by Neil Gaiman
On the side of the volcano there was a carving of a big scary face with one eye in the middle of its forehead. The eye was the biggest emerald I had ever seen.
“A special-shiny-greeny-stone!” said Professor Steg, with his mouth full of rope.
The fat man clambered up the side of the volcano.
“It is a good thing that Splod himself told us to give you the Eye of Splod,” said the little thin man who had narrowly avoided being sacrificed, “because there is another prophecy that if the Eye of Splod is ever removed, Great Splod will awaken and spread burning destruction across the land.”
“Here you go,” said the fat man.
He handed us the emerald. Professor Steg nipped up the rope ladder into the balloon’s gondola and began to install the emerald in the Time Machine.
“Hang on. He was a stegosaurus?”
“Yes.”
“Then how could he just nip up a rope ladder?”
“He was,” said my father, “a large stegosaurus, but very light on his feet. There are fat people who are excellent dancers.”
“Are there any ponies in this?” asked my sister. “I thought there would be ponies by now.”
I was standing on the ground, holding on to the rope ladder, when the ground shook and the very small volcano began to belch smoke and lava.
“Splod is angry!” shouted the little thin man. “He wants his eye back.”
There was a rushing wind, and the balloon jerked me up into the air, high above the splurting lava.
Unfortunately, I dropped the milk. I wasn’t holding on to it tightly enough. It landed on the top of Splod’s head.
Professor Steg hauled the rope ladder up with his tail.
“I’VE LOST THE MILK!” I told him.
“That’s not good,” he admitted.
“But I know where it is. It’s on top of Splod’s head, on the side of the volcano.”
Professor Steg said, “Good Splod! What on earth is that?”
Before our eyes, another balloon, just like ours, appeared, over by the volcano. A man hurried down the rope ladder. He placed a large emerald in Splod’s eye, picked up the milk from Splod’s head, ran up the ladder, and the balloon vanished.
The very small volcano stopped erupting as suddenly as if it had been turned off.
“That was a bit peculiar, wasn’t it?” said the professor.
“It was,” I agreed, gloom and despair and despondency overcoming me. “That man in that balloon stole my milk. We are lost in the past, with jungles and pirates and volcanoes. Now I will never get home. My children will never have breakfast. We are doomed to float forever through the dusty air of the past in a hot air balloon.”
“It is not a balloon,” said Professor Steg. “It is a Floaty-Ball-Person-Carrier. What nonsense you do talk. Now, I think that should do the trick.”
He finished attaching the emerald to the box, using string, mostly, and also sticky tape, and he pushed the red button.
“Where are we going?” I asked. It seemed like the sun was zooming across the sky, as if nights were following days in a flickering strobe.
“The far, far future!” said Professor Steg.
The machine stopped.
We were hanging in the air above a grassy plain, with a very small grey mountain beneath us.
“There,” said Professor Steg. “It is now an extinct volcano. BUT LOOK!”
On the side of the extinct volcano was carved the face of Splod, still recognizable, even though it was much eroded by time and the weather, and in the single eye was a huge green emerald, a perfect twin to the one that we had attached to the Time Machine.
“Right,” said Professor Steg. “Grab me that special-shiny-greeny-stone.”
I went over the side of the gondola and down the rope ladder. I pulled the emerald out of the eye socket.
Below me, on the plain, a number of brightly colored ponies were gathered, and when I picked up the emerald, one of them shouted up at me. “You must be the man without the milk. We have heard about you, in our tales.”
“Why are you a pink pony with a pale blue star on the side?” I asked.
“I know,” said the pony with a sigh. “It’s what everybody’s wearing these days. Pale blue stars are so last year.”
Professor Steg leaned over the side of the balloon’s basket. “Hurry up!” he called. “If the volcano is going to go off, it will do it any moment.”
The volcano made a noise like a huge burp, and the middle of it collapsed into itself.
“We thought it would do that,” said a green pony with a sparkly mane.
“There was a prophecy, I suppose,” I said.
“No. We’re just very clever.” All the ponies nodded. They were very clever ponies.
“I am so glad there were ponies,” said my sister.
I got back into the balloon basket. Professor Steg unhooked the first emerald from his Time Machine and replaced it with the one that I had just taken from the weathered face of Splod-in-the-Future.
“Do not, whatever else you might do,” said the professor, “touch those two stones together.”
“Why not?”
“Because, according to my calculations, if the same object from two different times touches itself, one of two things will happen. Either the Universe will cease to exist. Or three remarkable dwarfs will dance through the streets with flowerpots on their heads.”
“That sounds astonishingly specific,” I said.
“I know. But it is science. And it is much more probable that the Universe will end.”
“I thought it would be,” I said.
“You look so sad,” Professor Steg told me.
“I am! It’s the milk. My children are breakfastless—”
“The milk!” said Professor Steg. “Of course!” And with that, Professor Steg pressed the red button with his heavily armored tail.
There was a ZOOM, a TWORP, and a THANG, and we were hurtling through the cosmic void.
