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Adventure Journal of Dr. Horace S. Browntrout
120 million years A.D.
I began my sojourn to the future in the year 1911, using the mark IV version of the temporopede. Unlike a velocipede bicycle, which moves through space, the temporopede remains stationary whilst moving through time.
The temporopede remains in place by means of a weighted wooden wedge placed beneath the rear wheel, with the larger front wheel elevated above the ground to allow the tyre freedom of motion. Betwixt the two tires I have placed a chain comprised of the rare element impervinite. This metal has the unique property of emitting energetic vibrations. I discovered that its fluidity is further enhanced when placed near a clock. I observed that when I set a clock to a future time while spinning the impervinite chain, the clock disappeared and then re-appeared at the time I set the clock to! Working from this observation, I fixed a rather large cuckoo clock to a pedestal. I modified the clock face so that instead of 12 hours, it displays ten years at each numeric interval. Thus, it was possible to set the clock to 120 years in the future.
Then I ran the impervinite chain through the temporopede, set the clock to 30 years hence for a trial run. What I found when I arrived in Wooly Acres, England of 1941 was a hellscape of bombs being dropped from extremely loud, fast, high-flying aero-machines quite unlike anything we have here today. Also, the people of this time no longer use Mrs. Right Away’s Tincture of Opium Cure All or Carry On Sir John Potted Meat Product, and I must say that their foods and medicines seem much inferior to that of my contemporaries. Coming back to 1911 was as easy as moving the hands of the clock backwards and spinning the chain by depressing the foot pedals in a reverse motion.
Back in the workshop, I added a rear seat to the machine so that my hirsute saysquack (or sasquatch or bigfoot, if you prefer) friend Stanley might accompany me on the next expedition. After inspecting the impervinite chain for any cracks and retooling the cuckoo release mechanism, I filled a wicker handlebar basket with some of my wife Effie’s beef pasties, a bottle of sherry, a wedge of Cotswold cheese, a few semi-stale digestive biscuits, Mrs. Right Away’s Wild Beast Tamer, Soporific & Anodyne, a pair of wellies for myself and Stanley (in case, as I suspect, spherical atmospheric heating should cause the ice caps to melt and the sea level to rise, as I suspect will occur as a result of man’s profligate use of coal and petrol) and an aid and assistance horn. At the last moment, I also decided to bring Danny Jim Hopalong VII (the great-great grandson of Danny Jim Hopalong I), my silky white rex rabbit…thinking it will do for him to broaden his horizons a bit.
Stanley and I adjusted the chin straps on our expedition pith helmets, and I placed a pair of goggles over Danny Jim Hopalong’s eyes, should we find ourselves buffeted by the strong winds of the temporal vortex. After much grumbling, I convinced Stanley to attach the ends of what I am calling a “seat belt” to their buckler clasps to prevent our rude ejection from our perches on the temporopede. Stanley is convinced that his position at the rear of the machine will prevent him from flying forward, should any mishap befall us, but after much cajoling on my part, followed by a (somewhat pedantic, I am sorry to say) diatribe on my part, about how these life-saving devices will be used on all manner of vehicles in the future, he let out a sigh, rolled his eyes, but finally assented to be “buckled in.”
I set the clock hands to their furthest position: all the way to 120 years in the future. Then, without further ado, I donned my goggles and my thick, white calfskin mittens, grasped the handlebars, and Stanley and I began furiously peddling the temporopede.
What I did not account for, was the sheer power conducted by the thigh muscles of a healthy adult saysquack (or bigfoot, if you will) into the cast iron foot pedals impelling us forward, as Stanley was enthusiastic to begin our journey (and thus to arrive at our destination with greater dispatch and unbuckle his seat belt upon our arrival). Previously, I tried to explain to Stanley that both haste and tardiness are concepts rendered irrelevant by our mode of circumlocution through time. Looking back, I do not know that the lesson bore much meaning for him, as saysquacks tend to “live in the now” as it were.
As we began pedaling, all light and sound bent, extended, and merged together. The clouds above Effie’s garden at our Wooly Acres home fell away like an image distorted by ripples in a pond, but this was a trick of limited mammalian perception. For the clouds of home did not depart from us at such great speed; rather we shot through them with a rapidity unknown to any vehicle constructed by man.
