Willie's Redneck Time Machine (16 page)

YOU HAVE THIS CRAZY IDEA.
So crazy it’s going to be crazy awesome.

You’re going to give these students something they’ll never forget. They won’t be ready for it. It’ll be like they get hit by a tsunami of groovy love.

You head for the DJ at the back of the gym. “Hey, buddy. I’m wondering if I can play a song.”

The DJ looks sleepy-eyed and pretty laid-back. You could probably ask him anything and he’d say,
“Yeah, sure, whatever.”

You pull your iPhone out of your pocket and try to see if the DJ has anything to hook it up with.

But it’s 1990, and things weren’t so simple back then. You can’t just find a plug-in and play music from your phone.

“What’s that thing?” the DJ asks.

“This? It’s my phone.”

The guy shrugs. He seems quite out of it.

“I’m from the future,” you tell him.

“Me too,” he says.

You laugh. Then he pulls out something that resembles a Post-it note. He turns it on with a tap.

“What is that?”

“My communicator. Phones eventually go obsolete.” The hippie-looking dude is not smiling.

“Are you for real?” you ask him.

“Are you?”

“So would you be able to hook my phone up so I could play a song?”

The DJ just nods.

Cool.
“Okay, here. This is the song I want to play.”

The DJ looks at your phone. “Whoa. I don’t know, man.”

“What?”

“I don’t know if the world is ready for this.”

“They better be ready, ’cause I’m gonna bring the boom.”

Hippie DJ just stares at you. He obviously doesn’t get your joke. Whatever.

When the music stops, you go to the middle of the floor carrying a microphone the DJ gave you.

“Good evening, everyone. How’s everybody doing?”

Nobody says a word. They’re all looking at you, wonder
ing why the music is off, wondering who in the world you are.

“Listen, Principal Zachary told me I could introduce a song to you.” You use the principal’s name ’cause you know for a fact he’s not here. You remember he skipped this prom when he got sick right beforehand, but no one realized this until afterward. You figured you better mention his name so one of the teachers or chaperones doesn’t escort you out of here. “But I’m gonna need some help. You guys interested in learning a dance?”

Two kids say yes, but the rest of the room is quiet.

“Okay, come on
 
—I swear you’re gonna love this song.” You peer into the cluster of students. “Is John Luke in the building? John Luke, you here?”

You see John Luke come out of the crowd.

“You gotta help me, okay?” you whisper to him.

“Help you do what? We gotta get out of here.”

You return the mike to your mouth. “Okay, boys and girls. I’m going to introduce you to a song you’re gonna love.”

You motion for Hippie DJ to start the music. The zany electronic beat begins.

“‘Oppa Gangnam Style,’” Psy starts to sing. The stream of Korean lyrics continues. You can tell everybody in the room is completely perplexed and wondering what’s
going on. They’ve obviously never heard K-pop
 
—Korean pop
 
—before.

“Here you go. Watch me now,” you shout as you start doing the moves.

For the first minute, nobody is dancing. But you and John Luke keep showing everybody how it’s done, and a few brave souls start trying. Then more. Then you have a whole wave of kids trying out the motions. John Luke rejoins the crowd as the steps catch on.

“Come on; let’s go!” you shout as the chorus nears and the signature moves begin.

You make the motions of riding a horse. Soon the whole room is doing the same thing.

“You’re getting it. That’s right.”

You glance toward John Luke and see Korie dancing at his side. Dancing as if she knows him.

Uh-oh.

John Luke is staring at you like,
Dad, let’s get out of here.

You just laugh and make the lasso motion again.

As the song nears its end, you decide to get a little fancy with your footwork, hoping to move around John Luke and Korie. But your boots get tangled and you trip and fall.

You don’t just fall. You fall
hard
.

Hard enough to black out.

When you awake, you’re in a hospital bed. You can feel the bandages on your head and the IV in your arm. You feel woozy, and all you can hear are the whirring sounds of “Gangnam Style.” The door opens, and you expect John Luke to enter the room. Maybe he’ll be able to help you get out of here. But instead a man in a black suit comes in and shuts the door behind him. He comes and sits right by you.

“How are you feeling, Mr. Robertson?”

“Fine,” you say. “And it’s Willie.”

“Having fun at high school proms?” the man in the suit asks.

He’s maybe in his thirties and has sharp, cutting eyes that don’t wander.

“Yeah, it was a good time.”

“You do know there are penalties for doing what you did tonight.”

You don’t quite understand him. “Penalties? What do you mean? For hitting my head?”

“For sharing music the way you did.”

This guy is coming down on you for file sharing?

“What are you talking about? All I did was play a song
 
—”

“The world is not supposed to hear ‘Gangnam Style.’”

You laugh. “Uh-oh. Did I tilt the earth’s axis by playing it too soon? What are you, the pop music police?”

The man reaches into his suit coat and pulls out his wallet. He opens it to reveal his badge. “My name is Conan Skywalker Rambo. Of course, that’s not my real name.”

“Oh, really?” you ask without any humor.

You just want to get out of here and stop talking to this guy.

“I’m Member 004 of the PCP.”

“A secret agent?” you ask.

“It’s called the Pop Culture Police. We monitor the well-being and structure of pop culture, and have done so since the 1960s.”

This guy is acting serious, as if this isn’t some big joke.

“Are you for real?”

He nods.

“So what’d I do?”

