surprising ways. My time machine taught me that.

I thought about building some wings for my time machine. Or a propeller maybe. Imagine being able to fly over cavemen. They’d think I was some kind of a sky-god or something. Or a big scary bird of prey maybe. They might assume I was a threat and throw sticks at me.

The tribe looked really hairy and grubby. I was relieved when they never noticed me. They just kept grubbing for roots or worms or whatever was under all that dirt. They were intently focused on their activity. I guess they were foraging, if that’s the right word.

I got kind of bored after a while so I hustled my ass back to the present day. My time machine started smoking black sooty smoke that made me choke and cough. It filled the whole kitchen. The smoke detector shrilled. I had to turn on the vent above the stove to help clear the air.

My migraine came back, worse than before. The smell of the smoke was so pungent it burned against my sinuses and made my throat feel bleedy and raw. Like I drank a glass of shredded needles.

Someday I’ll install something in my time machine to get rid of the smoke. Like a filtration system or whatever. Something with a hose. And suction. A dispersal unit. I could use vacuum cleaner parts maybe. And a dense, loofa-type sponge to catch all the impurities, if that’s the right word. Ionize the molecules of the smoke to make them benign, if that makes any sense. That way the smoke wouldn’t have a chance to choke me with carcinogens or what have you.

I guess I should’ve brought back a rock or two from my recent caveman trip. Like a souvenir. They don’t call it the Stone Age for nothing. There were stones all over that place.

Maybe the tribe I spied had some of those flints that scientists like to collect. I could’ve stolen some and made money off them maybe somehow. Sell them to a natural history museum or whatever.

But it would be wrong to steal from cavemen. Because y’know, how stupid they are and stuff. They’re primitive if that’s the right word. No, I’d feel bad taking advantage of ignorant cavemen.

My Daddy on the other hand deserved every bit of the damage I did to his car. He neglected me as a kid. Roughed-up my mom something awful sometimes. He was mean when he drank and he drank all the time. He was a bonafide abuser, if that’s the right word. I don’t feel bad about him or anything like that. Never will. Not even at the end of time.

Besides, I needed that sweet bucket seat. It’s cool as shit and really hugs the butt.

I should get some headphones too, but money’s kind of tight at the moment.

I thought about going back to 1939 with a pocketful of dimes and buying a bunch of mint-condition Superman comics and then selling them in the present day for a million dollars. But then I remembered that all my dimes would be from the future to the people in the past. The clerks at the drug stores would think they were counterfeit coins or some kind of a prank or something and wouldn’t accept them. Might even call the cops on me.

I needed to find some old, Depression-appropriate dimes. Or nickels would work too, I guess.

Later, I set the date on my time machine to July 14, 1789 to see the beginning of the French Revolution. I used to go out with this chick, Julie Westburg, who was into that sort of stuff. She was a history major for some reason. Her thesis was on something about the French Revolution. I forget what, exactly. I was the science guy in the relationship.

Anyway, I figured if I were to witness the actual French event, it might make her jealous. I could really rub it in her face. I thought about taking a selfie with Napoleon or whatever. That would really get her goat. Then she’d regret breaking up with me after only two dates.

And I would just look at her and go, “Ha ha.”

I’d say, “I met Napoleon!” and hold the photographic evidence right up to her smug little face. “Yeah, that’s right, baby. THE Napoleon! How ya like me now?”

So on Friday I rode my time machine back to that past date but I forgot I lived in Illinois so I ended up an entire Atlantic ocean away from that whole “storming the Bastille” business. Nothing really happened in Illinois in 1789 so I came back after like, six boring, pointless minutes. All I saw were trees and a few tweeting birds. The sky looked the same as today, which was a surprise.

I thought about modifying my time machine so it could move through time AND space. Build like, a quantum compensator or somesuch thing. That way I could go anywhere anytime. I could watch Jesus get born and see if he really had a halo (I had always wondered if halos were warm or hummed like a lightsaber). I could also warn J.F. Kennedy about his incoming headshot. Or his little brother who met a similar fate. I could kill Hitler and rescue the Jews. Free the slaves in the South. Help drop the atomic bombs on Japan. Be a real participant in history instead of just a bored, passive spectator after the fact.

I rode the bus to Radio Shack, excited by the timeless possibilities, but they didn’t have the right cable adapters I needed for such a drastic modification.

I put the project on the back burner for now. I still intended to do it. And once I’ve finished fine-tuning my time machine, I’ll try that Napoleon thing again too.

Anyway, yesterday I decided I wanted to see some dinosaurs.