And then it was dark.
Very dark.
“Oops,” said Professor Steg. “Overshot a little. Only by a week, though. Hold on. . . .”
Professor Steg leaned over the side of the basket.
“Excuse me?” he said. “Is there anyone around?”
“Only me,” said a very surprised-sounding voice from below us. “The priest of Splod. Who is that up in the sky? Is it a bird? You do not sound like a bird.”
“I am not a bird,” said Professor Steg. “I am a marvelous yet mysterious and prophetic voice, telling you a mighty prophecy. So mighty that . . . Um . . . Very mighty indeed. Listen. When a huge and good-looking spiny-backed individual—”
“Monster,” I told him. “The prophecy said monster.”
“Accompanied by a scrawny human being of revolting appearance—” said Professor Steg.
“That was not necessary.”
“—lands in a Floaty-Ball-Person-Carrier, you must not sacrifice them. You must instead take them to the volcano and give them the Eye of Splod. And this shall be the way that you shall know them. The human being will hold up some milk.”
“Is that the prophecy?” said the voice.
“Yes.”
“Is there anything about crops in it?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Oh well. Thank you anyway, prophetic and mysterious voices from the air.”
I pressed the red button.
Daylight. We were in the middle of a very familiar volcanic eruption. “Quickly!” I said. “Give me the emerald!”
A little way away I could see a balloon being blown through the sky, while fire and ash were swept around it by the wind. I could see me in the balloon, standing next to Professor Steg, with my mouth open. I looked miserable.
Professor Steg—MY Professor Steg—gave me the emerald.
I raced down the rope ladder and placed the emerald back into the face’s eye. Then, as the volcano stopped erupting, I looked around for the milk. I knew it had landed on Splod’s head
when it fell.
Fortunately, the milk had fallen into a small drift of volcanic ash, and was unharmed. I picked it up, brushed it off, and started back up the balloon ladder. Professor Steg pressed the button.
The sky went dark.
We were FLOATING above a landscape of ominous towers and disquieting castles. It was not a friendly place. Bats flew across the sky in huge flocks, crowding out the waning moon.
“I don’t like this place,” I told the professor.
“I don’t see why not,” he said. “It looks as if it would be very nice when the sun comes up.”
There was a loud FLUT!, and where the bats had been fluttering, several pallid people were now standing. The man in front had a very bald head.
THEY ALL HAD
SHARP TEETH.
“Ve are wumpires,” they said. “Vot is this? Who are you? Answer us, or ve vill wiwisect you.”
“I am Professor Steg,” boomed the Stegosaurus. “This is my assistant. We are on an important mission. I am trying to get back to the present. My assistant is trying to get home to the future for breakfast.”
At the word BREAKFAST all the wumpires looked very excited.
“Ve have not had our breakfast,” they told us. “Ve normally have vigglyvorms, vith orange juice on them. Orange juice makes vorms ewen vigglier. Like vandering spaghetti. But if ve cannot eat vorms ve vill eat assistant, or ewen roast professor.”
One of the wumpires took out a fork, and looked me up and down in a hungry sort of way.
The baldest, most bulging-eyed, rattiest of the wumpires said, “Vot is this box?”
“It is my finest invention,” began Professor Steg proudly, but I interrupted.
“It is to keep sandwiches in,” I said.
“Sandviches?” said the wumpire.
“Sandwiches,” I said, with as much certainty as I could muster.
“Ve thought it vos a Time Machine,” said the head wumpire, with a sly, sharp smile. “And ve could use it to inwade the vorld!”
“Definitely sandwiches,” I told him.
“Vot happens if I press this button, then?” asked a lady wumpire. She had long black hair that covered most of her face, and peered out at the world with one suspicious eye.
She pressed the button. We went forward six hours in time.
“See?” said the professor happily. “All this place needs to brighten it up is a little bit of sunshine.”
The head wumpire said, “Vot?” and dissolved into a cloud of oily black smoke. So did all his friends.
“Yes,” I said. “It is a nice place here, after all. In the daylight.”
The professor tinkered with the jewels and the string and the buttons. Then he said, “I think I’ve got it properly fine-tuned, now. This next press should bring you back to your own time, place, and breakfast.”
But before the tip of his tail could touch the button, a voice said, “I’ll explain later. Fate of the world at stake.”
A hand grabbed, and the milk, which I had carried safely for so long, was gone. I turned in time to catch a glimpse of a fine-looking gentleman with his back to me, holding my milk, and then the hole in space through which he had reached was closed.
“MY MILK!”
“He said he’d explain later,” said the professor. “I’d be inclined to believe him.”
The hole in space opened again. A voice shouted, “Catch!” and the milk came rocketing through.
Fortunately, the milk struck me in the stomach, and in clutching my hands to my belly I caught the milk.
“There,” said the professor. “Everything is back to normal.”
“He did say he’d explain later,” I pointed out. “And that wasn’t much of an explanation.”
“But it’s not later yet,” said Professor Steg. “It’s still now. It won’t be later until later.”
