Authors: Dr. Cuthbert Soup
Weary from my travels, I summoned Hans, my driver for the past seventeen years, and had him bring the limo around. I mentioned to Hans that I should like to drive myself, as it always relaxes me after a long day of flying the corporate jet. He mumbled something about me being a control freak, or at least that's what it sounded like coming from the backseat.
It was quite late by the time I arrived at my sprawling mansion, known affectionately as Soup Manor. My elderly parents had long since gone off to bed, and I was greeted
at the door by my loyal Jack Russell terrier, Kevin, whom I had adopted nine years earlier when I found out I was unable to have puppies.
All in all, Kevin had been a good dog over the years, though he did suffer occasional lapses in behavior, having once been kicked out of obedience school for telling the teacher that I had eaten his homeworkâwhich, for the record, I had not.
My two snails, Gooey and Squishy, on the other hand, were pets of exemplary character, and were accomplished athletes as well. Like my parents, they had also gone to bed early that evening, exhausted from their extensive training for the upcoming Iron Snail competition.
And so the mansion was quiet, and I seized the opportunity for some much-needed down time. In the kitchen, I opened the fridge and found that Mother had brewed up a large batch of her famous Spam® chowder, the most delicious thing one could ever hope to eat. Unfortunately, because the recipe is a closely guarded family secret, I am unable at this time to reveal the secret ingredient that gives this dish its special ham-like flavor.
I hungrily polished off two large bowls' worth, while Kevin ate three. I then retired to the sitting room, where I put on some classical music (Rossini, coincidentally) and settled into my chair by the fire with a delightful cabernet sauvignon and a good book, because, as they say, a good book is like a good friend. Well, good luck trying to find a book that will loan you money, bail you out of jail, or water your plants while you're on vacation. Or in jail.
A good book, I'm afraid, is nothing like a good friend, but reading one is a very agreeable experience. So I settled into my chair, cracked the spine, and tucked into it while Kevin curled up at my feet.
I had gotten only a few pages into the book and a few sips into the wine when, suddenly, the doorbell rang, causing Kevin to let out his standard woof, which came whenever any type of ringing, dinging, or buzzing noise was made anywhere. The ringing of the doorbell was doubly strange because the remote location of the mansion meant that we received very few unannounced visitors, and even fewer at such a late hour and in such cold weather.
I set my glass and the book aside. With Kevin on my heels, I walked to the front door and flipped on the porch light, then looked through the peephole. Personally, I've never found peepholes to be of much use. All they tell you is that someone with a disproportionately large forehead is standing on your stoop. In this case, it was several persons, and an odd-looking bunch at that, their elongated faces aside.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I'm not sure what a thousand words are worth, but I do know for a fact that you can't use them to buy a motor home. The picture that lay before my right eye, as I pressed it against the peephole, was a strange one, to say the least. For a moment, I feared that it might have been some type of hallucination brought on by those horrible Moroccan mosquitoes or as the result of the jet lag that was now setting in.
If they were Christmas carolers, it was awfully late for
them to be showing up at someone's door, and if they were trick-or-treaters, it was later still, though I must say they did somewhat look the part. One of the smaller members of the bunch appeared to be dressed as a Native American baseball player, complete with beaded braids, buckskin clothing, and a bright blue cap. Another of them sported some kind of crude puppet on his left hand. All of them were draped in animal pelts, and, if that weren't enough to pique my curiosity, there was also a hairless pink dog and a small brown fox.
I might very well have ignored this unlikely bunch and tiptoed back to my comfortable chair and my friendly book, but, being that it was the holiday season, I thought they may have been collecting for a needy cause, or that they themselves might be a needy cause. When I opened the door and caught a non-distorted look at my late-night visitors, I was shocked beyond belief.
“Sorry to barge in on you like this, Bertie,” said a bespectacled man with a large bruise over his eye. The fact that this stranger at my door had just addressed me by my college nickname caused me no small amount of confusion.
“It's me,” the man continued. “Ethan.”