This would be a tricky endeavor, if that’s the right word. I had no doubt dinosaurs lived in Illinois during dinosaur times. They basically ran the planet. They would’ve been everywhere. We mammals were just pitiful, second-class citizens back then. Just little fuzzy mole rats hiding underground. Waiting for the big meteor to hit that would clear the way for our ascendancy, if that’s the right word.

No, but the trickiest tricky part was figuring out what kind of dinosaurs would be the coolest to observe. See, there were all these different epochs, if that’s the right word. Different dinosaurs lived during different spans of time.

I didn’t want to see just any old dinosaur. It’s like when you take a trip to the zoo and rush past the boring animals like sheep and goats to get to the lions and chimpanzees.

Personally, I liked the polar bears the best but always felt bad for them. I could tell they were sweltering in the summer climate. They had their own swimming pool in the enclosure but I’m sure the water was tepid at best. They needed real relief. Something colder than a lukewarm dip.

After I put the finishing touches on my time machine, maybe I’ll kidnap the polar bears out of the zoo and set them free in the Ice Age. That would be cool.

I’m sure they’d appreciate it.

Anyway, I have this dinosaur book called, “Informal Interviews with Prehistoric Creatures.” It’s a kid’s book from 1975 but it’s based on actual empirical evidence, if that’s the correct term. It was published by National Geographic so there you go. The information is valid, scientifically. And it has lots of neat illustrations. My favorite dinosaur has always been the ankylosaurus because it looks like a gigantic turtle with spiny armor and a tail like a Medieval mace. Those things were hugely massive. Plus, my Daddy introduced me to those Japanese Godzilla movies when I was little and Anguirus, the ankylosaurus-type monster, was always my favorite. Showing me those old movies was the only good thing he ever did to me.

The dinosaur book said they lived during the Cretaceous Period, about 67 million years ago.

I admit, that big number made me a little nervous. My time machine hadn’t performed a time jump anywhere near that distance. I’d be taking my life in my hands.

Plus, giant dinosaurs would be roaming around when I got there. I’d be materializing into a world ruled by Godzillas and such. If my machine suddenly popped into the past under a lumbering Tyrannosaurus rex, I’d get flattened flat. And my time machine too. Even the leaf-eating brontosaurous used to be called a Thunder Lizard and could squash a guy like me paper thin without even noticing.

And then millions of years later, a paleontologist would uncover my modern humanoid skeleton and the broken pieces of my time machine and say, “What the fuck?”

But I screwed up my courage—if that’s a real phrase—and decided to travel backwards 67 million years ago and take pictures of an ankylosaurus. It was do or die and so on.

I’d never been an adrenaline junkie or anything but I can face danger and challenge myself if I have to.

And now I had to. For science.

For the pioneer spirit of it or something. Whatever it’s called.

I had attached a modified digital alarm clock to a red cobalt rod and ran copper wires into a rubber throttle I’d fashioned from a tire off my Daddy’s 1970 Ford Thunderbird. That throttle controlled the backwards passage of time. I had made a trajectory lever for everything: forward-throttle, reverse-throttle, and brake. They were like the controls on a train, with the ties of the track representing centuries.

I chose rubber as the material because time has a curve to it. My time machine worked by bending, if that’s the right word to describe it.

I kept meaning to affix a super loud horn next to the bucket seat but never got around to it. Oh well, maybe next time.

I wore my old high school football helmet in case things got bumpy.

Safety is the skeleton key to success, if that’s an actual saying.

I set the controls to May 21st, 67 Ma. “Ma” stands for Megaannum (I looked up that term and it’s a real literal word). The month and day were for the most part arbitrary. I wasn’t really concerned about the weather. I’m pretty sure every season back then was tropical. I just decided to pick my birthday as a little private joke to myself.

I had stolen a seatbelt from my Daddy’s car. I expected some time-travel turbulence on the trip. The years would become mountains. Up and over, under and through. It could get choppy.

I filled a paper bag with a tuna sandwich, potato chips, an apple, and a can of Mountain Dew. Lunchtime would lose all meaning in the vortex but my stomach wouldn’t know that.

I also brought my toolbox just in case I had to make emergency repairs in order to get back to now. Be Prepared, if that’s still a Boy Scout motto (I didn’t even reach Webelos). It’s nevertheless a wise credo to live by, if that’s the right word.

I eased into the comfy bucket seat, fastened the chin strap on my helmet, and then started flipping switches. Once I was enclosed in a magnetic force field, I pulled the rubber reverse-throttle and electricity crackled like thunder in my skull. The years melted away. Ozone smoke billowed from the three exhaust pipes under the vibrating chassis.

