(Probably makes more sense if you read this first!(link))
It all started next week. I was feeling guilty that Red Dirt Girl's internet birthday party had sparked off so much fun and originality, and.... I'd only sent her a picture or two.
What, I thought, could I have done to bring a big smile to her face?
What might she want and not get?
Well, she keeps coming back to her fascination with the Aurora, the Northern Lights.
Could I by some cunning internet trickery, take her to see them. Or OH WOW! -Could I bring them to her, and light up the party?.....last week....Oh Dear.
Once I get a crazy idea, I'm a demon... So, next week I started on a long trek, of learning, travelling, making and doing.
First I had to learn how the Aurora works. Then I had to get myself up to speed on physics, theoretical stuff, mathematics, all those funny symbols...
It took ages.
Until 2012 in fact, by which time RDG had partied through five more birthdays.
The breakthrough came after the banning, totally, of all chemical additives to food and water in 2010.
My IQ surged to almost normal.
Some damage had been done, but I managed the first clumsy draft concept of the clockwork-heart-anti-matter-enfrictionator. By 2012, I had a rough prototype up and running, discovering, by the way, that rust is a potentiator for space/time warping.
Having learned by then to make a, though I say it myself, rather good aurora, in any place of my choosing, the next task was to control the space/time warpingnipraw emit\ecaps eht lortnoc............
Argh
Sorry
Time slippage.
Hold on whilst I rosin the drive belts.
There. That should hold it.
I watched all the versions of back to the future, to see if I could find any clues.
But
It all seems so complex. Speed, Clocks, Flux Capacitors etcetera.
So I turned to Jules Verne, H.G.Wells and their ilk.
Ha! burnished ivory, gutta percha, and brass?
no thank you.
But
By chance
I found the clockwork heart antimatter enfrictionator, when close-linked to an embiggener, and fuelled with dark matter, or, in a pinch, molasses, seemed to do timeshifting quite well.
Calibration was tricky at first. I burned out several calendars.
But I discovered that pulling the handle as far as the knot on the wood of the side-frame, took me into Elizabethan England.
Wherever I travel, I take a few books and time travel takes a surprising amount of time. So I'd taken my mother's old edition of the Complete Works of Shakespeare. Spotting an opportunity, I sought out the struggling bard, cursing and swearing, writers block... And an opening night but days away.
I copied a few verses in longhand, quill-penned scrawl.
slipped them under his door.
Offered him Henry the fourth, part one, act by act, scene by scene....
For cash. Soul not required... Told him my name was Marlowe, Christopher Marlowe...
Oh what a jolly jape.
Meanwhile, I was investing his coins in some new fangled ideas. With the aid of my history book, I was able to pick the winners, my investments bore fruit, and I purchased gold leaf, this being far better at auroreal regeneration than the cooking foil I had hitherto used.
Then... Forward again into last month. Because I really needed antimatter......
Hence the trip to the Cyclotron, and all that fuss at CERN.
I left a few more plays for Shakespeare, including The Tempest.
I think it will set him on the right track again, having Shakespeare to learn from.
So.
From Cern
Antimatter powered, in backwards time.
To the Party
And to set up the Aurora Generator. -I overpowered it by accident.
2000 miles wide.... I only meant for about twenty.
Still, it gave Mexico a party too.
Backtiming, again, I arrived at the party just before, five miles to the north, I set the aurora off.
Dylan was singing "To dance beneath a diamond sky, with one hand waving free" as overhead, a coruscating curtain of ruby red light burst across the star-sprinkled night sky.
Perfect.
Well.
I remember drinking margaritas... someone fell off an elephant onto my cake, and giggled uncontrollably...
The morning after, my head hurt terribly, as I woke here in my own little bit of England.
To the sound of hammering on the door.
"Police! Open the door!"
Yes. Chief Inspector T.Runcheon had sent the boys round to arrest me for breaking into Cern, and the theft of antimatter.
I pointed out, that the television cameras in Texas showed me, quite clearly, stepping out of the limo at Red Dirt Girls party bash, five minutes before they claim to have surrounded the lab at Cern.
Ergo, they'd got the wrong guy....
And besides? Theft of what, exactly?
Theft refers to stealing... Things. But antimatter is not just the absence of a thing, it's an antithing. How could I steal something which has a negative existence?
Argue that, Copper.
Eventually they let me go.
I'm so tired. But I might just nip back to the party....
And arrive a moment before myself on those cameras... Just for fun.