After just a few breathless moments of pedaling, Stanley’s foot pedals broke off and were whisked away in the time vortex. The diminutive rear wheel of the temporopede came unhinged, and spun away helplessly into the void. As I turned to him, a look of terror crossed Stanley’s visage; I reached over and grasped his paw. Danny Jim Hopalong VII poked his head trepidatiously out of the wicker basket, his whiskers bent in different directions, confused, I am sure, about why he could no longer smell the carrots in our garden patch.
I stopped pedaling, and pulled back on the brake to decelerate out of the vortex. I had the perilous sensation of free falling from a great height, but this was impossible, as we were not traveling through space, but time. A horrible sound commenced, like the singing of a bomb as it races toward the ground. I clapped the basket shut to prevent injury to my curious rabbit, and wrapped my calfskin-mittened hands around the handlebars with a white-knuckled grip. With a final thud, we touched solid ground. Stanley and I were flung from the temporopede with our bicycle seats still attached to our rear ends with the seat belts, which remained coupled to their buckler clasps. The cuckoo clock clanged and its mechanical bird shot out of its hatch in the side of the clock, only to peep twice faintly, and then fall to the Earth, head down, its legs pointed heavenward, still twitching on their springs. Thankfully, although the temporopede was crumpled on its side and in no fit state, the wicker basket opened and Danny Jim Hopalong VII hopped out and immediately began nibbling at a flower nearby, as though nothing more exciting had occurred than the tidying of his night soil tray.
After Stanley, Danny Jim Hopalong VII and I recovered from the shock of our distance-less travel, I took out a pair of field glasses and peered through them to see if I could apprehend any part of the “old” Wooly Acres. Instead of the damp meadows and fields of Midlands England, I saw smoke belching forth from several volcanoes to the south. The air was sulphurous and foul. Lava rivers and liquid tar lakes boiled and oozed nearby. We appeared to be standing in a highland region. Strange, forbidding hoodoos, spires and rock formations abounded, similar to those found in the American Southwest. There was no trace of humanity’s presence, not even a forlorn, overgrown graveyard.
Of course, I expected a few changes in the landscape of Wooly Acres over the course of 120 years—perhaps our compost pile might have grown, or the apple sapling I planted would be matured and tended to by my dedicated and enlightened progeny…perhaps a great-great grandchild of Effie and mine would be gamboling about in its boughs barefoot with a homemade slingshot in one hand and an apple in the other. Certainly if well-tended, the old estate would be more or less intact, less a shingle or two… But no. I now wondered: could this even be Wooly Acres?
Although admittedly I lacked a firsthand knowledge of the powerful forces of natural change and evolution, I could not help but stand with eyes agog at the tremendous cataclysm wrought in only 120 years’ time! It was then that Stanley showed me how one of the customized clock springs was wound far too tightly. I mis-calibrated it by several orders of magnitude. Because of this error, combined with Stanley’s vigorous pedaling, I estimated that we were not 120 years in the future, but 120 million years!
I looked at Stanley with downcast eyes. The entire human race was gone, leaving me as its sole representative (…well, considering Stanley’s progress towards the project of humanization I suppose you could more rightly call this assemblage the last 1.5 humans). If the Romans were mighty enough to leave traces of themselves millennia after their existence, surely we English could do better than that! All record of everything we ever created was gone. How could this smoking ruin be home, I asked him. “Umph?” he said, shrugging his shoulders. I gazed around at this violent, liquid metal Hadean hothouse…and saw that we were in a field of brilliant pumpkin-colored flowers of the kind Danny Jim Hopalong VII had just nibbled. Though the air was a tad stale, it seemed a nice enough spot. Before attending to repairs the temporopede required in order to get us home, I pulled out a checkered red and white picnic blanket and Stanley and I spread it out on the ground. I decided that humanity might be gone—from Wooly Acres, at least—but we needn’t fuss about it now…at least not until we each ate one of Effie’s beef pasties while they were still warm, and imbibed a glass of sherry out of the fine crystal glasses we brought with us.
“Well, you know what this means, Stanley?” I said. “With no one else about, we are superior beings! We may not be able to propagate, but at least we can be kings for a day!” Stanley umph-ed in agreement and clinked glasses with me in a toast, before quaffing his sherry. Then we all were aware of a peculiar stinging or pinching sensation. As we sat and enjoyed our leisurely repast, our picnic blanket was dissolving below us, being devoured, as it were, by the flowers we had been so recently admiring (admiring gustatorily, in the case of Danny Jim Hopalong VII). We discovered with a start that my trousers had holes in them and Stanley’s fur was gone from his legs and rear end, rendering him completely nude from the waist down, for the first time in his life.