“The timing of ‘Gangnam Style’ is critical to the
plan
we have for the music industry. It can’t be heard until 2012. And as you know, that’s twenty-two years from now. These kids are still fine with their Bell Biv DeVoe and their Jon Bon Jovi.”

“So do you give me a pop culture fine? Like I have to do an overnight listening to Poison or something?”

You’re trying to make a joke, but this man doesn’t think it’s funny.

“We have a list of the ten songs you most hate with a passion,” the man says. “You will be forced to listen to these for one week straight.”

“Are you serious? You’re crazy, right?”

He shakes his head. “No. I’m sorry, but the balance of culture must be maintained. We now have to erase the memory of ‘Gangnam Style’ from the mind of every single student who was in that gym tonight.”

“How do you do that?”

“We have our ways. We might show them four of the worst movies ever made back-to-back-to-back-to-back. Or we might let them hear or see pieces of music or songs that have been held in the vault.”

“Held in the vault,” you repeat. “Why?”

“That is not for you to know, Willie. Now I’m sorry, but here you go.”

He hands you an iPod with headphones.

Then he points a gun at you. “Put those on now.”

You make it only a day before you go certifiably insane.

You’re stuck forever humming the tunes of the songs you hate the most.

Over.

And over.

And over again.

Until a track comes on, and . . .

And everything changes.

Sure, you don’t like this song, but it also seems to spark something different in your mind.

In fact, you realize you’re no longer listening to the iPod. You’re back in your warehouse.

The Pop Culture Police might have tried to kill you, but the time travel lords have overruled them.

Oops.

THE END

Start over.

Read “The Morning Fog: A Note from John Luke Robertson.”

YOU BEGIN TO WALK DOWN
the worn-out road in front of the time machine, grappling hook in hand. Rain begins to fall, and soon you’re soaked. Your jeans stick to your legs more tightly the wetter they get. And a guy in skinny jeans is just not a good thing. It will never be a good thing.

You encounter a woman who looks like she’s planning to cross the road. But she catches sight of you and the thing you’re carrying and bolts the other way. From the way she’s dressed, you realize you must be in the olden days. Like the really olden days. Biblical times or something.

You keep heading along the road until you reach a small village. It reminds you of the place Frodo and Bilbo live in those Lord of the Rings movies. The Shire. That’s it. This is the Shire, except it looks like these set designers were fourth graders.

Nobody is outdoors, and if anyone’s inside the huts, they won’t open their crudely made doors when you knock. Impatient, you finally just open one, and the woman inside screams.

“I’m not going to hurt anybody,” you tell her.

“Please, my child.”

Good news is, they speak the same language here.

Or maybe I speak the same language they do.

“What’s the name of this place?”

The woman shakes her head like she doesn’t know what you’re talking about.

“The year? The closest town?”

“Are you with the one who built the boat?”

You hear thunder and wipe your dripping face. Your shirt and jeans are soaked.

“Uh, the one who built the boat?” you ask, curious about that. “What’s his name?”

“Noah.”

You look around the dark, enclosed hut.

There’s no way.

Of course, your mind’s been saying that ever since you set foot in the time machine. But now . . . Could you really be here? All the way back in Noah’s time?

“Did Noah build this boat?”

The woman nods. “He said God would wipe out the world with a flood.”

Thunder sounds again.

You aren’t that thrilled to be back in Noah’s time. And you totally don’t know how you’re going to use this grappling hook.

Why in the world do I have a weapon Batman would use? A grappling-hook gun?

“Where is this Noah?” you ask.

The woman tells you where the boat is located. So far she’s never said the word
ark
, but you have an idea that this boat will turn out to be it.

It takes you about an hour to reach the vessel. And the sight of it blows you away.

The ark looks far bigger than you’ve ever imagined or even seen in drawings or films. It’s more square than rectangular too. It’s like a massive box made of wood. You can’t see any windows or doors or anything.

The rain continues to fall, and as you approach the ark, you see people huddled around it. Some simply look on; some shout; some throw things.

This is no longer a nice little bedtime story or a Sunday school tale. This is real.

It’s real and somewhat scary.

You avoid the group of people and circle to the other side of the ark, trying to see if there’s any way in.

The boat seems to be made up of layers, much the way a pyramid might be built. From what you can tell, the ark is about three layers tall.

You think about the options you were allowed to choose from before leaving the time machine. Now they make sense. Especially the grappling hook you’re carrying.

You find a place where nobody can see you. Then you fire the gun, trying to get the grappling hook over the square edge of the ark. It doesn’t work, so you have to try again.

It takes you five tries.

Once the grappling hook is secure, you begin to climb the rope. It’s wet and a bit slippery, but you realize you’re climbing for your life. Maybe your father’s life. Maybe others’.

The climbing is . . . well, let’s say it’s been a while since you climbed up a sheer wooden wall using only a rope. Or maybe you never have. As you struggle, making a little progress, then hanging on and just breathing in and out, you come to regret the elk meat you had for breakfast.

As you make it to the ledge, you hear screams and cries from the people below. They’ve spotted you. You quickly pull up the rope. You don’t want to change history
 
—you
simply want to find Phil and get out of here. Maybe check out a few animals on the ark. But that’s all.

You circle the ledge you’re on, looking for some kind of entrance. Soon you spot one near the front of the ark. It’s a round opening big enough to put your hand into. Rainwater can’t get in because of the hole’s angle. You put your entire arm through and manage to pull open a door concealed in the wall.

You slip inside to darkness.

Do you search the deck you’re on?
Go here
.

Do you stay put until you hear voices?
Go here
.