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Chapter Eleven

"A Toast To The Coast"

By

Furry Sith Lord

Justin and I sat on the floor and leaned in trying to listen to the radio program. Every so often Justin would explain things about the show so that I could follow along with what was going on. The more I listened the more skeptical I became because the story just seemed to get wilder and wilder as it went on.

"Welcome back to A Toast To The Coast, I'm your host Arty Carnabell. With me tonight is Mad Mikabeans, and I use that term with the highest degree of affection, who became the world's first time traveler. Mikabeans, how did you come by that nickname if I may ask."

"Thank you for having me on Arty. To answer your question truthfully, species started calling me mad when they first learned I made a time machine."

"Uh huh, and was that the origin plan when you first discovered time travel?" Arty asked, his voice calm and patient just as Justin had described it.

"No, I was trying to build something else but as fate would have it; it turned into a time machine only I did not know about it until much later."

"What led to this groundbreaking discovery?" Arty asked. I was beginning to understand why he was liked as a host. His voice was calm and soft but always kept neutral in a way that he could be insulting you but you may never catch on to it.

"I was getting ready to graduate from college and I was drinking with a few friends. I forgot how but the topic of species getting hit by lightning was brought up. I was very interested in electronics and the discussion progressed from there..."

"Wow they still thought that species got struck by lightning? How backward thinking they must have been." Justin remarked and I chuckled as I thought about everything I knew from the future that Justin had no idea about yet. It struck me as funny like the pot calling the kettle black.

"That's how species grow, by asking questions." I remarked and Justin thought for a second then nodded agreeing with me.

"So one of the guys said he heard that certain species are more likely to get struck by lightning than other species."

"You know I have heard that. There was a former guest that said he had been struck by lightning over five times in his life and he never understood why exactly." Arty remarked.

"So this led to a discussion that asked the question: are there biological distinctions that are more likely to cause a species to be struck by lightning as opposed to others. I wondered if certain biology would cause certain species to become living transponders."

"What exactly is a transponder? For those of our listening audience that do not know what one is." Arty asked.

"That's a good question." Justin replied.

"A transponder is a device that sends and receives radio waves. I mistook it for a generator but you have to excuse my mistake because we were drunk at the time."

"Uh huh, and a generator is what exactly?" Arty asked but I wasn't sure if he was completely listening to Mad Mikabeans.

"A generator is a machine that can produce electricity. By definition it does not need to be limited to only a machine but species could potentially be generators also. That's where the hypothesis came into play in our discussion."

"The hypothesis being that species can be generators and attract lightning to themselves." Arty said, trying to repeat what was said but to make sure that it was understood by simplifying it.

"I wonder how a species could become a generator? Maybe wearing too much metal in their clothing or too many piercings?" I asked myself as I thought about what they had said.

"That's an old wive's tale. Science has found that metal has very little to do with attracting electricity. What they found in a book I was reading a week ago was that highly pointed objects that are elevated are more likely to be hit by a static discharge than someone in a suit of armor on the ground." Justin explained.

"You were reading about this a week ago?" I asked as I wondered what suddenly made him so interested in it.

"Well... yeah," he said shyly as he looked at his tail. "I was wondering if there was a reason why the machine struck you with a static discharge. I was hoping it might help answer a few questions." Justin said. I nodded now that I understood his interest and it made perfect sense why he would look something like that up. I was only ashamed I had not thought of it sooner.

"I became fascinated by the idea of species becoming generators and began to study what I could about them. I figured if I could understand how a machine generator could be built and operate then maybe I could see what could make a species act as one. The trouble was that there was not much I could find about how they work. The closest thing I could find was the old science man monster movies that had two metal poles and electricity was run through them making an electric line between them."

"Those were the movies where the scientist was trying to bring his monster to life. He raised it up and it was struck by lightning and became alive. He also built his monster from dead body parts that he collected." Arty added though I'd seen the movies so I really did not need to be reminded of the plot.

"Anyway, I built a small one that was about the size of a bucket and I started it up. The electricity ran between the two metal rods but depending on how you turned to look at it, there was a strange image that could be seen. Not completely but if you looked at it from an angle there was a shimmering effect you could see as if you were staring off into the distance in a desert. It looks like the air seems to bend and here is a hazy after-image.

