OUR TIMELESS CAPSULE

Last week a couple moved into the house next door. We were relieved. It’s six months now since old man Simpson passed on and left the property deteriorating. So, on Saturday morning, Betsy baked a cake and we went in to meet our new neighbors. We had barely managed to introduce ourselves when the husband, an angry-looking man bulging in a tattered vest said, “Hey, Sam, what’s that thing in your garden?”

           “Ed, ......” began his wife, Ellen, who was more than a foot shorter than him with an angry bruise across one cheek.

           He glared at her and threw me a quick smile.

           “It’s our time machine,” I answered.

           He snorted. “That’s a good one! I can see we’re going to get along just fine!”

           Betsy told me that he didn’t laugh the following morning when he looked over the fence and saw two trestles standing there with no sign of the capsule. “Your, ha! ha! The time machine’s gone, Missus! I suppose your husband’s gone off in it?”

           “Yes, actually, he has.”

           She didn’t wait for a response but fled indoors in order to avoid questions.

           I built it twenty years ago. “It’s time you cleaned up the yard, Sam. It’s full of junk and the pile grows higher every month. I see you’ve thrown that old computer out now. It's right next to the old TV set and that troublesome printer you threw out. Is that the start of an electronic waste dump? It’s a pity you can’t join all that stuff up into one piece and fly it out.”

           That’s exactly what I did. In a secondhand bookstore downtown, I found a thin Do-It-Yourself manual published by ‘Fantasy Inc.’ entitled “Build Your Own Time Machine”. To Betsy’s delight, the junk heap steadily decreased in size as I used one item after another in my complicated construction. It took a couple of years of slow work to complete the project. I let my imagination loose, improvising on the parts and assembly as I went along cheerfully and I spent countless hours sipping beer and fantasizing. I dreamed at length about weird and wonderful journeys into history and the future trips that I knew I would never make.

           One morning I accidentally found out how to make it go. I was sitting in the capsule as I often did, sipping a beer and dreaming for a little while. Deep in my reverie, I switched on the PC which was wired up to a discarded but apparently not yet lifeless battery from Betsy’s old Morris Minor. With one finger tripping playfully over the keys like a concert pianist, I casually typed “Take me to visit Napoleon Bonaparte.”

           There was a flash of light and a riffling noise and I was standing in a muddy field in front of a small group of men in uniform. A familiar-looking short man in a dark blue uniform turned towards me and said something unintelligible. I collected my wits quickly. “I regret, sir, that I do not speak French.”

         “You should learn,” he answered in heavily accented English, peering at the can of beer in my hand. “As soon as you can. When it is all mine, French will be the only language allowed.”

           “I will, sir.” I lied, knowing more than him.

           “What is zat pile of junk doing here?” he called to one of his adjutants, pointing at my time machine and forgetting to switch back to French. “Get rid of it at once!”

           At that moment there was a bugle call and they scampered off, leaving me breathing hard. I jumped into the seat, a rickety cane garden chair with three wobbly legs and the fourth corner supported on a short pile of old text books. “Take me home.” I typed frantically, vowing to learn touch-typing instead of French.

           Back at the house I headed for the liquor cabinet and poured myself a hefty scotch. “At eleven in the morning,” said Betsy, walking in with a yellow duster in her hand. “Really, Sam, you’re turning into an alcoholic!”

           “B...B...Betsy,” I stammered, “listen to this!”

           Her eyes grew larger and larger. “There’s place for two in that thing, isn’t there? Let’s do it, Sam. Now!”

           “Do what?”

           “Let’s go and see, er......., Adam and Eve!”

           “Take us to the Garden of Eden,” I typed when we had squeezed in.

           Flash, bump, scrape. “There’s Eve!” I said. “Some figure, huh? Look at those boo…”

           “Shush, Sam! We’re in the Garden of Eden! This is fantastic!” Betsy squealed with excitement.

           We begin to make trips. Betsy went down to the bookstore and came back with a thick volume of The History of the World.

           “This’ll be our travel catalog,” she said. “We’ll look up interesting things in here, type one into the computer, and go visit. We should also christen the machine, make it sound like something. How about Our Timeless Capsule?”

“Sounds great,” I said.

           We’ve been at it for years now, and have grown casual about Our Timeless Capsule. We talk about it and show it to people. But we have never allowed anyone else inside it. What if they couldn’t get back?

           I came home from a short trip to watch a historic golf game in Scotland and found Betsy at the kitchen window.

