The Secret Lives of Emails.docx (13 page)

“You can use my time machine if you like.”

Time travel?

~

Brittany and Emal jumped at the unexpected voice.

“Who said that?” Brittany asked as she started pointing her finger at imaginary people. “Who said it? Who?”

“It was me, friends,” came the voice from behind them. They both turned to see an older gentleman sitting underneath a light, in an ornate chair, fifty yards down their side of the tunnel. They hadn’t even noticed the man when they came into the tube; he had apparently been eavesdropping on them the entire time. The man sat in the chair wearing an old suit and an older thick mustache. The chair was covered with red felt and had brass railings around the outside. On the back of the contraption was a large dish with strange symbols and what appeared to be dates on it. It was a bizarre set-up, even for the Internet. Emal eyed it closely, waiting for it to do something he wouldn’t like.

“I was merely suggesting that perhaps you would both like to pile into my time machine here and simply go back to a more convenient time,” he said with a flip of his hand. “We can go back as far as you like. A few days ago, before you met, or even back to before these places you spoke of were destroyed. You, good sir!” The man said, pointing directly at Emal. “Do we know each other?”

Emal pointed at himself in confusion, though he was clearly the only good sir in the tube.

“Me? I don’t think so. If you haven’t heard, I’m fairly new here.”

“No. I do know you. I have a prophecy for you.”

The old man fumbled in a cup holder, looking for something. He tossed out soda bottles and food wrappers before exclaiming, “Aha,” and producing a piece of paper.

“Yes, here it is,” he said, clearing his throat. “One will be born of one. Two will be born of none. And more will come.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Brittany asked as she strode over. She stopped next to the man and the machine, eyeing them both rather pointedly.

“Oh, I have no idea, but don’t all good stories need a prophecy of sorts?”

“No, I don’t think they do,” Brittany said.

“Sure they do. It’s part of the hero quest. This fella over here is the hero of the story, isn’t he? He needs to have strange birth origins or early trauma. We can check that one off, I think. He needs a mentor. I believe that is you, young lady,” the man said, pointing at Brittany. “He needs a call to adventure, which I think you are providing for him quite well. Save the Internet and all that jazz. Of course, there are other things to come that will really round him out as a hero. Like his initial refusal to answer the adventure call.”

“Damn right; I don’t want any adventure,” Emal shouted. “I just want to go home. I just want to deliver my message.”

“See, there you are. Another check off the hero checklist. But we’ll stop there; we don’t want to give away any more details of the novel, or its future follow up novels, am I right?” he added with a wink to the reader. “Anyways, are you guys ready to travel in time and get this adventure started for real or what?”

“You’re H.G. Wells?” Brittany asked brusquely.

“I am.”

“Author of works such as
The War of the Worlds
,
The Island of Doctor Moreau
,
The Time Machine, The Undying Fire,
and countless other important stories?”

“That’s me,” he answered proudly, thrusting his chin up.

“And you think we should use a time machine to travel back in time to solve our little problem?”

“Well, it certainly couldn’t hurt any—”

Before he finished the sentence, Brittany pulled a pistol from somewhere in her skirt and shot H.G. Wells in the head.

Willing to listen to more details about this hero business, Emal, who had been walking over to the pair, suddenly froze in mid-stride, one leg held in the air. For a few moments the echo of the shot down the tube was the only sound. Smoke wormed out of the barrel of the pistol held at Brittany’s side. Emal decided the best course of action was to bombard his gun-wielding companion with as many questions as possible to keep her occupied as he decided whether or not he should flee for his life.

“What was that? What did you do that for? Where did you pull that out of? You shot a man with a mustache!”

Brittany put the pistol back wherever she had gotten it from, turning to Emal. She took a few deep breaths to calm herself.

“He suggested time travel,” she stated.

Emal waited for what he thought was an appropriate amount of time for her to provide more detail, but she didn’t feel the need for more.

“Okay . . . Didn’t you suggest time travel earlier?”

“I said you needed it to become a teenager, not that I would let you use it. Look, time travel doesn’t work. Well, not that it doesn’t work; it might for all I know. What I do know is that it doesn’t work in fiction. Think of how many movies, books, comics, and more have been ruined by time travel plot holes.
Terminator
,
The Lake House
,
The Butterfly Effect
,
Back to the Future
. The list just goes on and on.”

“You’re naming movies that are based on time travel. The movies might have some logic flaws involving the time travel, or poor lead actor choices, but without the time travel, they aren’t even movies to begin with,” Emal said.

“Fine.” Without having to stop and think, she replied, “What about
Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban
,
Star Trek
(2009),
Planet of the Apes
,
Lost
,
Men in Black 3
,
Donnie Darko—
”

“—
Donnie Darko
doesn’t count; no one understands that movie, and anyone who pretends to is a pretentious twat,” Emal said.

“That’s fair, but the list could go on if our writer felt like doing more research. I will not allow us to become part of that list. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of otherwise good works of fiction have been ruined by the failure of the time travel plot device.”

“But aren’t the readers or viewers accepting of time travel if they are given a decent enough explanation?”