The thing is it does not hang around the whole time. It might be there for a few seconds then it returns to normal. I wasn't sure what I was seeing exactly so I had a few screws left over and when the image appeared I tossed a screw into it to see if anything happened."

"And did it?" Arty asked.

"The screws vanished! I mean they never hit the ground because I was listening for the soft thud you would expect to hear but there was no sound. This caught my attention and I began to look around the machine. I still expected to find the screws but when I could not find them I wondered if I had found a way to make them invisible. The problem was that I turned off the generator and searched around to see if I could find the screws and there was no sign of them anywhere."

"Uh huh, could they have been vaporized?" Arty asked.

"The voltage wasn't strong enough to do something like that."

"So what did you think happened?" Arty asked.

"Maybe they were repelled as if exposed to a magnet." I remarked answering for the quest but more just voicing the idea that popped into my head.

"A magnet? Magnets don 't repel!" Justin said incredulously.

"They do if you expose positive to positive and negative to negative." I replied.

"Oh... well yes that's true." Justin remarked.

"I wasn't sure what happened but I wanted to find out. I was beginning to think maybe I created a teleporter like on the TV show Furry Trek. I decided that in order to find out I'd need a bigger machine then I could better test what happened." Mad Mikabeans said.

"Hold that thought, we'll be back after these commercial messages." Arty said as the show paused and the radio began to play ads and commercials.

"What do you think?" Justin asked me.

"Overall I like it. The show that is and I'm really curious if the guy is legit or just making stuff up."

"That's why I wanted us to hear this one so badly! If nothing else, maybe we can learn a thing or two, for when we start building the machine."

"It's a great idea but I'm just not sure we can learn anything without actually talking to him or reading his notes." I replied.

"Now that you mention it, I wonder where he lives? How far away he is from us." Justin asked as he used the end of his tail to scratch his head.

"We'll find out after these commercial messages." I said as I attempted to sound like a TV announcer. Justin and I began to crack up laughing and I had to wipe tears from my eyes as the show came back on.

"Welcome back to A Toast On The Coast we are speaking to Mad Mikabeans who is the world's first time traveler. So you were explaining how you first decided to create your time travel machine. You may not have realized it was a time travel machine but you knew something happened. So what did you do next?" Arty said.

"I wanted to understand what had happened but I was limited by the size of my machine. I had no funding because I was about to graduate in a month so I hadn't been able to get a full time job yet."

"Uh huh, I can see it. How can you get funding when you haven't graduated yet? The next objection is how do you explain you want money to build a bigger machine that you don't exactly know what it does yet?" Arty asked his rhetorical question.

"I realized I would have no choice except to scrounge around for the parts I need. I spent my free time looking to see if there were any discarded parts that I could take."

"Did you find any?" Arty asked.

"I doubt it." Justin remarked.

"A few junk parts here and there but nothing that would let me build a bigger machine. The main component is a generator and those are hard to come by. I called a company that makes them to see if they could explain how to build one but they were more interested in selling me a bigger generator for a huge sum of money that I didn't have."

"I assume you didn't give up." Arty remarked.

"I was venturing in this old part of the city and I saw two large generators sitting on this property that looked abandoned. I figured no one was using it and rather than let it sit there rusting I grabbed it."

"Ut oh... um how long had it been sitting there?" Arty asked as his voice took on an edge of caution. I looked at Justin and he nodded knowingly that we both knew that was not a good idea.

"When I first found it; it looked in good condition but just to make sure I went back the next day and it was still there so I took it."

"Is that why you were eventually arrested?" Arty asked. I found myself nodding as if answering the question for Mad Mikabeans. I quickly stopped myself because I did not want to get distracted.

"Eventually... yes. I had picked it up and no one saw me but when I hooked it up and ran the motor the power company picked up on the power surge and reported it to the cops and they came to my location and arrested me."

"What were the charges filed?" Arty asked.

"Theft. They said I stole the generator even after I explained that I thought it had been abandoned. I ended up serving two year for the theft of both the generator and they said I was stealing the electricity, even though I was paying the bills, so the second charge is completely bogus."

"So two years pass and then what happened?"

