Stuck in the Stone Age

by The Story Pirates

  “OHMYGOSH!” yelled Tom. “That is DEFINITELY AMAZING!” He looked around. “Right?”

  Tom was right. The other scientists were all nodding, smiling, and whispering to each other with excitement.

  As she watched them from the stage, Marisa’s nervousness melted away. Her face could barely contain her smile.

  Just look at them! They were so excited! They loved her invention! Even Dr. Vasquez was beaming, and she’d just been upstaged!

  This was the moment Marisa had been waiting ten years to enjoy.

  It felt even better than she’d dreamed. The scientists were all waving their hands in the air, desperate to quiz her about the solar panels. Or possibly to invite her to lunch! She wasn’t sure which. But she couldn’t wait to find out.

  Dr. Palindrome cleared his throat, quieting the crowd. “Now, I’m sure you all have a lot of questions for Dr. Moran—”

  “Morice,” Marisa corrected him, with a confidence that surprised even her. “Sorry.”

  “Not at all! Morice! Right! My apologies. But before we get to the questions, let’s not forget Dr. Vasquez. Have you got something for us that’s even more amazing than a solution to all of mankind’s energy needs?”

  “I think I do,” said Dr. Vasquez. “I’ve invented a time machine.”

  She whipped the sheet off her giant box, revealing a six-foot-tall, five-foot-wide contraption made of metal and glass.

  The room exploded with noise as fifty-seven scientists and a janitor went completely bonkers.

  “WHAAAAAAAT?”

  “OHMYGOSH!”

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE IT!”

  Marisa couldn’t believe it, either. “Seriously? But…isn’t time travel impossible?”

  “Not anymore!” said Dr. Vasquez in a perky voice. “Who wants to see how it works?”

  Fifty-eight hands shot in the air.

  “WE DO!”

  “SHOW US!”

  “OH WOW OH WOW!”

  Dr. Vasquez opened a human-sized door on the side of the time machine. Inside, there was just enough room for two people to stand.

  “There are controls inside that the user can set to any date and time in Earth’s history. But because of the risk involved in sending a human on its first test run, I’ve built a remote control to operate the machine from outside.”

  She pointed to a bright orange box hanging from a pair of hooks on the side of the time machine.

  “I call this gizmo a ‘fetcher,’ because it’ll fetch the machine to and from any date I request. Would you like to see a demonstration?”

  “WOULD WE EVER!”

  “HECK, YEAH!”

  “ZOWEEE!”

  Everyone was on their feet, yelling with excitement.

  Everyone, that is, except Marisa. She stood off to one side of the stage, looking pale and slightly barfy. The moment of her dreams suddenly felt a lot less dreamy.

  In fact, it was starting to feel more like a nightmare.

  Dr. Vasquez unhooked the bread box–sized fetcher from the side of the machine. “I’ve programmed the fetcher to send the machine back in time to 10,000 B.C. for exactly five minutes, then return to this very spot ten seconds from now.

  She placed her finger on a big red button on the fetcher’s display panel.

  Everyone in the room sucked in their breath with excitement. (Except for Marisa. She was clutching her stomach and trying not to be sick.)

  Dr. Vasquez paused. “Before we start,” she warned, “there’s a slight chance this will go horribly wrong and create a small but extremely dangerous black hole. In which case…”

  She turned her eyes to Tom and gave him a hopeful look.

  Tom raised his hand and yelled, “I can clean that up for you! I’ve got nine-and-a-half fingers left!”

  “Thanks, Tom! You’re the best!” Dr. Vasquez gave him a thumbs-up. “So, goodbye, time machine. We’ll see you again in ten seconds!”

  Dr. Vasquez pressed the button on the fetcher.

  The time machine disappeared. Only the wheeled cart remained, spinning in place on the stage.

  Everyone in the room gasped in wonder…except Marisa, who was very dizzy and had just lurched offstage in search of somewhere to sit before she fainted.

  Dr. Vasquez watched the fetcher’s display panel as she counted down:

  “Four…three…two…one—”

  That time machine really spoiled Marisa’s plan! See Storytelling 101: Reversals of Fortune.

