“You know, that solar panel invention was really amazing—”
“Shhhh.” Marisa finished unwrapping the sandwich. She pulled off the top slice of rye bread and carefully balanced it next to the rest of the sandwich atop Tom’s open palm.
“Don’t move,” she warned him.
Down below, the tiger suddenly lifted its nose in the air.
What was that smell?
It was amazing! Mouthwatering! Like some kind of animal flesh that had been cooked in a fire until it was crispy!
Even though his stomach was full, the smell made trickles of drool run down both of his saber teeth.
This day was just getting better and better.
“Can you hurry?” Tom asked. “The tiger is getting riled up. I think it smells the bacon in your sandwich.”
“Hang on,” said Marisa. She plucked a stem full of berries from the bush and carefully worked the berries off the stem and onto the top layer of avocado on the turkey-bacon-avocado sandwich.
“Are you sure those blueberries are going to go well with the avocado?” Tom asked.
“They’re not blueberries,” Marisa told him. “They’re belladonna.”
“Do those go well with avocado?”
“Yes and no. They’re poisonous.”
“We’re going to poison ourselves?”
“No. We’re going to poison the tiger.”
“Oh,” Tom thought for a second. “Hey, that’s a really good idea!”
Marisa finished loading the sandwich with berries. She carefully placed the slice of rye back on top, then quickly rewrapped the sandwich.
“Can we do this fast?” Tom asked. “I don’t know how much longer I can hang on.” The tremble in his right arm was turning into a shudder.
“Okay—drop the sandwich.”
The tiger couldn’t believe his luck. The greatest-smelling thing in the history of the world had just landed at his feet!
He snapped it up in his powerful jaws. Once he chewed past the wrapping paper, it was delicious.
It was more than delicious. It was mind-blowing. Definitely the best thing he’d ever put in his mouth. Even better than baby birds.
And the berries were a great touch. They made a nice, juicy counterpoint to that crispy cooked meat thing.
The tiger chewed and swallowed. It was over all too quickly.
He turned back to the humans. They were still hanging from the cliff. But they were clearly tiring. The one on the right looked like he might fall at any second.
Then the fun would start. Not long now!
Such a great day. Really. And getting better every minute.
Except for that fluttery feeling in his stomach.
“How long is this going to take?” Tom asked Marisa.
“I don’t know,” she replied.
“My arms are shaking. I think I might fall off.”
“Try not to fall until the poison kicks in.”
“Are you sure belladonna is poisonous to saber-toothed tigers?”
“Not exactly,” Marisa admitted. “I’ve never tried to poison a tiger before.”
Something weird was definitely happening in the tiger’s stomach.
Not just weird. Painful. It was like a small animal was stuck in there, kicking him from the inside.
The greatest thing he’d ever tasted might not have been so great after all.
He laid down. Maybe he just needed a nap.
No. That wasn’t helping. He needed to get up. Move around. Maybe do some stretching.
Nope. Still not helping.
The pain was really…getting…painful.
Maybe he should throw up.
Yes! Great idea.
Cavemen?! Tigers?! These two have their hands full! Check out Storytelling 101: Obstacles.
“He’s barfing!” yelled Tom.
“RUN!” screamed Marisa.
They jumped to the ground and sprinted down the shore as fast as their legs would carry them.
The tiger didn’t even notice they’d left. He was too busy puking his guts out.
All of a sudden, his day wasn’t turning out so great.
Why…are you…making us…run uphill?” Tom was panting so hard he could barely get the words out. They’d run along the lake to where the cliff gave way to a climbable hillside. Now Marisa was leading them straight uphill, toward the long ridge where the cavemen had first thrown rocks at them.
Between pants of her own, she answered the question. “Got…to get…to higher ground.”
“Why?”
“So next time…somebody tries…to kill us…”— she took an extra-long pause to gulp more air—“we’ll see them coming.”
