Casper Candlewacks in the Time Travelling Toaster (2 page)

Casper was a good fifteen centimetres taller than Lamp – and a good fifteen centimetres better at spelling, for what it’s worth. Casper was a dab hand at sums, a keen reader and he could list the kings and queens from 1066 to the present. Lamp could just about list the numbers from one to two, but he struggled to open books the right way up and he didn’t even know when history was. Casper’s clothes were scruffy hand-me-downs from his dad’s rock-band phase, while Lamp only wore his boiler suit. When it got dirty, he wore it backwards to save on washing. The two made an unlikely pair, but because they’d saved the village three times since June, and it was only a quarter past eleven on the sixth of October, nobody was complaining.

Lamp’s one and only strong point was inventing, but, boy, was he good at it. He’d invented just-add-water moustaches, hind wheels for donkeys and a torch that glowed dark in the day. The thing is, when Lamp Flannigan says a piece of toast is from the future, you’d do well to believe him. He’s not normally wrong about that sort of thing.

Lamp’s house sat at number 1 Corne Approach, a charming two-bedroom property, just a stone’s throw from the new bus stop, complete with a garage, good access to the town centre and stunning views into the window of the house across the road.

But who’d want to look outside when the interior held such wonders? Lamp’s garage was dark, gloomy and absolutely wicked. Here, amongst piles of scrap metal and buckets of leftover doorknobs, Lamp let his inventions take form. Today, at centre stage on the workbench, sat a brushed-steel, four-slot toaster with a dozen metal springs boinging outwards at jaunty angles, each with a watch face glued to the end. Most of the watches were cracked, bent or missing vital numbers, like three etc. The hands weren’t turning, either, so Casper guessed they were just for decoration. Multicoloured wires sprouted from inside the toaster and wound about in scruffy coils, meeting again as they stuffed inside a digital alarm clock strapped on to the toaster’s front face. A series of buttons ripped from Lamp’s mum’s cardigans had been installed in a long line below, each labelled with things like
SEKUND
,
MINIT
, and
MUMF
.“It’s my Time Toaster.” Lamp proudly patted it, making the little watch faces wobble. “It steals a piece of toast from any toaster through time and space.”

“Oh…” Casper let that flow over him. “But why would you want toast from anywhere through time and space?”

“If you’re hungry, of course.”

“Couldn’t you just make some real toast?”

Lamp blinked. “Didn’t think of that. But listen, this is way better.” He pulled out the crumbling slice he’d shown Casper earlier. “Sniff this.”

He did. It smelt of toast.

“See?” grinned Lamp. He took a bite. “Mm, futurey.”

Casper waited patiently while Lamp invented a jam magnet.

When the toast was finished and the jam wiped off the walls, Lamp licked his lips and said, “So. Fancy a slice?”

“I... er…”

“Me too!” Lamp bounced across the garage to his Time Toaster and twizzled some buttons. “Ready?”

Casper took a few steps back and shoved on a motorcycle helmet that was lying on its side. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

“Then
Let’s TIME!
” Lamp did a heroic pose involving pointing one finger at the ceiling.

“Wait!” shouted Casper. “Can we think of a better catchphrase first?” He was worried that
Let’s Time
would stick.

“Erm…” Lamp chewed on his tongue. “How about ‘
Let’s Hope We Don’t Get Sucked into the Time Vortex and End Up Getting Trampled On by a TRICERATOPS!!
’”

Casper shuddered. That was a hope that he too shared, but he didn’t want to think about it every time Lamp made toast. “Shall we stick to the first one, then?”

Lamp nodded. “In that case, Casper, there’s no time to lose.
Let’s TIME!
”
He pushed the toaster’s lever down with a geeky flourish and the alarm clock went off. A dim, pulsing buzz came from the toaster’s bowels. The watches began to tick round now, slowly at first, but speeding up and up, until the springs shook and the hands were a blur of minutes and hours.

Smoke poured from the machine, and Casper smelt toast. A lick of flame danced from the top of the slot, then a crackle and hundreds of little clangs as the whole machine shuddered and the watches clashed into each other.

The cloud of smoke engulfed Lamp and his Time Toaster. Casper coughed into his shirt, his eyes stung, the smoke plumed across the garage and surrounded him too.

“Lamp!” he coughed. “Has it gone wrong?”

Through the smoke Casper saw somebody stumbling about inventing a fire extinguisher, but there was no response.

“Turn it off!” Casper shouted. “Turn–” but his lungs filled with smoke and he bent double, coughing. He longed for fresh air, for a cool breeze, for a friend who didn’t burn things down all the time.

Then…
SPRUNGG!

Something popped up. The cacophony ceased, the flames died and the smoke began to thin. Through Casper’s watery eyes he could see Lamp plucking something from the toaster’s tray and blowing it out with sharp puffs. Little cinders still burnt at the corners, so he threw it to the floor and gave it a good stamp.

“You can have that slice,” said Casper, straightening up and rubbing the ash from his eyes. “Not a big fan of stamped toast.”

Lamp picked it up and gasped. “But, Casper, this isn’t toast!”

“More like charcoal.”

“No, no, look. This is writing! It says…” He scratched his nose, leaving a black smudge. “Casper, can I read?”

“Not often, no. Give it here.”