“Ethan Cheeseman?” I said, with equal degrees of befuddlement and delight. While Ethan's certainly was a memorable face, it took me a moment to try to make sense of the situation. Standing next to Ethan was an elderly man, along with that hairless dog and the brown fox, and a small brood of children. Or is it a
herd
of children? I must look that up.
Regardless, were they brood or herd or four-legged beast, I welcomed them all into my home, for I've had few friends in my life of the quality of Ethan Cheeseman.
Ethan and I had first met at Southwestern North Dakota State University, where we played football together for the SWNDSU Fighting Paper Clips. We pledged the same fraternity and were, for the first couple of years there, fairly inseparable. That is, until Ethan met the lovely Olivia Lodbrock. After that, none of us saw too much of him. In fact, the last time I had seen him in person was the day he made the very wise move of taking Olivia as his wife. I was only mildly offended when he chose that pretentious gadabout Chadwick Peabody to be his Best Man while I was forced to settle with being named
Most Improved
.
In the years that followed, Ethan and I made an attempt to keep in touch, but slowly fell out of contact the way people tend to do in a busy world such as this. While I was focused on starting a business, Ethan turned his attentions to starting a family. I could only surmise that the young people with him now were part of that family.
With a closer look I was also able to determine the identity of the elderly gentleman in the group. He was none other than Acorn Boxley, the esteemed physics professor at SWNDSU. Being that my field of study was in the humanities and not in the sciences, I had never had occasion to make the professor's acquaintance, but now was honored to do so.
“Ethan, old boy. What in heaven's name brings you here?” I said, offering him the secret fraternity handshake,
which he rather clumsily returned. He never did seem to be too enthusiastic about the whole fraternity lifestyle. He'd always been more of an independent soul, a lone wolf, if you will. “Come in, come in before you all catch pneumonia.”
“Wow. This sure is a big house,” said the boy with the sock puppet, who I would soon learn was Simon, Ethan's youngest of three children.
“You can say that again,” said the sock puppet I would soon come to know as Gravy-Face Roy.
“You all look a bit weary,” I said. “Please have a seat on the chesterfield.”
Young Simon, apparently unfamiliar with the word, tried to sit on the dog.
“No, no,” I said. “That's Kevin. The chesterfield is the couch, or sofa if you prefer.”
“I prefer the couch,” Simon said, and promptly sat down on the sofa, with the others squeezing in beside him. Kevin, traumatized by nearly being sat upon, curled up at my feet and leveled a cautious stare at the four-legged interlopers in his living room.
“May I offer you a cup of tea?” I asked my surprise visitors. “Or perhaps a bowl of Spam® chowder?”
“No, thank you,” said Jason. He looked a far cry from the baby picture on his birth announcement, which I'd been sent all those years ago. My, how the time had flown; for here was this person I had known only as an infant and only in photographic form, now sitting in my living room,
shyly introducing me to his girlfriend, the pretty young woman named Big.
And though I'd never seen a photo of Catherine, it was clear beyond any doubt that she was the daughter of Ethan and Olivia. Smart as a whip, I could tell in a flash. And that beautiful auburn hair. It sparkled and shined just the way Olivia's had on her wedding day. Which, of course, prompted me to ask, “And how is Olivia?”
What I assumed to be a simple and entirely innocuous question seemed to cause Ethan great distress. He suddenly appeared more pale and exhausted than I had ever seen him look after all those grueling football practices.
“Didn't you get the postcards?” he asked.
“Postcards?” I said with consternation, for the last contact I'd had from Ethan or from any of the Cheesemans was that singular birth announcement some twelve years before. “I haven't received any postcards.”
“I sent you postcards. Loads of them, to this address,” Ethan said. “From the road, telling you about Olivia and how she was poisoned.”
“Poisoned?” This awful news caused my knees to buckle, and I nearly fell back into my chair.
“Yes,” said Ethan. “You've always had a certain way with words, and I wanted you to be the one to tell our story, in case anything were to happen to us before we were able to go back and save her life.”
“This is the first I've heard of this dreadful occurrence.”