“Time out!” croaked Tom. He collapsed onto the ground, although the hill was so steep that he didn’t have to collapse so much as lean forward a little.
Marisa did the same.
“Why do you think somebody’s going to try to kill us?” Tom asked.
“Because that’s all anybody’s done since we got here!”
“But we can’t get too far away from where the time machine landed,” said Tom, pointing back toward the rocky ledge that was now a few hundred yards below them. “I mean, what if we’re not there when they come back for us?”
Marisa shook her head. “Nobody’s going to come back for us.”
Tom was shocked. “Of course they will!”
She sighed. “No, they won’t. They’ll never figure out we’re here. They’ll think you fell into a black hole like the other janitors. And as for me…”—she let out a long, pitiful sigh—“they won’t even realize I’m gone.”
Marisa wasn’t quite right on either count. Twelve thousand years later at that very moment, Dr. Palindrome stood alone in the CEASE auditorium, examining the solar panel Marisa had used in her Show and Tell.
This really is an amazing invention, he thought to himself. It was a shame that, in all the excitement, the others had forgotten about it. It wasn’t as flashy as a time machine. But in its own way, it was revolutionary. It could solve mankind’s energy needs! It could save the environment!
It could make whoever invented it incredibly rich.
Probably famous, too.
That inventor—the child prodigy he’d hired ten years ago, then forgotten about—what was her name again? Morris? Murphy? Dr. Palindrome felt a pang of jealousy. It had been a long time since his own research had gotten any attention at all. And the director job at CEASE didn’t pay very well.
Maybe this Dr. What’s-Her-Name could use a business partner. Or a boyfriend—
“Dr. Palindrome?” Dr. Vasquez stood at the door of the auditorium, her face glowing with excitement and post-nacho satisfaction. But when she saw her time machine—with the mud on one side now drying into a hard crust—the glow faded into concern.
“Dr. Vasquez! Congratulations again! What can I do for you?”
“Have you seen Tom Edison? He came back here to clean the time machine, but it’s still a mess. And he never showed up at the nacho party. It’s very unlike him—we’re all a little worried he might’ve met with a…janitor accident.”
“That IS worrying,” Dr. Palindrome agreed. Janitor accidents meant a lot of paperwork for him. And finding replacements was getting to be a nightmare. “I’ll check the footage from the security cameras.”
Minutes later, Dr. Palindrome sat alone in his office, staring in disbelief at the security camera footage of Marisa and Tom entering the time machine…followed by the time machine’s disappearance…followed by its reappearance ten seconds later, with nobody inside it.
I must tell Dr. Vasquez immediately!
He sprang up from his chair and started toward the door.
But then he stopped.
He thought about it some more.
Losing the janitor would be a shame. Everybody seemed to like that one, and they were a real pain to replace. Still, mysterious janitor disappearances were common as dirt around CEASE.
And if that solar p
anel scientist disappeared, and nobody went looking for her, what would happen to those solar panels? And all the money and fame that went along with them?
Hmmmm…
Dr. Palindrome sat back down at his desk and rewound the only evidence on Earth of Tom and Marisa’s disappearance.
His office door opened a crack. Dr. Vasquez poked her head in.
“Any sign of Tom on the security cameras?”
Dr. Palindrome clicked the “ERASE VIDEO” button, then gave Dr. Vasquez a look of thoughtful concern.
“None at all. It’s a real mystery.”
Oh, THAT is evil, Dr. P! See Storytelling 101: Villain Check-In.
Other than Dr. Palindrome, only three people in all of human history knew what had happened to Tom and Marisa.
Their names were Dug, Edd, and Jim. They were the cavemen who’d spent the past hour trying to kill the two strangers who’d literally appeared out of nowhere. And at that very moment, exactly twelve thousand years before Dr. Palindrome erased the video, Dug, Edd, and Jim were standing on the narrow ledge where the time machine had first materialized.
They stared down in disbelief at the vomiting saber-toothed tiger a hundred feet below them.