  POP! With a noise like a cork getting pulled from a bottle, the time machine reappeared on its wheeled cart.

  But it looked very different. The gleaming new box was no longer gleaming or new-looking. Its roof and three sides were pockmarked with fist-sized dents. The fourth side looked like it had been dunked in a vat of mud. And on the side opposite the mud, an enormous dent had bowed in the machine’s entire lower half. It looked like some giant horned animal had rammed it at high speed.

  “Oh, my!” declared Dr. Vasquez with a grin. “It looks like 10,000 B.C. was a pretty rough place.”

  The scientists began gasping, cheering, and yelling all at once. They were shocked! They were amazed! They had questions.

  The only person in the room who wasn’t talking—or even listening—was Marisa. As the other scientists all crowded around Dr. Vasquez and her muddy, dented, mind-blowing invention, Marisa sat in a corner with her head between her knees.

  The moment of triumph she’d been working toward for ten years had lasted all of ten seconds. And now everyone was falling all over some other scientist, leaving Marisa as forgotten and ignored as before.

  It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right.

  Maybe if she just closed her eyes for a little while, it’d all go away.

  She tried that. It didn’t work. When she opened her eyes again, the whole crowd was heading out the door, chattering with excitement, practically carrying Dr. Vasquez on their shoulders.

  Dr. Palindrome was saying something about a party. The new janitor was yelling, “Nachos for everybody!”

  As usual, nobody thought to invite Marisa.

  Then they were gone. She was left alone with a time machine, a solar panel, and a terrible ache in her stomach.

  Or maybe it was her heart. It was hard to tell. Everything in there ached.

  Marisa stared at the machine on the stage. Could it really be true? Could this big, muddy refrigerator be an actual TIME MACHINE?

  Either Dr. Vasquez had just come up with the most amazing invention in the history of the world…or it was all a hoax.

  Ohmygosh!

  What if it’s a hoax?

  A scam?

  A magic trick?

  After all, what proof did anyone have that this machine had just gone back to 10,000 B.C.? Some mud? There was plenty of mud just behind the building. A bunch of dents? No reason those couldn’t be made in the present.

  It had to be a hoax. Sure, Dr. Vasquez seemed friendly and trustworthy, with a warm smile and perfect fingernails. But didn’t all con artists seem that way? What was more likely—that she’d solved one of the greatest challenges in the history of the universe or that she’d tricked everybody with a fake time machine?

  Marisa’s heart began to beat faster. This was a disaster in the making. What would happen when Dr. Vasquez announced her so-called time machine to the world and the truth came out? CEASE would be ruined! The whole center would become the laughingstock of the world! Its reputation would never recover!

  Unless Marisa saved them all.

  If she could prove the time machine was a hoax before the rest of the world found out about it, Dr. Vasquez would be ruined. But Marisa would have rescued everyone at CEASE from being ruined along with her.

  Then they’d remember that Dr. Vasquez wasn’t the only one who’d come up with an amazing invention that day.

  The ache Marisa was feeling began to go away. She had a job to do.

  She got up and approached the time machine.

  The front doo
r of CEASE burst open. Fifty-seven scientists, a janitor, and a receptionist (they’d picked up Doris along the way) emerged, heading for the restaurant across the street. The moment was too big and exciting for a simple cafeteria celebration, so Dr. Palindrome had called the restaurant to reserve a table for fifty-nine and place a very large order of nachos.

  Suddenly, Dr. Vasquez stopped. The others stopped with her.

  She turned to Tom. “I hate to mention this, buddy, but if that mud dries, it’s going to be a real bear to clean up.”

  Right away, Tom saw what she was getting at. “I’m your man, doc! I’ll wash that mud off, pronto!” He turned to head back into CEASE.

  “Wait!”

  “Yeah, Doc?”

  “Unhook the fetcher first. If it gets wet, it could leak deadly radioactive goo. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “Good to know. Thanks for the tip!”

