Chapter 23 of Beyond the Ember Star

Jay was sitting by the fire enjoying a good breakfast, a rack of bison ribs that had been smoking all night!

What’s that dummy? Warning, warning! Eddie is looking serious. If he kicks off his next thought with a smartass comment its big idea time, and that always means trouble.

“Yo Fred Flintstone, I hate to interrupt your value-meal, but we got to talk.”

Oh no.

“Okay, go on with your silent meat-munching self, but we got some issues.”

Yes we do.

“According to Doctor Robinson we are here to render aid to these knuckle-dragging folks—though they’re arms aren’t long enough for their knuckles to drag. That also entails them being able to call us back some day. As far as I know almost nobody has any experience with this stuff. I never even worked one a these things live, and yet I am supposed to teach this stuff. Now you teachin’ all about kickin’ ass and killin’ shit. That makes sense, since you done kicked a lot of ass and killed a lot of shit. But me; how many times I used a time machine? I aks you my brutha, how many times?”

I see where he’s going here, and it feels like indigestion.

“Also, since we can’t really be popping these things off ten miles from the nation’s capital we know next to nothing about how this shit goes. I mean, you know how it feels more than anyone…”

Stop him.

“No Eddie.”

Cave-Girl then spoke up, “Yes Eddie. Bad Jay!”, and pointed her finger accusingly at him.

What the…

“Okay Jay-Bone, what’s the turn around?”

“Huh?”

“You da expert son! What’s the turn around? How long does it take here, for your ass to get there, and then get back here again? I aks you, If I call you now, how long does my ass have to wait while creepy-crawlers be coming up on me? If I call you now, how long before you know? Ready, ready, go. I got this. Say you layin’ up with Clicker here tonight and dem Branch One niggas call ya? Does your dumbfounded ass jus’ get translocated with what’s left of her nice little tit in yo hand? Ha? You want that? You want you twins while you huggin’ dem to get ripped apart and sucked through that tube witch’ya? How’d ya like dat shit son!?!”

I’m getting dizzy.

“Alright Eddie, what do I have to do to shut you up.”

“Son, jus’ grab a hold of Science Officer Eddie Scientific’s Magic Rainbow, en we’ll send ya around in Time, and have ya turn on a dime!”

Just grab the hoop so he shuts up.

Eddie was actually looking diabolical, almost cackling, as he set the target dial.

“Now son, I send you away, en these folks practice bringing your bad-self back! Here we go Jay-Bone, ready to rock the past with your ass.”

Hey dummy, I think he used all eight bands on the dial—no!

“Eddie, no dinosaurs man.”

“Shoot Jay-Bone, ya need ta watch Nat Geo. Dey jus’ big chickens!”

…The trip through the tube was pretty standard, including the 100 megaton kidney punch and being turned into spaghetti, and re-living random scenes from his past. The float, or middle portion of the journey, was quit long and restful. He even slept, if sleep is indeed something that he could experience in this scattered and ever unifying state. He smelled really fresh clean air before he saw the pinhole of radiance. Unlike the other events, it took a long time to get stretched again and sucked through the blazing pinhole.

He burst into being under huge towering palms—no, those are a ferns. His feet were submersed in ankle-deep water that rippled from the seismic activity he could feel through the bottom of his feet.

He could smell and taste and sense and hear the world as good as he could after any other trip, and what he was sensing was frightening. The very trees swayed with the pounding of the ground that shook from the impact of a dozen long-necked C-130 size monsters who were rumbling off away from him, trailed by their babies who were as big as adult mammoths. To his left was a steaming pile of gooey manure as high as he was tall and six feet wide.

He didn’t like being in water, although it was soothing and he could see the bottom. It just bothered him that it would reduce his foot speed. Running was likely to be his only viable survival option here. He scented land to the east and spent the next three hours getting to it.

The vegetation was fairly monotonous, with no plants that he could identify with any confidence. He was thirsty from his trip, but wasn’t about to drink from this milky waste water. He had to find a stream where water flowed over rocks.

He eventually came to a lagoon where a brook emptied into the wetland from a range of low hills to the north. There was a broad plain to the south.

The topography is all wrong. This is not the same physical location.

He scouted around before laying down for a drink. There was nothing within sight, but he could hear something nearby, something small, a lot of them. He took four swigs of water and then he heard the patter of little feet and something bit him on the butt.

He rose with a stone in his right hand and his cock and balls in his left hand to face a dozen little bald birds that were pecking at him with beaks full of teeth. He squished one with the rock and kicked another into a tree and the others dispersed to devour their two fallen friends.

How long am I going to have to stay here? Do you smell that fear?