“Mugga Tooka dugga,” said Edd.
Roughly translated, this meant, “This is really quite shocking. I’ve never seen anyone escape Tooka the Tiger. And they didn’t just escape—they left Tooka barfing his guts out! That’s a heck of a thing.”
“Durrr?” asked Jim.
In that context, “durrr” meant: “Whaddaya make of this, Dug? Wild stuff, huh? What’s your take on it?”
Edd and Jim waited nervously for Dug’s answer. Dug was the leader of their whole clan, because he was the strongest, the smartest, and the most likely to bash your brains in with a rock if you disagreed with him.
Dug thought for a long time before answering. Finally, he spoke.
“Hurg blurg ‘do-dee-doot-doot’ urg Tooka nugurg.”
And by that, Dug meant: “Let’s review the facts here, gentlemen. We’re standing atop that ridge above us, innocently gathering rocks as we do. Out of nowhere, a giant magic box appears, right on this very ledge! Which I think we can all agree is a highly unusual situation.
“We follow standard procedure—huck some rocks at it, roll a boulder down the hill—and suddenly, two strange humans pop out of the magic box! Which, again—is HIGHLY unusual. A magic box is one thing. But a magic box that gives birth to strangers? We’re definitely in uncharted territory here.
“Then it gets weirder. The magic box disappears! And leaves the strangers behind! Now, as your leader, I have to admit—at this point, I probably should’ve taken a step back and done some strategic analysis. But there was a lot of stuff happening at once, it was very stressful, and I figured, let’s just run the usual playbook. Which is, y’know, ‘Strangers are invading our territory, let’s kill them with rocks.’
“Makes perfect sense in most situations.
“But this was NOT a normal situation. Because the second we get within rock-throwing range, Stranger Guy pulls out a MAGIC ROCK! I’ve never seen anything like it. Those flashing lights! And that sound—’do-dee-doot-doot!’ What IS that? It’s as irritating as it is catchy. Honestly, even if I never hear it again, it’s going to take me days to get that sound out of my head.
“Mark my words, gentlemen—that magic rock is the key to understanding this whole thing.
“So Stranger Guy’s waving it around, and Stranger Lady seems mad about it. Which makes NO sense at all. Why get mad at the guy with the magic rock when he’s on your side? For the life of me, I can’t figure out where Stranger Lady fits into all of this.
“But let’s just put a pin in that and move on—because then Tooka shows up! And I’m thinking, A) FINALLY, something normal happens, B) we gotta get outta here pronto or we’re gonna get eaten, and C) magic rock or not, those strangers are tiger food.
“But C) turns out to be dead wrong. By the time we get back up here and take a look around, Tooka’s drowning in his own puke, and the strangers are running up the hillside over there.
“When you add it all up, I think it’s pretty obvious what’s going on here and what we need to do next. Follow me.”
Dug started up the hill toward Marisa and Tom. Nodding in agreement, Edd and Jim followed.
“Don’t you think we’ve got enough rocks?” Tom asked Marisa. They were on top of the high ridge above the lake. Marisa was frantically piling the rocks they’d already gathered into a makeshift barricade.
“There’s no such thing as ‘enough rocks!’” she told him. “Rocks are everything in this world! They’re weapons. They’re building materials. They’re probably money! From now on, our lives depend on rocks! We’ve got to keep gathering them!”
“Geez,” muttered Tom. “You’re acting like we’re going to be stuck here forever.”
“We ARE stuck here forever!” Marisa was sure of this.
“No, we’re not!” Tom was every bit as sure of that. “Dr. Vasquez and the others are going to come back for us! It’s just going to take them awhile to figure out we’re gone.”
Marisa rolled her eyes. “Tom, they have a time machine. It can come back to any time in history. Including ten minutes ago. If they were coming back for us, they’d already be here.”
“Yeah, but…I mean…it’s like…uhhh…” Tom tried to understand the logic of what Marisa was saying. Thinking about it made his head hurt.