The centuries poured out from under me, clicking like a million Geiger counters. The numbers on the readout blurred like a riffling deck of cards.

My head felt bad almost immediately. I remembered that I forgot to bring along a bottle of Anacin. I began to gasp, like my lungs were full of dust. Like I was installing fiberglass without a protective mask filtering my inhales.

I watched the numbers on the digital readout spin backwards. They whizzed by so fast that reading them was impossible. My time machine rocked like a rowboat in a gale, if that’s the right word.

And then I yanked back on the brake and my time machine shuddered to a stop. I thought my eyeballs were going to explode. My teeth ached and I spit out my fillings.

I had guesstimated the date but the numbers had settled down and they checked out. I had parked safely in the Cretaceous Period. My head sang, and my ears popped with the release of the painful pressure.

I was hidden in a foggy mist that took several minutes to lift.

The jungle slowly revealed itself. Everything was immense. The color green hurt my eyes just looking at it. It was too green. It was so green it wasn’t even green anymore. It was the undistilled concept of green, if that makes any sense. Like my tiny rods and cones had swallowed a whole ocean of chlorophyll.

Then I made the mistake of looking up at the sky.

Oh my God.

It was deep blue music, like the symphony of the planet. The color cut into my mind like a sky-sized straight razor and my brain bled blue. It poured out and created the oceans. I was drowning in pure azure. If that makes any sense.

I closed my eyes but the sky was still there inside me. It imposed itself, if that’s the right word. I tried to ride the wave and calm myself down. I breathed.

And then I heard thunderous footsteps behind me. They vibrated the entire terrain.

I turned around and opened my eyes. Through blue dissipating mist the behemoth appeared before me. But it wasn’t an ankylosaurus.

It was a tyrannosaurus. I saw it plain as day. I didn’t need a guide book to identify it. I’d seen it in so many movies and museums and comic books that it was like recognizing an old pet.

I felt my bladder release from fear, warming my jeans. I tried to breathe. I couldn’t breathe.

I had wanted Anguirus.

I got Godzilla.

The cavernous nostrils in its massive snout snorted and snuffed with the power and volume of a locomotive smokestack.

This wasn’t what I’d signed up for. Being eaten, I mean. Meeting my demise all the way back in the Cretaceous Period.

Nobody had been born who could mourn me yet. Everything I knew was millions of years away. I was stranded several millennia away from home.

I began to hyperventilate, like my lungs had deflated and stayed that way. The oppressive blue sky had been blotted out by the towering beast above me.

I did not want to faint but I was too shocked to run. My legs had become petrified pegs.

I felt. I felt. I can’t even think of the right words right now.

I let myself fall back. Running was not an option. I landed on my back. I felt the undergrowth beneath me. A cushion of moss. I closed my eyes.

And waited until the danger passed.

And eventually, it did. I don’t know how long I lay there. The concept of time had ceased to be meaningful. But the dinosaur rumbled off into the jungle, leaving me alive.

Maybe I was too small a snack to bother with. Like a potato chip crumb at the bottom of a bag of Lay’s. There comes a time when you just throw the bag away. It becomes empty enough to toss into the trash. Sucking up the last few salty crumbs is just too much work for too little satisfaction. It just makes a greasy mess of your hands at that point.

That was me. I was just a greasy little potato-chip crumb.

I sat back in the time-machine saddle and set the destination for the present day. My now. The right now.

When I arrived back in my kitchen, I realized I hadn’t taken any pictures of the Late Cretaceous Period.

My head was killing me.

I lay down and recalled my latest adventure. I wondered where to go next.

I’ve often thought about driving my time machine forward into the future but the very idea makes me way too afraid to actually attempt it. The future should be left to its own devices, if that’s the right way to phrase it.

I don’t want to know what the future holds.

But once I perfect my time machine, after I iron out the bugs, I intend to return to the Cretaceous Period and kidnap a Tyrannosaurus rex.

I’ve already started drawing up blueprints for a tractor beam. It’ll run on distilled plutonium fluid that I’ll pump through a magnetized intake manifold.

I’ll hover over the biggest Tyrannosaurus rex I can find (my time machine will also double as a gyrocopter by then) and capture the giant carnivorous theropod in my tractor-beam force field. If theropod is the correct designation. I think it is.

And then I’ll travel back to the near-present and set the gargantuan beast free in my Daddy’s driveway.

I’ll remember to get pictures this time.