“But what’s a decent explanation for time travel suddenly popping up in a novel? Take
Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban
, the entire logic of the series is ruined because if they had the ability to turn back time, they could’ve prevented the entire seven books from needing to happen. Kill Voldemort before he is a powerful wizard. Simple. It’s done. Instead of seven books, eight movies, and countless addendums, we can read a journal article that Dumbledore submitted to
Wizarding Monthly
. Dumbledore can explain why he was justified in killing an innocent orphan. Surely he could justify killing Tom Riddle to prevent the deaths of thousands. And another thing, Dumbledore could have also come out as a homosexual as a simple note in his byline of the journal article. Instead, we are just going to pretend he was homosexual all along and we, the stupid reader, just never figured it out. Almost 900,000 words with no mention, yet I’m made to feel homophobic because I never knew he was gay.”

“The entire logic of the series involves people using magic on each other with pieces of wood that have unicorn hair in them. I don’t think introducing time travel randomly in the middle ruins anything.”

“Oh, I can suspend disbelief to a certain degree. All fiction requires that at some point. Well, except maybe the really boring fiction that deals with personal dramas. You know, the stuff that wins awards even though no one wants to read that crap. We all have our own drama; I don’t need to hear about someone’s disturbing childhood. I digress. I can accept the magical world of
Harry Potter
, but I cannot accept that they don’t have logic in that world,” Brittany said. She was getting angry now as the exchange became heated, as most discussions involving
Harry Potter
are liable to do.

“You can accept unicorns and magic wands but not the Ministry of Magic’s reluctance to use a time travel device? Besides, it’s explained in another book that during the battle in the Department of Mysteries the stock of Time Turners was destroyed,” Emal shot back.

“So what! That was years after Voldemort had risen to power, subsequently disappeared, and come back again. In all that time, no one ever discussed the possibility of simply going back and killing him? Never a committee meeting discussing the pros and cons of killing a teenage boy before he becomes the worst wizard in history? Never even someone going against orders and doing it anyway to save their wife, child, mother, or beloved family pet from getting killed by Voldemort? All the people in the Ministry of Magic who had access to the Time Turners and you’re telling me not a single one of them lost someone they wanted to go back and save? It would have happened. If there was a time device that would allow people to go back and kill Hitler, I think someone would find a way to use it. Whether their boss said they could or not.”

Emal opened his mouth for a retort, but he wasn’t quick enough and she continued on.

“And another thing, the wands are meaningless. When it’s convenient for the plot, only the true owner of the wand can use it properly. But when it’s convenient for the plot, they can use any old stranger’s wand and it suddenly doesn’t matter. Either the wand is linked to one wizard or it isn’t. The lack of consistency is maddening,” Brittany shouted.

And mad she was! Her face was getting as red as a stoplight, and new veins that Emal had never seen before were beginning to appear on her neck.

“Well, who am I to argue,” Emal said, attempting to de-escalate the situation. “Besides, what does that have to do with you shooting H.G. Wells? A man with a mustache, I might add!”

Brittany took another deep breath to further calm herself.

“The whole point is . . . Time travel is a cheap plot device that is never properly explained since it doesn’t exist in real life and involves too many paradoxes. It inevitably confuses the plot and leads to more questions than answers. I won’t allow time travel to happen in our story.”

“What if our writer can’t find another way around plot issues? I’m sure he doesn’t have any of this planned out ahead of time. You wouldn’t want him to just scrap us entirely like his first dozen unfinished novels?”

“I won’t let time travel happen. Period. He will either find another way or else,” she said with a finality that indicated the discussion was over and Emal would be wise not to attempt to continue it.

They stared at each other for a moment. Emal hoped that Brittany wasn’t weighing if he was worth a bullet as well. He didn’t care about time travel or lame plot devices. He just really wanted to go home. This Internet place was clearly dangerous to his personal health.

A shot rang out!

Time to die

~

Emal flinched as he was shot.

Or was he?

He didn’t feel any pain, and Brittany looked as surprised as he was.

Another shot echoed through the tube, and this time he saw cement explode behind Brittany’s head as a voice called out.

“Who goes there? Answer us or we’ll shoot! Stop resisting!”

Brittany reacted first, ducking quickly behind H.G. Wells’s chair and whipping her pistol back out from its hiding place. She yelled back to the mystery shooters, “You’ve already shot at us, idiots! We didn’t even have a chance to raise our hands.”

“Oh my Gore,” Emal yelled. “You just had to shoot a man with a mustache, didn’t you? Now you’re going to get me killed.”

Emal considered not running toward Brittany. One choice was an armed and angry Brittany, who apparently will shoot anyone who even merely suggests time travel. The other choice was an unknown person who shoots first and asks questions later. He decided he had a better chance going with the whole ‘I saved your life’ angle. Emal heard the crack of bullets passing by his head as he half stumbled and half slid around the edge of the time machine, crashing into Brittany.

“NOW I’m resisting!” Brittany yelled toward the other end of the tube as she began firing.

“And I’m not getting you killed; you’re getting me killed,” Brittany said to Emal, firing at nothing in particular.

“You shot someone with a mustache, and now we are being shot at. That suggests to me it’s your fault,” Emal said.

“This is because you let that dumb dog sniff you.”

“No way, this is totally your fault.”

“Is not!”

The body of H.G. Wells had slumped half off the time machine toward their side and Emal attempted to push him back up and out of the way. H.G. groaned and Emal let out a squeak of shock.