The Decameron 2.0

Day 7.9 Humor - HOW TO HOT-WIRE A TIME MACHINE ... H-A-Spade

How To Hot-Wire a Time Machine With Your Least Favorite Granduncle*

Introduction

The short answer is, jam him unceremoniously into the sub-diode panel under the dimensional processing unit, flip the switch, and count to three.

However, we are not here for the short answer. The research I have conducted in the pursuit of this article's evidence is my own. I have had no grants or funding. The granduncle was my own; don't worry, I have backups.

*Hot-wiring someone else's time machine in order to steal it is legal on Earth if it has already traveled back to a time when laws regarding time-traveling vehicles do not yet exist at the time of theft. Similarly, it is legal to hot-wire in order to steal a time machine which will be yours in the time in which it has traveled back to the time in which you are hot-wiring it in order to steal it. It is, however, illegal to steal your own time machine from someone in the future who has stolen or will steal it from you in the past. The following account encourages the reader to strictly adhere to all active laws regarding stealing a time machine.

***

On a severely average day in history, a baby was born. This baby, as babies are often wont to do, took it upon itself to become a man, slowly but gradually; and though it was a man, the baby was aware of its own shortcomings and ineptitude where all things manly were concerned. Namely that the baby had been born multiple times, and wished bitterly that it could stop going back and hearing itself scream uncontrollably while a stranger (always a stranger even after a plethora of first-meetings) carefully yanked him out of another stranger and stretched his head out rather disconcertingly—you see, he was always self-conscious about how often he cried. And the weirdly oblong shape of his head.

Generic childhood; moderate lifetime achievements; inner struggle with self and desire to become more; eventual insecurities and marriage problems {we are on a tight word-count here, you and I}.

And so it was that he found a time machine. Here it is necessary to define the term "time machine" in a way which will befit whatever era it so happens you, gentle reader, are reliving. For instance, the universe itself can be considered a "time machine", in the sense that repeatedly inflating and contracting from periods of increasing to decreasing entropy forces the entire contents of itself (matter, energy, the worst day of your life, et al.) to rewind and replay, for all eternity. Or, you could have had too much to drink last night, and you've just woken up to find that you have, in fact, traveled into next Tuesday, and you have no idea where you are right now but for some reason there is a pile of live salmon beneath you, in which case stop reading this, find out where you are, and get off the salmon for God's sake.

But lo, the "time machine" I discuss is of a rather peculiar nature; in fact, a nasty one. It is structured entirely of artificial elements; heavier than Satonium if you are living after 4300 A.D., lighter than aether if you are living in a prehistoric jungle-desert or wherever it was you philosophers built your teepees, and very shiny. The student-model time machine, for those who are learning to drive, will typically explode on impact with extra-dimensional space, safely allowing an inexperienced teen driver to be horrifically unassembled and reassembled through a protective series of micro black holes, while a more upscale, luxury vehicle will conveniently destroy a teen thirty seconds before he can destroy it. Some time machines are smart-asses; others are hordes of pygmy goats with laser eyes and fine leather saddles.

This man's time machine is/was/will be neither.

This man of whom I speak is, indeed, my great^ 7 granduncle, King Henry VIII.

***

"Thou art too fat," he declared, and stepped to the next maiden.

"Thou art too skinny." Again he yanked the tasseled cord, and the latter woman quickly fell through a trapdoor into a pool of ravenous piranhas, following the former. "And thou," he said, eyeing the forty-eighth maiden in line, who trembled in respectful fear. "Thou art too perfect." She, too, fell through a trapdoor, this one opening into unnecessarily-raging flames.