Finally, he gave up. “Whatever. I don’t know time machines. But I know people. And there’s no way Dr. Vasquez would abandon her fellow scientists like that.”
“You’re not a scientist,” Marisa reminded him. “You’re a janitor.”
Tom looked hurt. “I’m not just any janitor,” he said in a wounded voice. “I’m a scientist-janitor. Everybody knows that.”
Marisa opened her mouth to tell Tom he was wrong—that what everybody except him actually knew was that he’d been duped into taking a life-threatening job that nobody else wanted. And that the only person who thought Tom was an actual scientist was Tom.
But when she saw the look on his face, Marisa couldn’t bear to tell him the truth. “Just get more rocks,” she said again as she turned back to her barricade-building. “The next people who climb that hill are going to try to kill us, and it’d be a whole lot better if we killed them first.”
“Do-dee-doot-doot!”
Marisa looked up. “What did you say?”
“I didn’t say anything,” Tom told her. “They did.”
Marisa poked her head up over the pile of rocks and looked in the direction Tom was pointing.
Down the hill a hundred yards below them were Dug, Edd, and Jim.
“Do-dee-doot-doot,” Dug yelled. Then all three cavemen fell to their knees, raised their hands in the air, and bowed down to them.
“Do-dee-doot-doot,” they chanted.
Tom looked at Marisa. “If they’re still trying to kill us, that’s a really weird way to do it.”
Marisa had to agree.
Talking to strangers—or anybody, really—had always been scary and stressful for Marisa. It was even more stressful trying to talk to strangers who couldn’t seem to decide whether they wanted to murder her or worship her. Especially when they didn’t know any words in English except for “do-dee-doot-doot,” which technically was not even a word.
Marisa opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Fortunately, Tom spoke up for both of them.
“Me Tom,” he said, pointing to himself. “She Marisa.”
The cavemen looked confused.
“Don’t use pronouns,” Marisa told Tom. “They won’t understand.”
“Tom,” said Tom, pointing to himself.
“Marisa,” she managed to say, pointing to herself.
“Do-dee-doot-doot,” said Dug.
“Do-dee-doot-doot,” agreed Edd and Jim.
“Whaddaya think that means?” Tom asked Marisa.
&
nbsp; “It’s the sound your phone made.”
“Oooooh…Now I get it!”
The cavemen were slowly getting to their feet. When Tom pulled out his phone, they froze. And when he turned the strobe light on and opened the Fruit Fight game, they fell to their knees again and began to bow, chanting “do-dee-doot-doot” along with the theme song.
Tom was thrilled. “Wowzers! It’s just like on Star Trip!”
“Turn it off!” Marisa warned him.
“Why?”
“If the whole reason they’re not killing us is your phone, we have to make sure the battery doesn’t run out. How much have you got left?”
Tom checked his phone display. “Sixty-eight percent.”
“Switch it to low power, shut off the Wi-Fi, close all your apps, and turn on Airplane Mode.”
“What if somebody tries to call me?”
Marisa’s jaw dropped. “Are you serious? Have you ever gotten a phone call from the future?”
“No. But I’ve also never been stuck in the past.”
“Just close everything!” Marisa turned to look at the cavemen, who were nervously poking their heads back up from the ground. “Now what?”
Tom thought about it. “Why don’t we ask them where we can get a bite to eat? I haven’t had anything since lunch. And that was, like, minus twelve thousand years ago.”
Marisa nodded. She was even hungrier than Tom, because she’d used her lunch to poison a saber-toothed tiger. “Good idea. Ask them about food.”
Tom stood in front of the cavemen, pointed to his mouth, and said, “Food.”
They looked up at him, confused.
“Food?” he repeated.
“Foo-dee-food-food?” Dug asked.
“Foo-dee-food-food!” Edd and Jim chanted.
Stuck in the Stone Age Page 5