“Well,” said Ethan, with a disgusted shake of his head, “nothing else has gone right, so I guess it's possible that they all got lost in the mail somehow.”
“That seems pretty unlikely,” said Jason. “Maybe you sent them to the wrong address.”
“Thirty-four-fifty Bumbleberry Lane,” said Ethan. “Placitas, New Mexico.”
“Wait a minute,” said Catherine. She narrowed her eyes, as if doing a difficult math problem in her head. “You sent hundreds of postcards to this address, but they never arrived? Is it possible that they never got here because you haven't sent them yet?”
“I see what you're saying,” said Jason. “And maybe you haven't sent them yet because it hasn't happened yet.”
“Hasn't happened yet?” said Ethan. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” said Catherine, rising to her feet, “that maybe the chronometer on the LVR was wrong.”
“It's unlikely,” said Professor Boxley.
“More unlikely than a hundred postcards being lost in the mail?”
“I suppose it is possible that the chronometer was damaged when we crash-landed in 1668,” said Ethan.
All this talk was beginning to make me feel as though I was in the presence of a group of crazy people. What was all this nonsense about chronometers and LVRs? If things seemed strange now, they were about to get a great deal stranger yet.
“Bertie,” said Ethan excitedly. “What's today's date?”
“Why, it's December 13th,” I said, assuming my friend was interested in how many shopping days remained until Christmas.
Ethan sprang to his feet, walked over, and took me by the arm. There was a slightly crazed look in his eye, and I began to develop concern for his personal well-being, and for my own as well. “That's the day before she was poisoned,” he said. “The chronometer was wrong.” And then, as I would later learn, came the truly important part. “And what year is it?”
Never before in all my days had anyone ever asked me what year it was. After all, there are very few reasons for someone to be unaware of the proper year. Being stranded in a location so remote that it had no calendar store would be one explanation. Suffering from amnesia would be another. And the only other reason that comes to mind for a person not knowing the calendar year is that that person has been traveling through time and has no idea where he has landed.
Individually, Ethan and Olivia were two of the most brilliant people I had ever met. Together they would certainly create a force to be reckoned with. But time travel? Was it really possible? I had no way of knowing for sure. But what I do know is that when I told Ethan what year it was, he practically exploded with enthusiasm, taking a triumphant punch at the air.
The others in my sitting room reacted in similar fashion, celebrating the news as if they'd just won the lottery or the Iron Snail competition.
“She's still alive,” said Catherine. “She doesn't drink the coffee until tomorrow morning.”
The children leaped to their feet and hugged one another. “Yes!” said Simon as he engaged in a double high five with Professor Boxley, forgetting that his left hand was currently occupied by a sock puppet.
“Ouch!” said Gravy-Face Roy.
“Your phone,” said Ethan. “I need to borrow your phone.”
I hurried off to retrieve the cordless phone, which always seemed to be somewhere one wouldn't expect. Once, I found it in the freezer, next to a half-empty carton of butterbrickle ice cream. This time I located it in the laundry hamper. I returned to the sitting room, where I was mobbed like a rock star.
“I want to talk to her too,” said Simon.
“Don't worry, you'll get a chance,” said Ethan. “You'll all get a chance.” I handed my friend the phone. He stared at the keypad and did nothing else. “Does anyone remember our phone number?”
“I do,” said Catherine, who had more room in her oversized brain for such things.
Ethan quickly dialed the number. So shaky were his hands that he had to hang up and start over twice before getting the number right. “It's ringing,” he whispered finally.
“Hello?” came the sleepy voice on the other end.
“Olivia,” Ethan practically shouted. He covered the phone and whispered to his children, as if what he was about to say next was a closely guarded secret to which Olivia herself was not privy. “She's alive.”
“Hello? Who is this?” asked Olivia.
“It's me, Ethan.”
“What?” said Olivia. “Listen, I don't know who you are, but if you call here again I'm going to the police.” The line went dead, and Ethan stared at the phone before quickly hitting redial, but the call went right to voice mail.