A
Nice Donation
by
John B. Rosenman
The
sign on Thrift World’s front door read Donations
Accepted
Around Back, so that was where Marcelline went.
She backed her pickup
toward the Donation
Center in the
rear, then hopped out and opened the tailgate.
“Hallo!”
she greeted the slender woman who appeared in the
doorway. “I have a donation
for you, but it’s rather heavy.”
“I’ll
get some help,” the woman said, turning back inside.
Soon
two brawny men came out and carried her offering inside.
It looked like a rosewood
cabinet, four feet long by a foot and a half wide, and
the men struggled with
it.
“Lady,”
the red-haired one puffed, “this thing is heavy.”
“I
know,” Marcelline said. She swished her long granny
dress and fingered the
beads on her necklace.
The
other man, who was black and bespectacled, grunted.
“Darn thing weighs a ton,”
he said. “What do you have in here, a pile of rocks?”
“Not
even warm,” she laughed.
Inside,
they lowered her donation to the floor and gazed at it.
The woman Marcelline
had spoken to came over.
“That’s
a nice cabinet,” she said. “Thank you for donating it.”
“You’re
welcome,” Marcelline said. She hesitated. “Oh dear, I
have a confession to make.”
“Confession?”
“Yes.
I want you to sell it as a cabinet. In fact, it will
work perfectly fine that
way. But it’s really not.”
The
black man bent down and opened one of the drawers, then
the other. “Could have
fooled me,” he said.
“If
it’s not a cabinet,” said the red-haired one, “what is
it?”
Marcelline
fidgeted. For the first time, she realized the sound
system was playing
something sweet and sad, a song filled with longing.
What was it? Oh, yes… Somewhere
In Time. It was a place she’d
often been.
“What
is it?” the man repeated.
Marcelline
sighed. “It’s a Temporal Displacer.”
They
all stared at her. “A what?”
the
woman said.
“It
relocates you in the space-time continuum,” Marcelline
said. She moved forward
and tapped the top. “The problem is, this model’s old
and unreliable, and I
have to return home. So I felt Thrift World might be
able to use it as a…cabinet.”
They
all stared at her as if she’d grown a second head. The
red-haired man rubbed
his mouth. “You’re not from around here?” he asked.
She
giggled and twirled her dress. “Not even close.”
“A
Temporal Displacer,” the black man said, rising and
adjusting his glasses. Marcelline
sensed he was the most intelligent of the three. “What
does this device do?” he
asked, touching a dial on top.
“Don’t
touch that!” she screamed. “I forgot to remove it.”
Too
late, she saw him slide the dial to the left. Though he
moved it only a little,
she feared it was far too much.
The
thrift store vanished. In place of women thumbing
through racks of second-hand clothes, they found
themselves in a noisy, happy, excited crowd. People
wearing sandals and dressed in tunics and togas moved
past and through them.
To
Marcelline,
it meant she had screwed up again. If she hadn’t
mentioned the
Temporal Displacer, the black man wouldn’t have messed
with it. The last thing
she wanted was to have her Time Travel license suspended
once more and have to work
at a desk job.
The
two men gasped and whirled around. “What happened?”
“What is this?” they asked.
The woman stood stunned, staring at the passing crowd.
The
red-haired fellow swore in disgust. “Aw, shit. They
stink of perfume and body
odor.” He yelped. “And they pass right though us!”
The
black man tried to leave, only to be repelled by an
invisible barrier a dozen
feet off. He followed it with his hands for several
steps in both directions,
reaching as high as he could. Then he returned.
“It’s
some kind of wall,” he said. He glared at Marcelline.
“What the hell have you
done? Are we trapped?”
“There’s
no use running,” she told them. “The ‘wall’ forms an
impenetrable circle all
around us.” She waved at their surroundings.
“We’re in Rome, AD 210 or thereabouts, and the
languages you hear these
folks speaking are Latin and Greek.”
The
black employee snapped his fingers. “That damned
Displacer!” He moved toward
the machine. “How does it work?”
“Too
complicated to explain,” Marcelline said. She watched
them, mentally chastising
herself. Damn it, she loved traveling through time and
seeing different
cultures and periods. When would she learn she was
supposed to be a mere
witness and not interfere at all, not even make a
donation?
The
black man raised his hand and pointed at a colossal
stone structure in the
distance. “That building,” he said. “It’s the
Colosseum!”
“Excellent
powers of observation,” she confirmed. She smiled at the
other fellow. “And the
reason the Romans pass right through us as they go there
is that we’re both
here and not here. That’s hard to explain, too.”
The
woman looked as if she were about to faint. “My God,
what the hell are you?”
Marcella
curtsied, as she’d seen women do in Queen Victoria’s
court. “Merely a time-traveler
who’s far from home,” she said.
“Can
we get out?” the red-haired man asked.
“Ah,
I thought you’d never ask.” Marcelline went to the
machine and paused, rubbing her
chin. “I wanted to donate this ‘cabinet’ because it’s
become so unreliable.