  “And whatever you do, don’t open the door of the machine. And if you DO open the door, DON’T pull the green lever.”

  “Unhook the fetcher, don’t get it wet, no door, no green lever. Got it!”

  “You’re the best, Tom!” Dr. Vasquez yelled as he ran off.

  “Save me some nachos!” he yelled back happily.

  When Tom came back into the auditorium, the time machine’s door was open.

  He gasped and ran to the machine. Inside it, he found Marisa. She was standing in front of the control panel, staring at its large green lever.

  Tom gasped again.

  The gasp startled her. She jumped—and when she did, her arm struck the green lever, nudging it forward.

  “AAAAAAAH!” Tom screamed.

  The scream startled Marisa even more. She jumped again—and her arm knocked the green lever even farther forward.

  “NYAHHH!” Tom screamed again.

  This time, Marisa wasn’t startled. She was annoyed.

  “Will you stop screaming?”

  “You’re going to start the time machine!”

  “It’s not a time machine. It’s a hoax!”

  Tom looked at her, confused. “Uh…no, I’m pretty sure it’s a time machine.”

  Marisa sighed. “What’s more likely—that Dr. Vasquez figured out how to rip a hole in the fabric of space-time? Or that she faked it, and time travel is impossible?”

  “Time travel IS possible!” Tom insisted. “It happens all the time on Star Trip.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” said Dr. Morice. “Star Trip is fake! Just like this!”

  She waved her arms in the air…and knocked the green lever still further forward.

  “YAAAAAAH!”

  “Will you please stop screaming?”

  “Just don’t touch that green lever again!” Tom pleaded with her.

  “What, THIS green lever?” she asked, and pushed it all the way forward.

  The lever disappeared.

  So did the time machine.

  And because they were standing in it, so did Tom and Marisa.

  It’s impossible to describe the feeling of traveling through space-time at one thousand years per second.

  But Tom tried anyway.

  “This feels suuuuuuper-weird,” he said.

  And he was right. The feeling of having your body flattened into a sheet one atom thick, twisted around itself half a million times, and then put back together exactly as it was before is nothing if not suuuuuuper-weird.

  Marisa would have agreed with Tom if she’d heard him. But her ears had just been flattened into a sheet one atom thick, so she didn’t quite catch what he’d said.

  And then…

  Just like that…

  POP!

  They were standing in the machine, exactly as they had been a few seconds ago. Marisa looked past Tom, out the open door behind him, and gasped.

  Tom turned to see what Marisa was looking at. “Oh, geez! We left the door open!”

  Half a second later, he realized that not only was the door open, but it no longer led into the CEASE auditorium. Outside the doorway was a narrow, rocky shelf, with a steep hillside looming above on the right and a sharp cliff on the left.

  “OHMYGOSH! WHERE ARE WE?”

  Marisa quickly glanced out of the time machine’s three small windows, each looking out a different side. “Looks like we’re perched on a ledge…at the edge of a cliff…high above a lake…with a huge hill right behind us.”

  “WHEN ARE WE?”

  Marisa looked at the control panel next to the green lever. “10,000 B.C.?”

  “HOLY JAMOLEY!”

  “Will you please stop yelling?”

  “Sorry! I’ve just never traveled through time before.”

  “Well, you’re about to do it again,” said Marisa, pulling the green lever back toward her.

  This time, the lever didn’t disappear.

  Neither did anything else.

  Marisa pushed it forward. Nothing happened.

  She pulled it back again. Still nothing.

  Forward. Back. Forward. Back—“Don’t break it!” yelled Tom.

  “I’m not! I’m just trying to go home!” Marisa could feel her heart pound against her ribs. Her breath was coming in shallow, rapid bursts.

  Tom thought for a second. “Wait—I think we have to use the fetcher! It’s hanging on the hooks outside the machine!”

  “Can you go get it?” asked Marisa. She wasn’t too hot on the idea of stepping outside herself.

  “Sure thing,” Tom said, and stepped out the door.