The oily boy was right. He held out a charred strip of paper, yellow and curled and peppered with cinder holes. Most of the blackened bottom half melted away into ash as Casper took it, but some words at the top were still visible through the soot. A title, an author and a date.

Casper’s brain twisted the wrong way up. “What? But…” He read the paper again. And again. He rubbed his eyes. He looked at the date, and the name, and the title. Then he pinched himself. He asked Lamp to pinch him. He asked Lamp to punch him. He asked Lamp to stop punching him now, because six times was quite enough.

“What’s it say, then?”

Whichever way Casper read the paper, the words written on it were impossible. Firstly, it seemed to be an article written…
written
… by Lamp. This in itself was beyond belief. Only once in his life had Lamp spelt a word correctly. (He wrote ‘fish’, which is more of an achievement when you don’t know that it took him a week and he was trying to spell the word ‘the’.)

But more importantly, the date said
18 November 2112.
That would make Lamp 111 years old when he wrote it. Now, Betty Woons was 107 and going strong, but she didn’t get blown up nearly as often as Lamp. And anyway, Betty was probably lying about her age. She’d been 107 for as long as Casper had known her. Sure, she was old, but in all likelihood she’d lost count at around 80 and just picked her favourite number.

And even if
Lamp
had
grown to 111 years old and learnt to write, why would he discredit his own time machine, of all things? It was Lamp’s ultimate goal! With this toaster he was halfway there! Why ever would he criticise something like that?

“I think your machine’s broken, Lamp.”

“Can’t be. If it was broken then this light would come on.” He pointed to a green bottle cap on the top of the alarm clock marked
BROKKIN
.

“But this is written by you, in the future, and it says the Time Toaster should never have been invented.”

“Don’t be silly,” chuckled Lamp. “I can’t write.”

“Well, that’s what I thought.”

“So what’s that writing mean, then?”

“I haven’t a clue.” Casper chewed his lip, but that didn’t help at all.

Lamp thought for a minute, then snorted. “We should go and find out!”

“To the future?” Casper’s heart beat faster. “But how?”

“All we’ve got to do is climb into the Time Toaster. Then the me in the future will pull the switch.” Lamp was already trying to force his foot into the tray. “Gimme a push, Casper.”

“Lamp, you’ll never fit!” Casper gave his friend a shove, but his toes barely passed the lip of the toaster. “You’re just not toast-shaped.”

“I could be,” Lamp piped up. “As long as I bring some glue with me, I could travel in slices.”

“Not sure that’s wise.”

“But I want to go time travelling, Casper! I could be a knight, and a spaceman, and – ooh! – I could be a postman!”

“You could be a postman now.”

“Not a proper postman, Casper. In the olden days they rode horses and fired guns at deserts.”

“That’s a cowboy.”

A gasp came from the garage doorway.

Both boys spun round and one squeaked. There stood Anemonie Blight, her greedy eyes wide. She pointed a black-nailed finger at the Time Toaster. “Wassat, then?”

“Nothing,” snapped Casper. “Go away.”

“Not until you tell me what it does,” the girl smirked. “Fly, does it? Will it do yer homework?”

“It’s not finished,” lied Casper, “and even if it was, it still wouldn’t do anything.”

“Actually –” Lamp stepped forward proudly, clasping his hands together and closing his eyes like a museum curator describing Picasso’s bogey – “it’s a time machine.”

Anemonie’s ears pricked up.

Casper’s heart leapt.

Lamp’s tummy rumbled, so he took a bite of toast.

“Time machine, is it?” Anemonie’s body had tensed, her eyebrows raised.

“No!” cried Casper. “You heard him wrong. He said… erm… prime gravel. That’s it! It makes gravel for your garden path, that’s all.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Lamp frowned. “It makes time travel.”

Casper winced. He jabbed his friend twice with an elbow, to the rhythm of
Shut up
, but by the look on Anemonie’s face, he knew it was too late.

“The things I could do with a time machine,” the girl murmured, inching forward with a wild look in her eyes. “Go back and buy last week’s winning lottery tickets; take a telly back in time and pretend I invented it…” She giggled. “Or I could just sell the time machine. Reckon it’s worth a hundred pounds at least.”

“A hundred pounds?” chuckled Lamp, shaking his head. “Not likely. My Time Toaster’s more valuable than all the money in all the piggy banks in all the world.”

That was enough. Pound signs flashed in Anemonie’s eyes and she launched at the boys, fingernails first.

Lamp spun protectively and grabbed the Time Toaster while Casper stepped forward to block Anemonie’s path. She deftly dodged him, leaping to one side and bouncing at Lamp. Turning away just in time, Lamp found himself holding the Time Toaster at arm’s length as Anemonie pushed into him, screaming with envy.

“Lamp! Over here!” Casper was unmarked at the entrance to the garage, and he’d played enough rugby to know this was a good thing. “Chuck it!”

Anemonie lunged, but not in time to deflect Lamp’s mighty lob as the Time Toaster soared into the air…

…and landed with a
CRASH!
about fifty centimetres in front of Lamp’s feet.

“You broke it.” Anemonie sneered with disdain at the crumpled heap on the floor. “How’m I gonna sell a big lump of broken metal?” With a huff, she stomped from the garage, spitting on the floor as she left.