He dunked himself in the brook and calmed down while the nasty little lizard-buzzards tore apart their friends. He then walked up through the streambed, dunking himself at regular intervals to dampen any scents he might be emitting. He spent about three more hours navigating this stream, bathing in pools, drinking the white water, until he came out on a low plateau where the spring that was the source of this stream bubbled out from beneath a ring of split rocks.

There were a few large flightless birds ripping apart what looked like a giant turtle, and a winged reptile dipping his beak into the drink like an egret fishing. The 100-pound flying lizard eyed him with some curiosity and then made a call that sounded like a flute and flew off slowly.

He gave the featherless flightless birds a wide birth. The animals he had seen did not seem like dinosaurs to him, except for the huge things back in the swamp. Rather they seemed a mix of bird and reptile. He was wondering for a moment if he was just imagining all of this. As he walked on, seemingly at the roof of this world, he could see towering figures across the plain nibbling on tree tops and long lumbering turtle-like beasts mowing the grass.

This isn’t bad man. These critters don’t even know what you are.

He then heard a big mallard duck quack—kind of—off to his right. He turned to see three big-headed lizards that were about his size, but were otherwise the spitting image of every little science geek’s fantasy—a T-Rex! Of course, these fellows also had a long claw attached to their foot. They looked at him, scented the air—Yeah, that’s you, you are scared to death!—and looked at each other. The smallest then honked and they began bolting towards him.

Well, dude, at least they only have two legs!

He did not remember starting to run. He was off, faster than he had ever run in his life, across a sandy plain dotted with what looked like agave plants. He could hear them falling behind and pacing themselves after their initial failure to get him in the short run. Then he heard them honk, and he heard answering honks up ahead to his left.

They are herding you dummy!

He broke right to stay closer to his already tired pursuers and headed for a tall fern in the distance. He had beaten the first three across a quarter mile, now he had to beat the others to the tree. They came into sight at the same time he realized that there were no branches on the tree lower than forty feet up. He had to pick up his pace and hit the base of the tree running and scamper up the trunk that sloped gently away from him to the east, apparently to catch the morning sun.

Run Goddamn it, run! You are going out fighting, not like this.

The raptor was five paces to his left when he took his last stride. He pushed off so hard that he snapped the second toe of his right foot again! and was scrambling up the trunk like a coconut jockey. The raptor had read his move and leaped at him, trying to body check him off the trunk. He fell under the tree with his arms in a key-lock around the trunk as the raptor hurdled past and crashed into a stone, breaking some ribs and gushing blood from its mouth, but still leaping back up to snap at his dangling feet as he swung to safety and shimmied the rest of the way up the tree to where the fronds were.

You are screwed dummy.

The raptors, five in all, gathered beneath the tree honking and clacking to each other and waiting patiently for him to fall.

As night feel he could still hear them waiting patiently, breathing, honking and clacking below. His stomach began to knot up a little then became worse. He thought perhaps he was going to have diarrhea. As night fell and the huge moon lit up the sky the pain became worse.

After the sun passed its zenith something appeared in the sky; a dark cloud through which a red pulsating star seemed to emerge. He was hypnotized by the sight, and cast into ecstasy when the star burst through the cloud in a flash of platinum brilliance and his aching guts ripped open and he was turned to spaghetti once again, streaking into the void…

He spent another long period in the void, eventually bursting forth in a sheen of radiance that lit up a darkened campsite. People yelled and wolves howled, and Eddie came crawling out of his tent with Cave-Girl. “Damn son, we thought you was dead! It’s been six days yo!”

Kill him.

“Okay, Jay-Bone, now I know that sending a dude back tens of millions of years takes some time. It ain’t all instant.”

Kill him later.

The people were all gathering around to marvel at his appearance.

“Now Jay-Bone, we going to send you close up en personal to an English speaking time. Before your next experiment though, Eddie Scientific needs to take some notes on his very own ink pad provided by old school Doctor Robinson. Okay, how long were you in the past?”

“About ten hours.”

“Okay, that means the transit took one-hundred-and-thirty-four hours. Wow! I could have made some change selling that shit on the street. Where was you at? Was it the same place on the map?”

“The topography was vaguely familiar—the only thing that I can be sure of was dat I was listed as a main course on one menu en as an appetizer on another!”

“Yo son, that shit’s too funny. What really happened?”

“Your big chickens tried to eat me Eddie!”

“Oh, snap, sorry ‘bout that son. Your next trip will be much quicker and nicer. You good?”

“Yeah Eddie, I’m good.”

“Then grab a hold son, the shores of Perfidious Albion await your nekked self…”