We arose from our lethargic reverie, to observe that the flowers were moving all about us. On closer inspection, we saw they had mouths with small but sharp incisors, and they were making soft grunts and biting at us. “Great Scott, carnivorous plants!” I exclaimed. I observed that these plants were in the exact spot where Effie’s flower beds were. Were these vile cut-throats the descendants of our noble English rose? As we stepped out of the flowers’ way, they continued shuffling towards us on spry, monopodial feet. We walked away and as we quickened our pace, the flowers, following us like a pack of hungry foxes, did the same.
Suddenly, we heard a rumbling sound and a strangely shaped shadow loomed over us. Danny Jim Hopalong VII, with his finely-tuned lagomorphic instincts, thumped with his hind paw to warn us of impending danger. The shadow bore the outline of giant rabbit ears! I stepped in front of my small entourage and held my umbrella—the closest thing I had to a weapon—as menacingly as I could. We all looked up and beheld a sight like nothing seen before on Earth: a creature with the body of a caterpillar and the head of a bunny rabbit. The body of what I am calling a “bunnypillar” consisted of five spherical segments, each about ten feet long by ten feet high. It undulated its body towards us on tiny nubbin-like legs, stopping just a few feet in front of us. Its whiskers projected ten feet on either side of its face. Each whisker moved independently of the others—as did the massive ears—obviously deployed as some kind of auxiliary sense organ.
I summoned every ounce of courage, stood up and puffed out my chest and said, “I am Dr. Browntrout. I represent the United Kingdom and the Humans of Earth. You are standing on the property of my private estate…sir. Please state your name and your business in Wooly Acres or…you shall compel me to use my all-powerful Aid and Assistance Horn, with which I shall summon…an intimidating authority figure to question you with fearful intensity!”
There was a pause. The giant bunnypillar (who I dub Megapillar giganthropus multipodae browntroutii) stared down at me with wide, benevolent, wise yet somehow disdainful eyes. Then, without warning or any time to react, its mouth opened, revealing fangs the size of stalagmites. In the span of a split second, a giant yellow and green spotted tongue sprung out of the cavernous mouth. It hit me like a forceful slap, knocking me backwards and rendering me completely stupid for some minutes afterwards. After I finished toweling off the bunnypillar’s saliva from my head and face, I witnessed a most peculiar interaction.
The Bunnypillar ignored Stanley and I completely. Its eyes stared at Danny Jim Hopalong VII. As the bunnypillar held my bunny transfixed with its hypnotic gaze, I saw the behemoth’s whiskers twitching oddly—like keys or knobs depressed at intervals. And Danny Jim Hopalong’s right, rear paw was thumping the ground, keeping perfect time with the bunnypillar’s whiskers. Stanley pointed at the spectacle, scratched his head and said, “umph…?”
His umph hung in the dense air, a fitting response, I thought, to the many unspoken observations about our current situation. It was then that I felt a kind of tingly, tickling sensation in my brain—not altogether unpleasant. I recall distinctly from my medical training that these perceptions were a sign that the skull does indeed deny the brain. As Danny Jim Hopalong’s paw thumps translated into clicks in my head, I finally saw what should have been plain. These were not paw thumps at all! Rather, they were dots and dashes! The bunnypillar was sentient; it was using morse code to communicate, perhaps by telepathically accessing the deep recesses of my brain. But as I began translating the words, it was clear that it was not communicating with me…or with Stanley.
I took out pen and notepad, and began to decode the messages.
--RE YOU COME FROM, MINI-CREATURE?? WE ARE THOSE WHO LIVE HERE. WE HAVE SONGS/WILL NOT SING THEM. WHY YOU BRING UGLY HAIRLESS BIPED AND OTHER FRIEND? WHY YOU BRING HIM TO OUR BURROWTOWN?
At this point, I shuffled awkwardly, got down on one knee and whispered to Danny Jim Hopalong VII. “Danny Jim, you tell this bunnypillar here, that it is humans who are in charge, and that you are my loyal pet, yes? HUMANS IN CHARGE,” I slowly enunciated for the bunnypillar. I could swear that both he (or she) and Danny Jim both gave me a resentful sidelong glance! Why, I thought, the sheer cheek of these bunnypillars, snuffling about and licking anyone they please as if they owned the place!
It was then that our host on this New Earth turned his rump segment to us, and began slithering away so quickly that Stanley and I had to take pains to catch up. And I hadn’t even a chance to take out my easel and sketch this new discovery! The bunnypillar disappeared from view and with a start we realized that we had followed him (or her…I’m not certain to what degree sexual dimorphism is present in bunnypillars) down an underground den or lair, lit from within by a greenish, phosphorescent glow (I swear on Nanny Browntrout’s grave I am not making up a word of this!).