Perhaps I could try, though.”
She
reached down and carefully moved the dial.
Rome
and its people vanished, as did the mighty Colosseum. In
its place was a hot,
dry, yet fertile landscape. And standing fifty feet away
was an inhabitant nearly
twenty feet tall.
Uh-oh,
Marcelline thought. Talk about polluting the integrity
of the timelines! If
CenCom finds out about this, my license will be
cancelled for twenty years.
The
employees screamed at the monster before them. “I was
afraid of this,”
Marcelline said, trying to stay calm. “With this model,
I just can’t depend on
the settings anymore; there’s too much temporal shift.”
She stepped forward and
adopted her tour guide voice. “Folks, we’re now in the
Cretaceous Period about seventy
million years ago. Our friend Mr. T-Rex is the biggest
meat-eating dinosaur ever,
and had—or has—the most powerful bite of any land
animal. Just look at those
sharp, nine-inch teeth. Imagine what they could do.”
The
T-Rex opened its cavernous jaws and roared, shattering
the world with thunder. They
all clasped their ears.
When
it was over, the woman found her voice. “Dear Jesus,
look at those eyes. Can he
see us?”
“Yes,
how about it,” the black man asked. “You said we’re here
and yet not here. Well,
can this monster see and hurt us? Are we in danger?”
“That’s
an excellent question,” Marcelline said. “The Temporal
Displacer—”
“Don’t
tell me, I know. It’s unreliable.”
They’d
all backed up as far as the device would permit. “I’ll
tell you one thing,” the
redhead said. “From now on, I’m staying the hell out of
thrift stores.”
“Makes
two
of us, brother,” his colleague said. “You never know
what some fool is
going to donate.”
Towering
over them, the T-Rex stalked closer and closer. Yes,
Marcelline thought, I do believe
we’re all about to get killed and eaten here. Eaten raw.
Before
that could happen, though, she darted to the machine and
moved the dial.
She
pushed it too far, and the result was a seismic jolt.
Mr. T-Rex exploded into a
million pieces and the grassland turned inside out. When
things steadied, they
found themselves in outer space, surrounded by
glittering stars.
“Uh-oh,
we’re offworld now, far away from Earth.”
“Away
from Earth?” The woman’s eyes rolled in fear.
“How
far away?” the red-haired man said. He marched through
space toward Marcelline,
his fist raised. “Tell me!”
The
black man grabbed his arm. “Stop, we have enough
problems!”
“I
don’t see the Milky Way anywhere.” Marcelline clenched
her hands. “Could be
five billion light-years or more.” And that’s how
long they’ll cancel my
license if they find out.
Moments
passed, and they hugged themselves. “It’s c-c-cold!” the
woman said. “We could
freeze to death.”
“What’s
that?” the redhead said.
Marcelline
turned and saw a bright ball with a fiery tail. “Looks
like a comet,” she said.
“And
it’s coming right at us!” the black man said.
Marcelline
moved to the Temporal Displacer again. Yes, it was, and
if she didn’t do
something quick, they would be reduced to ashes. She
leaned over the dial. How
to correct the situation, though, without making matters
worse? Let’s see, if
she moved it here…
“Do
something,” the woman wailed, “before it hits us!”
Marcelline
glanced up. They were all cowering
before the imminent impact. Turning back, she whispered
a prayer and slid the
dial one, two, three spaces to the right, then focused
its hidden beam on the
workers, erasing their recent memory.
***
The
outer space scene vanished, and to her relief, she was
back outside Thrift
World, watching the two men lug her donation into the
store.
“Darn
thing weighs a ton,” the black man said. “What do you
have in here, a pile of
rocks?”
“Not
even warm,” she laughed.
Inside,
they lowered her donation to the floor and gazed at it.
The woman Marcelline
had spoken to came over.
“That’s
a nice cabinet,” she said. “Thank you for donating it.”
“You’re
welcome,” Marcelline said, and this time she felt no
need to confess. Instead, she
removed the Temporal Displacer and headed toward the
back door. “I hope you
find just the right customer for it,” she said.
Suddenly
her fingers slipped on the Displacer, and she heard an
ominous sound behind
her. Uh-oh. It sounded like a temporal breach. She
looked at the dial and tried
to reset it before something bad happened.
No
luck. The damned dial wouldn’t budge. Desperate, she
turned toward the store
and tried to move the dial in several different ways.
All of them failed. Her
heart sank as the truth sank in.
The
device
was broken.
More
sounds came from Thrift World, and she had no trouble
interpreting them. The
mighty creature they’d visited in the Cretaceous Period
was breaking through to
this time period, and some of its curious friends would
follow. Human screams now
signaled the arrival of this most unexpected guest whose
dining habits left
much to be desired.
Stunned,
Marcelline could only watch as the T-Rex crashed through
the back of the store,
shattering the wall to pieces. It looks like my Time
Travel license is about
to be cancelled for good,
she
thought. She managed to smile as the dinosaur came
toward her, its jaws opened wide
in hunger.
End
|