"When I was released I went about trying to get a job so I could save up and try again to build a bigger machine. The jobs were nothing special. I just started at the bottom and attempted to work my way up. Along the way, I told other species and friends I had made about my machine and my plans to make a bigger one. I heard all kinds of hypotheses on what they thought happened to the screws.

Eventually a rich philanthropist that was interested in finding out what my machine was capable of. He thought he could attach his name to it and it would both make him rich and famous. He set me up in a warehouse and got me in touch with the right species so that I could get the parts I needed to make the machine.

He also set me up with a staff in order to help me carry out the experiment and the documentation of it and everything that happens leading up to it. I kept detailed notes and a journal describing everything and we were given a video camera so we could record how the experiment ran." Mad Mikabeans explained.

"We'll find out how that experiment went and how you became the world's first time traveler after these brief words from our sponsors." Arty said then the theme music played as the show took a break for commercials.

"What do you think?" Justin asked.

"Overall I like it. The host asks good pointed questions and so far the story seems consistent and what to expect if what he is saying is true." I replied.

"You still think he's faking?" he asked. He then used his tail to undress and I saw him in his white briefs. I followed suit and undressed and I saw him staring at me.

"What?!" I asked.

"Nothing... You're just wearing boxer shorts." he replied. I hadn't really thought about what I was wearing with everything that had happened today. I forgot that kids in this time only wore tighty whities and my boxers would be out of place.

"Oh yeah," I chucked trying to keep the mood light. "I switch off because tighty whities sometimes squeeze my junk and make it uncomfortable to wear." I lied.

"Uh huh, well that's a new one, I never heard anyone explain it like that before." He said and he slithered into his bed.

"To answer your question, It doesn't make sense. Let's assume, for the moment, that everything he said is true. How come time travel isn't more readily available?" I asked.

"Maybe the governments don't want it to be misused and keep the information locked up." Justin replied.

"Then how come they allowed this radio program to air then?" I asked.

"They probably think no one would believe it so it's harmless if it plays." Justin countered. He had me there even though I tried to think of a response and nothing came to mind. I could feel myself getting tired and even Justin looked about ready to fall asleep.

I wanted to know how the whole thing would end so I had to make sure I would not fall asleep. I quickly got out of bed and sat back on the floor. The comfortableness of the bed was one of the catalysts that was making my eyelids droop.

"And we're back!" Arty finally said after what seemed like an eternity of commercials. "So before the break you were mentioning that you found someone that was willing to fund your project to make a bigger machine. Up until this point you still had no idea it was a time machine."

"No we didn't but we did suspect there was something unusual about it. While we were making the larger version I had recreated a tiny bit larger version to test it out. I started off throwing screws through it and like the other machine they would disappear without hitting the ground.

My team then began to search outside the warehouse to see if they had been teleported some distance away. This revealed interesting results because we found the screws in perfect condition about 500 feet from the machine. The odd thing is that we went in all directions from the machine but the screws were only found towards the west and east of the machine."

"Why did you think that was the case?" Arty asked.

"We thought it might have to do with the planet's rotation or magnetic field."

"Uh huh,"

"Either way it helps narrow the search. It took 6 months but we finally finished a much larger machine. The first one was about the size of the back end of a pick up truck. The second model was about the size of a small house."

"Did you start testing ith the new machine?" Arty asked.

"No, I was afraid it might be too powerful with our test subjects."

"Test subjects? What test subjects?" Arty asked.

"We had some non sentient field mice and since we were able to recover the screws we felt that they would not be in any danger so we tried with them. At first we tried a couple to see what would happen and like the screws we found them some distance away to the west or east. I had an expert examine them and they were perfectly healthy. The only thing was they were a little scared about being tossed through the shimmering wave as I call it.

We then decided to test the screws on the larger machine. This one was the problem because at the 500 foot mark we could not find the screws."

"Did you try searching farther than the 500 foot mark?" Arty asked. I looked over and saw that Justin was fast asleep. I smiled to myself and knew he'd be disappointed that he missed the rest of the broadcast. I'd have to tell him about it at breakfast.

