Even Sir Reginald Gets the Blues
“Of course,” Sir Reginald said, with a little
half-smile on his face, “I don’t really know if it’s a functioning
time/space machine or not. The gentleman who sold it to me insisted
that it was, but that the guilt of ignoring it was driving him mad.
He’d only wanted to build one to go back and cure his mother’s
ischuria, but obviously this one would not do.”
Sir Reginald pulled a pale silken sheet from off of the small machine and removed the cap from a pipe in the middle of all the gears, vacuum tubes, tiny sparking things, and unnecessary dials. Something on it was letting out a keening wail.
“Time is not the self-healing mechanism that writers of fanciful tales want you to believe. It can be irrevocably damaged by meddlesome people, so whenever the machine alerts me that somebody, somewhere and somewhen, is about to activate their own device and possibly unravel all of creation...well, I’m here to help.”
He reached into a nearby basket and removed a hand grenade, pulled the pin, and dropped it into the center tube. After a few seconds, the piercing noise faded away.
“The man told me that whatever I dropped in there would be taken to the site of the about-to-be-activated time machine. He used to drop treatises on the breakable nature of timespace, but I was always afraid that my note would reach somebody who only reads Hindi. I find my method to be a much more efficient,” he said, absentmindedly scratching at one of his sideburns, “and I could never abide fools mucking about with the fabric of the universe.”
“It’s also quite therapeutic during bouts of melancholia, when the loneliness is upon you. You’re never alone when you have hate.”
b
Sir Reginald pulled a pale silken sheet from off of the small machine and removed the cap from a pipe in the middle of all the gears, vacuum tubes, tiny sparking things, and unnecessary dials. Something on it was letting out a keening wail.
“Time is not the self-healing mechanism that writers of fanciful tales want you to believe. It can be irrevocably damaged by meddlesome people, so whenever the machine alerts me that somebody, somewhere and somewhen, is about to activate their own device and possibly unravel all of creation...well, I’m here to help.”
He reached into a nearby basket and removed a hand grenade, pulled the pin, and dropped it into the center tube. After a few seconds, the piercing noise faded away.
“The man told me that whatever I dropped in there would be taken to the site of the about-to-be-activated time machine. He used to drop treatises on the breakable nature of timespace, but I was always afraid that my note would reach somebody who only reads Hindi. I find my method to be a much more efficient,” he said, absentmindedly scratching at one of his sideburns, “and I could never abide fools mucking about with the fabric of the universe.”
“It’s also quite therapeutic during bouts of melancholia, when the loneliness is upon you. You’re never alone when you have hate.”
b