Dick Wiener Must Die: A Story Of Redemption

2. THE COMPLETELY DUMB MORON'S GUIDE TO TIME TRAVEL FOR IDIOTS AND MORONS

Physics professor Wesley Waxworks frequently lost track of time. In fact, he was a habitual time loser who even occasionally forgot it was time to lose track of time. He also occasionally forgot to go to the bathroom. After a series of embarrassing pants-crapping incidents, which had earned him the decidedly un-creative nickname "Professor Stank-pants" among his students at Johns Crotchkins University, he decided it best to set an alarm to remind him to defecate, and he considered the problem solved. This was neither here nor there, except that it illustrated that forgetfulness and tardiness were not particularly unusual occurrences in the life of Professor Waxworks, and so he was not the least bit worried about being an hour and a half late to his lecture on the morning of Wednesday, August 26, 2019. The students would understand and accommodate, he thought.

Upon arriving at the university campus, Professor Waxworks stopped at his office inside the expansive new Ripley Albert Phart Science Center to pick up some typed notes on Higgs-Bosons and such sciences, and it was inside the office that he detected a rather strange odor.

It wasn't his feces. No, by now he was acutely aware of the unique notes of that smell. This was something different, yet oddly familiar. Nonetheless, he checked his pants just to be sure. Bone dry, just some skidmarks, he observed.

What was that strange odor he was detecting? It almost smelled like— No, he thought. That's impossible. I showered today.

But then the thought came to him again. It smells like me, Waxworks hypothesized, only worse, like I have tremendous body odor, like I've gone a day without showering. How can that be?

Professor Waxworks was a hefty man, but he was not overly broad in the beam, and so he did not believe it possible that he had excreted enough body soil by nine in the morning to release such a pungent stench. This was the smell of a man who had been unwashed for several days, at least. Waxworks scanned the small, wood-paneled office and immediately it became clear that his eyes, rather than his nose, were the most effective means of solving the scientific mystery at hand.

There, seated in a swivel chair directly in front of Professor Wesley Waxworks, was, to his astonishment, a hefty man dressed head-to-toe in tweed, with a wrinkled, pasty white face and a gray moustache. His wire-rimmed glasses were unmistakable, as was his slightly balding pate. The man in front of him, realized Professor Wesley Waxworks, was also Professor Wesley Waxworks.

"Good morning, Professor," said Professor Wesley Waxworks.

"Good morning, Professor," said a very confused Professor Wesley Waxworks.

"I thought I might find you here," said Professor Wesley Waxworks. "It's ninety minutes past the start of your lecture. Right on time."

Professor Wesley Waxworks was astonished. "How is it that you," he said, "are me?"

"I am me," said Professor Waxworks, standing up from the swivel chair with a high-pitched squeak that may have come from the chair's metal machinery or may have come from inside his trousers. He circled Professor Waxworks inside the cluttered office. "And you are you."

"And you are me and me are you," said Professor Wesley Waxworks.

Professor Waxworks descended deep into thought in an attempt to untangle this inscrutable conundrum. This was a mix-up for the ages, he deduced.

"I gather that you've gathered that you, being a master-minded professor of physics, have invented a means of time travel in the future which has enabled you to travel into the past, via me, in order to be here now in your slash my office," said Professor Waxworks.

"But what I cannot yet gather is why I slash you would do that," said Professor Waxworks.

"Naturally, the answer is obvious," said Professor Waxworks.