The CuisinArt

We’ve got contributor #2, folks. The leather-foot, scatterbrained, and immensely clever- Shea O’Neill. He is single, bearded, and author of the kerouacian (care-OH-whack-ee-n) blog ‘Northwest Excursion.’

Below is part one of his quirky time travel saga. Enjoy:

It did not surprise Milo Stampton, repudiated best friend of Manoj Vindalu, when Manoj burst into his apartment one Friday afternoon with a solution to the “M Knight problem.” Nor did it confound his sensibilities that the “solution” appeared to be a shoebox, wherein wires and circuits co-mingled in a pool of Elmer’s Glue. It fazed him little when Manoj called the box a time machine; less when he explained the mechanics: it would encapsulate him within a pan-dimensional, time-neutral bubble, allowing him to transport instantaneously while time continued as normal outside. His plan was easily deducible: use the machine to fast-forward to the twist endings in M. Knight’s movies.

Considering Manoj’s zealotry, single mindedness, and weekend propensity for glue huffing, it all made perfect sense. Except for the fact that Manoj, an often solitary man, invited Milo to the device’s inauguration. This was truly surprising.

They traveled together to the movie theatre, though Milo, admittedly, went only to ridicule. At the concession stand Milo bought a large tub of popcorn. Manoj refused concessions, reminding Milo that “he won’t need snacks where he’s going.” They filed into their seats, nodding or sneering accordingly throughout the previews. The credits silenced the crowd. Taking his cue, Manoj closed his eyes and activated the device.

He awoke to find himself staring once again at the opening credits. Defeated, he tossed the device among fallen popcorn kernels and half chewed bubblegum. It appeared Milo had been right all along and that one cannot deconstruct the mysteries of time travel using wires and glue. Perhaps next time he would use rubber cement instead. He turned to congratulate Milo. In his place he found an older gentlemen, ashen white, waving his hands and stuttering “G-G-Ghost.”

It would be far too convenient to construe the man’s outburst as just another “senior moment.” The man is, or rather was—as these events would surely precipitate a downfall in his sanity—a rather competent and upstanding citizen. But what other conclusion could he possibly draw? He had, after all, been minding his own businesses, palming a rather ambitious handful of popcorn, when an Indian man appeared out of the Ether and plopped into the seat beside him.

While hovering beyond the earth in his pan-dimensional, time neutral bubble, Manoj forgot the fact that the Earth would continue to turn on its normal 24-hour rotation, spinning at an impressive 800 mph below. And so, two hours later, the geographic location from which he had originated was no longer the geographic location in which he re-emerged. He resurfaced two hours West in a small midwestern town called Dunville. The true miracle was that he had somehow managed to reappear inside another movie theatre showing the same film he had attempted to avert two hours and 1,600 miles earlier.

Manoj fled the escalating awkwardness in search of a bus station. Nearing the depot he heard a whisper from an adjacent alleyway. Curiosity piqued, he slinked into the darkness. There he found a man cloaked in black.

“Looking for some time?” the man asked.

Manoj, confused and still distraught over his failed experiment, decided to inquire further into what the man meant by time. Most likely he was some black market clock salesman. Though Manoj clung to hope that just maybe he was selling some thyme, which would go nicely with the stew Manoj planned to cook later that evening.

“Time,” the man repeated. “The Great Journey. Miss Scary Plane. The Relevancy Factor. The STC. Time Travel.”

“You mean to tell me,” Manoj replied skeptically, “that you are peddling time travel in the back alley of a small midwestern town? How do I know this is not a hoax?”

“You’ll just have to trust me the same way you trusted Marty Coopersmith to sell you an official early release copy of Cloverfield, instead of some cheap bootleg,” he answered, checking over each shoulder for whatever authorities might police against illegal time dealing.

Manoj then concluded that no stranger could possibly know such personal information unless they had traveled back in time to obtain it.

And so perhaps it was the curious name drop. Or perhaps it is because a bootleg time travel device turned out to be much cheaper than a bus ticket back to Philadelphia. But Manoj decided to make a deal.

“So where will you be going, forward or backward?” the man asked, opening his coat to reveal a colorful assortment of trinkets and mechanical devices, all of which hummed at a deep and unsettling frequency. Manoj’s instincts told him to say forward, but he caught his tongue. Why continue to go forward when there would always be another movie theatre just beyond the horizon? Why run a race he could not win? Why not just go back to the beginning and rig the race in his favor?

He would travel backward to the curry swept bazaars of 1970’s Pondicherry, India. He would find the parents of M Knight. He would thwart their love. And once and for all he would avert the ill-fated conception of the man responsible for cinematic holocaust.

“I’ll take an order of the past,” Manoj said, smiling wryly. “And make it to go.” End Part I.