  He found himself on a narrow, rocky ledge a hundred feet above the shore of a small lake. Above the ledge, a steep hill rose another fifty feet behind them to a boulder-strewn ridge.

  The sun was shining. Birds were chirping. 10,000 B.C. actually seemed quite nice.

  Except for the fact that the time machine was teetering on the edge of a cliff.

  And the fetcher was hanging from the side that stuck out over the edge.

  “Oh, geez,” Tom said.

  “What is it?” Marisa called to him from inside the machine.

  YIKES! They’re in the Stone Age! NOW they’ve got a problem! See Storytelling 101: We’ve Got a Problem!

  “That fetcher’s gonna be tough to reach without plummeting to my death. Heeeey, wait a minute…”

  The time machine Tom had walked into was muddy on one side, nearly caved in on the other, and pockmarked with small dents. But the one he’d stepped out of was as gleaming new as when Dr. Vasquez first unveiled it.

  “This time machine’s good as new!” Tom told Marisa. “Come out and look at this!”

  “I’d rather not,” she said.

  “How come?”

  “What if it leaves without us?”

  “So why am I out here?”

  “That’s up to you.”

  Tom quickly stepped back inside. “Okay, here’s the thing. The machine looks brand-new. No mud, no dents, no huge caved-in side, nothing. What’s up with that?”

  They both thought for a moment. Then Tom had an idea.

  “Did you ever see that Star Trip episode where the Formidable went back in time, and Lieutenant Modi got eaten by a Chocksnark, so Captain Dirk sent them back a second time, only that time he tricked the Chocksnark into eating a Gundulzort instead?”

  “I don’t watch Star Trip.”

  “How can you not watch Star Trip? It’s the greatest show ever!”

  “I just don’t. It seems kind of silly.”

  “AAAAGH! How can you say that? What kind of scientist doesn’t like Star Trip?”

  “Did you have a point to make?”

  “Only that Star Trip is the greatest show in the history of—”

  “Not about Star Trip! About the fact that we’re stuck in the Stone Age!”

  “Oh! Right…Yes! Sorry. I’m thinking the fetcher was still programmed for Dr. Vasquez’s demonstration? So it sent us back to the exact same place and time. And we’re just repeating what happened all over again.”

  Marisa though
t about this for a moment. “So all we have to do,” she said, “is sit in this machine for five minutes, and it’ll send us right back to the present.”

  “Exactly!”

  “That’s great. Except for one thing.”

  “What?”

  PLUNK! Something hard and loud struck the side of the machine.

  “Shut the door!” Marisa yelled at Tom. He reached back and closed it just as—

  PLUNK!

  PLUNK!

  PLUNK-PLUNK-PLUNK!

  It was like sitting inside a car during a hailstorm.

  Except it wasn’t hail. It was something much more dangerous.

  “Where are all those rocks coming from?”

  “THOSE guys.” Marisa was peering out the machine’s back window, her head tilted so she could see up the steep hill that rose behind them. “Take a look.”

  She stepped back to give Tom room to look out the window himself.

  “OHMYGOSH! ACTUAL CAVEMEN!” There were three of them atop the ridge—short, thin, bearded, and shaggy-haired men wearing what looked like animal-skin gym shorts.

  “You shouldn’t call them that,” Marisa said. “I doubt they actually live in caves.”

  At the moment, where the men lived was much less important than what they were doing: hurling rocks down the hillside at the time machine.

  PLUNK!

  PLUNK!

  PLUNK!

  “This is so amazing!” yelled Tom. “Cavemen are trying to kill us! It’s just like that episode of Star Trip when they went to the parallel universe where civilization never developed!”

  “Could you not yell everything at the top of your lungs?”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just really exciting.”

  “It’s not exciting,” said Marisa. “It’s terrifying.” She tried to take a deep breath to calm herself down, but it didn’t work.

  PLUNK!

  PLUNK!

  PLUNK-PLUNK-PLUNK-PLUNK!

  “Why’s it so terrifying? We know what happens! The time machine goes back to the present!”

  “With one side covered in mud—and the other side caved in. How do you think THAT happens?”