"My team searched far and wide and there was absolutely no trace. One of the members thought that maybe the screws were too small and that if we tried the mice we could find them when we heard them squeaking. Now remember all of this is being recorded on our video camera!

I finally gave in and decided to use the first two that we had experimented with. We placed the teams in various places so we could be ready to retrieve them after I tossed them. Each member was set up alone at varying distances towards the west and the east.

I walked up to the shimmering wave and gave them both a kiss for good luck. I don't believe in animal violence even if the mice are not sentient. I still didn't want them to be hurt. I them gently tossed them into it and watched them vanish.

I called the teams on the radio and they searched for hours but there was no sign of either of them. I even had the teams try searching to the north and south just in case the new machine worked differently than the other one but there was no trace of them or the screws."

So what happened next?" Arty asked, his voice took on an element of excitement. Something I had not heard from him yet but he seemed to be getting into the tale almost as much as I was. It was clear we had both discarded our objectivity as we wondered what was going to happen next.

"I was frantic as I tried to reason out what happened to them. All kinds of thoughts went through my mind. Could they have been vaporized? Could they have been teleported to a farther location than we searched. I became so frustrated that I simply had to know.

I know it was recorded on camera but I decided to jump through the shimmering wave and find out what happened to the mice."

"But you could have been killed or vaporized?" Arty objected.

"I threw aside caution because my need to know got the better of me. I jumped through the simmering wave and..."

"And we'll find out after a few kind words from our sponsors." Arty said and I swore under my breath. I could not tell if he was doing it on purpose or not but he ended on a cliffhanger!

Justin was still sound asleep and I pulled up the blanket a bit to tuck him in. I suddenly realized I was acting in the role of being a big brother again. It's felt like forever since I saw Lyon and here I was pretending in my heart that Justin was him. Even though Justin was older than me I could not shake the 'I've got to protect him' vibe I felt.

"The moment we've all been waiting for has arrived and we are back!" Arty said. I swore at him again but did it softly because I did not want to miss anything. "So you jumped into the machine and what happened? It did not kill you because you are here with me in the studio, but what happened exactly?"

"I became the planet's first time traveler! It was weird because I was blinded and my body felt strange like I was sinking in water yet for some reason I was not afraid. I was not sure how long had passed but I woke up on the ground and my head felt weird."

"What do you mean 'my head felt weird?' Did traveling through time affect you in some way?" Arty asked.

"Yes. I found I have trouble remembering certain things I knew before. I could not remember where the warehouse was exactly. I can kinda remember the city but that's it. I remember jumping through the shimmering wave but how to build the machine is also lost.

I went to the nearest city and found a newspaper. I was going to look for a job to get money so I could return home. When I read it I then learned that 2 years had passed from when I jumped through the shimmering wave. I was the same age as when I jumped through but 2 years had passed."

"So what happened next?" Arty asked, his tone becoming neutral again. I was curious about that myself but a nagging feeling that something was wrong started forming in the back of my mind.

"I eventually raised enough money to return to the city but as I searched around I could not find the warehouse. It seemed like everything was gone! My notes, the videos, the machine. All of it was gone!"

I listened until the show took listener calls and everyone started to say the same thing about his story falling apart at the end and asking him questions like 'why didn't you do this?' or 'why didn't you try that?' I finally turned off the radio and went to bed.

The next morning Justin grilled me on what happened and I explained everything. He was as disappointed as I was.

"Could the governments have stolen the data to keep it a secret?" Justin asked.

"Who knows? The trouble is that he can't prove anything so it's basically just take his word for it. He doesn't even remember how to build his machine. That doesn't do us any good." I complained and Justin nodded in agreement.

"Well.... I guess it was worth a try." Jusdtin said sadly.

"True. Arty said something about him writing a book that it might help him remember. I don't remember if he said he did but it's worth a shot. Oziah wants me to go to the vet today so you could check out the library and see if you find anything." I said and Justin cheered up a little then he lowered his head before speaking to me.

"Sorry I fell asleep."

"No worries, you really did not miss much. Like you said, it was worth a try." I said and Justin and I became quiet as Lou entered wearing only his tighty whities. He glared at us but ignored us as he sat to eat his breakfast. We ate our meals in silence until the maid arrived and asked Justin about his life's story.

To Be Continued...