4

9.11.06

The TIME TRAVELER stands, holding her wristwatch before him as glues his eyes shut impatiently. They (her eyes) open wide.

TIME TRAVELER
Eureka! I’ve made it! I am in the future! What a strange and wonderfying place this is! Electrified everything! Great googally moogally! Everyone is so much FATTER now! This is incredibonkers! What strange new means of agricultural nutrification have brought us to such a healthy, big-boned era? My! I’ve never seen so many bathing beauties in all my wonder years! And what’s this? My golly, I do believe there isn’t a single ankle unexposed! What bizaarish and sexpository times of liberation have I missed in my travels? My, if only Professor Silas Masterson could see this brave new moment. Alas, he must have been deceased for many years now…along with everyone I’ve ever known…how sad…
…And yet, how lucked-up I must be, to have gotten such a rare chance at life in the age of women-in-pants and what I can only guess is the rise of a new alien master race!

So where is the new alien master overlord anyway? I’d like to thank him for all the technologinal inventerations he must have brought with him to our humble heliocentric home. Would you please kindly point me in his mean directional radius?

Excuse me, I believe I was addressing all of you.

Does anybody here know where I might find our alien tyrant?

Is there an alien emperor? ...from the moon perhaps?

My, this is disheartening. You mean to tell me all of humanity’s innovations were self spun these many-score years? How far could we possibly have gotten? Are we still excreting via the back-end, or have we found a solution to such degredations? Blasted, I figured as much. Still, this typhoon of new experiences is a bit overwhelming. Might I enquire that one of you serve as my guide for the next few moments? I am looking for a doorman – er- or woman to the future. You there! Youngling, yes you, come over here a moment, will you child, and tell me all I’ve missed. Don’t be afraid. Come closer. There, that’s better. How, might I ask, do you hail yourself?

_____
What?

TIME TRAVELER
What is your name, last first, then Christian?

_____
Oh. Uh. _________.

TIME TRAVELER
Such brilliancyful names we have in the future! _____! I’ve never heard such an odd name before! What does it mean?

_____
Uh, I don’t know. I don’t think it means anything.

TIME TRAVELER
Fie! Every name has a meaning. But, alas, I do not have the time nor the patience to discern the …meaning…in yours, _____. Now. Brass tacks, let us sink through to them, shall we? First, what of other time travelers? Any make it here before myself?

_____
I don’t think so…

TIME TRAVELER
You don’t think what?

_____
No

TIME TRAVELER
No what?

_____
What?

TIME TRAVELER
YOU SPEAK IN RIDDLES FUTURECHILD! Do all such spawn of your generation verbify in such obfuscated enigmaticisms, or is it just you?

_____
I guess.

TIME TRAVELER
You guess what?

_____
Nothing. Nevermind.

TIME TRAVELER
AGAIN! I have been hoisted by your oratorical potard, if I do sing so myself sir. But perhaps I can manage a deuce with a question of my own. How has human flight prevailed since Orville and Wilbur embarked at Kitty Hawk? Are our wings found only in Ohio or are we birds elsewhere?

_____
We have planes. I guess. People fly places.

TIME TRAVELER
It is not the completion of your words, but rather the poetry of the moment that brings a tear to my eye as of now! And what of Edison’s wax cylinder? Are the voices of the dead captured in such a way as he predicted? What of Roosevelt? And temperance?

_____
Uh…

TIME TRAVELER
Has the direct-current electric horseless automobile yet dominated the streets? Are the diseases which once plagued humanity yet cured? Is the anarchist menace yet defeated, or do their acts of terrorism still strike fear into the hearts of civilized people everywhere? If we have not been colonized by some moon force of odd-shaped invaders, have we then been said colonizers in places located beyond the cold nothing of space? Have we been to other stars? Has America yet legislated itself into perfection? Is poverty a thing of the past? Do children still go to bed hungry in this world, or is everyone as fat as we? Where are you going? Where, what are you doing?

_____
I’m going back to my seat.

TIME TRAVELER
But you haven’t yet answered my questions! How much has changed? How far have we come? What is this newlified future like, and what of pomade? How has pomade changed lo these many years I have been navigating the space-time canals of time and space?

Aren’t you going to answer me?

Are you just going to sit there? And say nothing?

Have you nothing to say? Have you no answer?

Is this what the future is really like?

Is this what I have to look forward to?

Perhaps this time is a steak too rare. Yes, that’s it. I must place myself back in the oven to emerge, juicy and tenderloinicised another day. Maybe the future of this future is a future more worth waiting for. Fairtheewell, bleary-eyed slack-taskers of the new new era! I’m off to better, and even newer times! Excelsior!

The TIME TRAVELER stares at her wristwatch, again his eyes and waiting impatiently for the future.