           “Our new neighbor has been hanging over the fence all morning, waiting to see if you come back. Was he there when you arrived?”

           “No. He missed it. He’ll be furious.”

           The front doorbell rang. We looked at each other. “Guess who?” we chorused.

           It was them. He was holding his wife’s arm in a vice, the skin white around his grip. The bruise on her cheek was yellow. I stared at it.

           “New house. Ellen walked slap into the edge of the door,” explained Ed, noticing the direction of my glance.

           I nodded. “Want to come in?”

           He pushed in past her and turned to face me. “Look here, neighbor, that time thing of yours - it really goes?”

           “Sure, it does.”

           “Can you take me somewhere?”

           “Sorry, Ed, I can’t. We have rules. No one is allowed in except Betsy and I.”

           “I see. Got a beer?”

           We sat down and sipped from cans. The women disappeared into the kitchen and I heard low voices and the clink of teacups. 

           “So, how do you like the new neighborhood, Ed?” I asked.

           “Seems fine. Can’t I sit in that thing, just to see what it feels like?”

           “Sorry, Ed. Not allowed. You guys got any children?”

           “Two. Married. Where’d you get that thing anyway?”

           “Oh, I built it. Years ago. Where do your children live, Ed?”

           “One in Australia and one in the city. You got plans?”

           “Plans for what?”

           “To build that machine thing of yours.”

           He kept coming back to it. We finally managed to get them out of the house and went to rest for a while.

           “He beats her, Sam. You should see what the top of her arm looks like where he punches her.”

           “Yeah. Real nice guy, our new neighbor. We may have to discourage him if he becomes a nuisance.”

           He was back next evening, dragging his wife along. We sat out on the verandah and he asked more questions about the time machine. In the kitchen, Ellen showed Betsy another bruise on the top of her thigh.

           “He kicked her! He’s an animal, Sam. How can we stop them from coming in here?”

           “Tomorrow evening we’ll be out.”

           “Where are we going?”

           “Anywhere. Let’s take a trip for the whole weekend.”

           “Good idea. He can look at the trestles for two days while he drives himself crazy.”

           We spent the weekend in Rome in 1510, watching Michelangelo working on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. We strolled around the narrow streets and wandered into the studios of other artists and sculptors. We forgot our nasty neighbor. At lunchtime we sat on a stone fountain at the edge of a square and ate sandwiches. Food is always a problem on these trips because we have no way of paying and often no way of communicating with the locals, so we solve the problem by bringing our own food and playing dumb. We spent an uncomfortable night cramped up in the capsule. 

           On Sunday evening at about nine, we walked back to where we had left the machine, climbed in, and typed in the command “Take us home.”

           He was hanging over the fence as I opened the hatch.

           “Where’ve you been?” he demanded, loudly.

           “Oh, flitting about,” I said in my most maddening voice. “Here and there. You know how it is.”

           “I don’t believe a word of what you say! That thing can’t fly - it’s just a pile of junk! Look at it! I suppose you’ve been at the beach all weekend?”

           “More or less,” I said, wanting to get inside.

           We wished him goodnight and walked across the lawn.

           As I headed for the bathroom, there was a loud knocking on the door.

           “I’ll get it!” called Betsy.

           I heard women’s voices and the sound of crying. I ran downstairs and found Betsy holding Ellen, who was sobbing.

           “He hit her again, Sam. Look at her face!”

           “I’ll call the police,” I said, turning to the phone.

           The door burst open and Ed stood there, chest heaving and eyes blazing. “You’ll do no such thing! Get away from that phone! Come on, Ellen! Home! Now!” He grabbed her arm and dragged her off.

           I went into the kitchen and took a beer out of the fridge. Popping the ring, I walked outside and strolled over to the time machine, my quiet and peaceful haven in troubled times. Opening the hatch, I climbed into the chair and switched on the computer.

           “Where are you going now?” He was back at the fence.

           “Uh, nowhere. Just sitting here.” The sound of Ellen’s crying came clearly across from their living room window. He looked in that direction and said, “Bloody woman! I’ll smash her one day.”

           I nodded and typed, “Take me to the Beginning of Time.”

           The sobbing grew louder.

           He jumped over into my garden. “She’s driving me crazy, the bitch!”

           It was impulsive and inspirational. I clambered out hastily. “You still wanna sit in here, Ed?”

           “Do I ever!”

           “Okay. Climb in. Carefully now! Don’t touch anything, okay?”

           He was in the chair, leaning back to see how the hatch closed when I reached in and hit the ‘Enter’ button…