The cave or tunnel was not formed by natural means, for it had a level floor and a symmetrical shape. After a quarter of a mile’s walk down a gradual slope, we arrived in a massive, central chamber. Danny Jim hopped along ahead of us, periodically popcorning up in the air, more gleeful than I have ever seen him. Stanley and I followed with heads slightly bowed, feeling disoriented. Upon arriving in the middle of the chamber, several other bunnypillars surrounded us. However, they fixed all their attention on Danny Jim Hopalong VII. The bunnypillars’ and the bunny’s whiskers were all twitching. They were communicating something and at a rapid pace. After some minutes of this, Stanley and I could no longer hide our annoyance.
“Excuse me,” I protested. “This cave is beneath my house…er, beneath where my house once was. The mineral and soil rights are part of the deed, sir. No Browntrout would have ever sold it, therefore it is rightfully mine. I will kindly refrain from having you charged as trespassers, sir, but please repay my hospitality by telling me who you are and what you are doing on my land … if you’d be so kind,” I added, somewhat more meekly.
The bunnypillars paused their twitching to stare at me briefly—with what I could swear was a look of revulsion—then they turned back to Danny Jim and returned to their twitching.
“I say, are you capable of social intercourse?” I tried. “If you are the masters here, show me your structures. Where are your grand edifices? Where are your beautiful machines? Tell me you have at least perfected the computation engine, or created automata? If you are sentient beings, where is your civilization? I see no sign of it here. Your phosphorescent ooze is admirable, but I see nothing else impressive here.”
With that, Danny Jim Hopalong VII and all the assembled bunnypillars turned to me. This time, Danny Jim shared their contempt. He beat out the rhythm of the Head Bunnypillar with his paw. It was clear that they were finally deigning to communicate with Stanley and I. Huzzah! I took out my notebook and began scribing the translation of morse code:
TELL BIPEDS QUIT CHIRPING. IF BIPEDS NOT SHUT UP, BIPEDS GO BACK TO FLESH EATING FLOWER PEOPLE. WE KIND TO STUPID LIFE, IF NO DANGER. IF DANGER, WE BITE. DANNY JIM STAY WITH US, BIPEDS GO.
I turned and whispered to Stanley. “Something tells me that it will not make any difference if I was to show them a copy of my deed. Look,” I said to the Head Bunnypillar, “Danny Jim Hopalong VII is fluffy and adorable, but he is in my care. He cannot stay with you. He needs the nibbleage only I can provide. He’s just a simple rabbit!” I reached down to pick up Danny Jim, but he thumped in warning. There was a murmur from the other bunnypillars. I was utterly at sixes and sevens. I lowered myself to one knee. “Now you listen to me,” I said to Danny Jim, wagging a stern finger. “You are a naughty bunny. You cannot stay here with these…creatures. You belong to me. Now come along and we’ll get you back to your hutch and some fresh, clean Timothy Hay and even a carrot if you cease this naughtiness.” I leaned over to kiss the top of his head, but instead of warm fur on my lips, I felt his teeth on my nose. By God, the little rapscallion nipped me! It was just a nip, thank heaven, but it was the very height of disrespect.
Stanley, mumbling disconcertingly, helped me to my feet. I dusted myself off and slowly looked around. “I see how it is,” I said. “Well then, Danny Jim Hopalong VII, I guess Stanley and I will have to go home and leave you here with this…tribe of disrespectful den dwellers. Is that what you want?” There was no response. Stanley and I turned and slowly began making our way to the entrance of the tunnel. I expected to hear the pitter-patter of Danny Jim changing his mind and hopping to catch up with us, but there was only stony silence. “No more love for the naughty bunny!” I called out into the darkness. “No love! No home!”
With that, we walked out of the cave, returned to the temporopede, and began working to repair it in silence. The malicious flowers were nowhere to be seen. Stanley turned to me with a handkerchief in his hirsute, anthropoid paw, which he used to dab my left eye. Apparently, an unmanly tear had formed at the lid, and was almost about to make its humiliating, unacceptable journey down my cheek, had he not caught it in time. “Many thanks, old chap,” was all I could say. I heard the sound of chittering or faint, mocking laughter. I am not sure what was more melancholy, losing my bunny, or discovering that he was a superior form of life.