The Decameron 2.0

Day 7.4 Humor - DARK TIMES, INDEED VioletSun5

The floor was not supposed to squish, he was pretty sure. Or at least, it didn't the last time he came here. Must have done the calibrations wrong when he set up the pad this time. Again. Last time he'd found himself inside a Roman archway, in a vast city which looked pretty neat, but unfortunately no one there spoke any English.

The time after that, he'd found himself a few feet underground, trapped save for his pinky finger, which had saved him from the debacle. Turned out the Romans loved piling their trash up in odd places, until it rotted and started to turn to the smelly equivalent of concrete.

This time all he saw was grass, which rolled off into little hills and down toward a swelling lake. That wasn't right. If he'd plotted his trajectory correctly, he should have wound up somewhere in London around 1863. London definitely had buildings then.

A wet smell drifted past on a strong breeze. The traveler grabbed at his hat to prevent its untimely escape. No buildings. No soot. No smoke. Nothing but a blue sky with a few birds in it, and now he would never get to yell at Charles Dickens for making his books so insufferably boring.

The traveler glared at his travel pad--which looked an awful lot like a sad little mid-2000s Segway with an old-style smartphone taped to the handle--and punched the dialpad a few times. It flickered to life, then beeped. 

London, 10,000,000 BCE

A flower of joy bloomed in his chest, then died again with the puff of smoke that emanated from the touchscreen. The date replaced itself with ERROR written in large red letters, along with an error code he could never remember the meaning of. Too many of the damn things.

Maybe weed killer wasn't the right thing to use when trying to distill the capacitor fluids. Maybe using the insides of those old lithium batteries as an ion salt wasn't the greatest idea either. At any rate, the result probably would have been less...explodey. His jacket still had the soot stains to prove it. 

A stand of pine trees separated wherever he was standing from whatever was behind it. He sighed and grabbed the handle of his contraption. Well, I might as well find some shelter, even though I'm stuck here since iron hasn't even been invented yet.

It would be okay. It usually was. This wasn't the worst pickle he'd been in. The Celts had tried to kill him, the last time he'd miscalculated and wound up in the wrong era. He'd just scavenge his pen for metal. He'd be able to rebuild the circuits and go home. He wouldn't be stuck here for all eternity with nothing but dinosaurs for company and one of them definitely wouldn't try to eat him or anything like--

A flying animal coasted overhead. A white mass of its droppings landed on his brand new silk shirt.

"Oh, this is just perfect!"

He threw up his hands, which startled a group of long-legged animals grazing nearby. They bounded off in all directions. His eyes focused on them for a moment, but as soon as he'd spotted them they were gone again, disappeared into the scrub bushes. 

"Wait, hold on!"

The traveler took off across the scrub, kicking his feet up on a few clods of dirt, feet slipping out from beneath him as he chased them across the rolling green. He burst through the stand of pine trees and into a maze of manicured hedges. The traveler blinked once, twice, a dozen times. 

"Rose bushes?"

"Yeah, what of it?"

A man in yellow overalls snipped a protruding stalk from one of the hedges. The traveler shook his head. This doesn't make any sense! 

"There are no roses in 10,000,000 BCE," he said. The gardener lifted the brim of his hat and shot him a look like he'd grown an extra head. He brandished his set of hedge clippers like one might wield a knife. The traveler shrunk under his gaze and held his hands up.

"Good thing it's not 10,000,000 BCE, isn't it?" 

He turned back to the roses and snipped a few more fronds that didn't lay in place with the others. The time traveler punched his dial pad again. It did not flicker to life. He let out a long sigh and looked over at the gardener.

"Would you mind telling me where I am?"

"Regent's Park," the gardener replied without looking up. "But I haven't a clue how you get in here without knowing where you are. You on drugs or something?"

"No, no, definitely not," the traveler insisted, still holding his hands up. The gardener shook his head, rolled his eyes, and turned back to his delicate work.

"At any rate, vehicles aren't allowed off the paths. Get back to it before I call security on you and have you thrown out of here."

"Fine, fine, on my way." He hoisted the machinery into two arms and trudged off toward the asphalt road that snaked itself between entirely ordinary stands of maple trees and flower bushes. A sigh worked its way out of his chest.

If it wasn't 10,000,000 BCE, what year was it?

He made his way up the path and toward the park's entrance. A woman with a baby carriage gave him a strange look as she approached. Her crotch spawn screamed from inside the cot. The time traveler resisted the urge to cover his ears with his hands. 

"Might want to get out of here with that thing," she said. "They're only allowed on private property, you know."

The time traveler let out a groan. "Doesn't anyone around this place mind their own business?"

"Excuse me for helping," she said, not even bothering to hide it when her lips curled downwards and her eyebrows bunched into a sneer. Her baby continued to wail. The time traveler made away as quickly as he could so as not to have to listen to the infernal racket. 

The asphalt spilled out into a concrete courtyard. A sparkling fountain stood in the middle, showering the gaggle of teenage girls at its base with an unpleasant mix of chlorine and pigeon shit. The traveler wrinkled his nose and kept walking. 

He could smell animals off in the distance, carrying in the breeze. He didn't know why people went to look at them in cages, when you could teleport to see perfectly good ones in the Savannah, and not have to subject yourself to the stench of so many of them together in cages.

A racket that could only come from human-driven cars was music to his ears as he approached the main gate. Civilization! He skipped toward it, a spring in his step, ignoring the growing throngs of people as he approached the street. An LED sign flashed from across the road.

"Finally!"

Tuesday, November 7, 2016

10 degrees Celsius

Brought to you by Harrod's!

The traveler's stomach sank into his shoes as he read the message. It was worse than he'd thought. Worse even than dinosaurs. Worse than the Celts, and worse than the trash. Worse even than dinosaurs.

Donald Trump gets elected tomorrow.

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Host's Note: In a completely unplanned act of fate, this story was originally posted not on the eve of the US Presidential election, but on the day the winner of that election became Inaugurated to office (January 2017). Dark times, indeed VioletSun5