He was arranging pebbles and stones and string on the top of the Time Machine box. “Final coordinates entered,” he said. “And then it’s off to your house for breakfast.”
“Does that mean that there is a Stegosaurus in a hot air balloon outside?” I asked my dad.
“There is not,” he said. “For reasons that will become apparent.”
“I think that there should have been some nice wumpires,” said my sister, wistfully. “Nice, handsome, misunderstood wumpires.”
“There were not,” said my father.
“Would you like to press the button?” said Professor Steg.
I pressed the red button. There was an ear-popping noise and a flicker of years and I was floating, in a balloon basket, above the intersection of Marshall Road and Fletcher Lane. I could see our house from above. I could see the bicycles in the back garden. I could see the rabbit hutch.
“We’re here!” I said, and I patted Professor Steg on the back ridge-plates.
“It was very nice, having you as a traveling compani—aargh,” said the professor, because there was a familiar sort of a thumm-thumm noise, and before I had a chance to press the red button, we were deposited, balloon and all, on the enormous metal deck of a flying saucer, with a number of very grumpy-looking green globby people staring at us with too many eyes. They did not look pleased.
“HaHA!” said several globby people at the same time. “You thought you had escaped us! And you were wrong! Now, you must sign the planet over to us so that we can remodel it. We will take out all the trees, for a start, and put in plastic flamingoes.”
“Why?”
“We like plastic flamingoes. We think they are the highest and finest art form that Earth has achieved. And they are tidier than trees.”
“Also, we are going to replace the clouds with scented candles.”
“We like scented candles, too,” explained a huge green globby person, who looked like he was mostly made of snot.
“We also like decorative plates!” said another. “We will put a decorative plate up where the moon is now.”
“A really BIG decorative plate, showing landmarks of the world.”
“And we will then replace all of the landmarks of the world with decorative plates with pictures of landmarks on them too, so the Eiffel Tower will be replaced by a large plate with a picture of the Eiffel Tower on it. And Australia will be replaced by a really seriously big plate with Australia on it.”
“Also we will replace all of your mountains with throw-cushions,” said the smallest, globbiest thing of all, with triumph in its glutinous voice.
“We have learned a lot from our previous meeting,” said some globs that were sticking to a wall. “If you look over there, you will see that the door to the space-time continuum you used to escape through last time is now securely locked.”
It was definitely locked. It had a huge padlock on it, and a sign saying
KEEP OUT
on it, in unfriendly red letters. There were also chains around it, a tape that said
DO NOT CROSS,
and a handwritten notice that said
For Your Convenience,
Please Use Another Door.
ESCAPE WAS IMPOSSIBLE.
“Also we have depowered your Time Machine.”
I looked at the professor. His armored back-flaps were drooping, and his tail was—well, not actually between his legs, because stegosauruses aren’t made that way, but if they were, it would have been.
“We have been tracking your movements through time and space,” said a large globby alien in front of a console with a screen on it.
“Now, see what happens when I press this grundledorfer,” said a particularly drippy alien. It was half-sticking to the wall, next to a large black, shiny button.
“It’s called a button,” I said.
“Nonsense. We named it after our brood-aunt, Nessie Grundledorfer,” said the globby aliens. The particularly drippy alien pressed the black button on the metal wall with something that might have been a finger and might just have been a long strand of snot.
There was a CRACKLE.
There was a FIZZ.
Standing around us, in attitudes of anger and irritation, were several pirates, some of the black-haired people from the jungle, a very unhappy-looking volcano god, a large bowl filled with piranhas, and some wumpires.
“I’m not sure that I understand what the piranhas are doing,” said my sister.
“They were from a narrow escape earlier that I forgot to mention,” said our father. “Fortunately, the milk floated at a crucial moment and it all ended for the best.”
“I thought it might,” I said.
“Uh-oh,” I said.
“Prepare to be keelhauled, you scurvy dogs,” shouted the pirates.
“Let us now sacrifice them both to great Splod!” shouted the men with shiny black hair.
“They stole my eye! Twice!” rumbled mighty Splod.
“Ve vants those willains and warmints wiolently vound up,” proclaimed a tall lady wumpire with long fingernails.
The piranhas said nothing, but they thrashed about in their bowl, ominously.
“Doomed,” moaned Professor Steg. “We cannot escape. They have frozen us in time and depowered us. Even my mighty Time Machine can do no more than open a small window in time and space—smaller than either of us could get through.”
“But can you do it?” I asked. “Open a little window in time to our last location?”
“Of course. But what good would that do?”
“Quickly!” I said. “Do it!”
Professor Steg pushed the button on the box with the tip of his nose.
There was a zum! and a plip! and a window opened in space and time, large enough for an arm to get through.
I reached into it.
“I’ll explain later,” I said. “Fate of the world at stake.” I grabbed the milk from me, fifteen minutes earlier, through the tiny space-time portal.
“You must like milk a lot,” said the globby aliens. “But that craving for lactic liquids will not make us take pity on you or let you go and spare your badly-designed planet.”
