Out of Mind, Out of Time

Did someone get the number of that time machine?

If I ever get home, remind me to NEVER go to a science fair EVER again. I mean it!

Jan, my best friend from college, asked if I wanted to go to her daughter's science fair. Sounds harmless enough. I mean, really -- a seventh-grade science fair?

Anyway, I get to the fair and start wandering around. Most of the entries were your typical seventh-grade stuff. You know, polymers, solar energy displays, crystal gardens, that kind of stuff. The stuff any reasonably intelligent adult would do to pretend their kid did it. Hey, I remember seventh-grade, no matter how long ago it was.

Still, this one entry stood out amongst all the pseudo-juvenile entries. Perhaps because the, ahem, child had built himself a time machine.

No, it wasn't H. G. Wells in disguise. I think. How am I supposed to recognize a NINETEENTH CENTURY writer, especially after all the movies and TV shows that have him as a character? But I'm getting off the subject again. Can you blame me?

Okay. As I was saying, this kid enters a time machine as his science fair project. Okay, okay, he called it 'The Time Inversion Relativity Modifier.'

Anyway, the way he described it, his machine creates a 'bubble' of time around an object, then pushes the bubble into the future.

As a person with normal amounts of curiosity, this fascinated me to no end. So naturally, I leaned over to bet a better look at the device.

Now, please don't ask how the following events got me into this situation, because I DON'T KNOW, OKAY!!!

Well, as I bent over to get a better look, my pack started to slide off my shoulder. I nudged it onto my back. At the same time, I heard a gasp and a grunt of pain behind me. As I turned to see what was happening, one of the parents fell into me, throwing me completely off balance. I started to fall forward in to the time machine.

I remember thinking that all this kid's hard work was about to be flattened as I tried to regain my balance. The there was a bright flash, and instead of me falling into the display, I landed 'here.'

'Here' has a lot of plants. If the temperature wasn't so mild, I'd be thinking tropical rain forest. Now I'm not completely clueless when it comes to plants, but most of these plants were completely foreign to me. Right now, I could use 'The Big Book of Tropical Vegetation' and a machete about now.

So now I seem to be stuck 'here' with my back pack. I am so not equipped for this. My survival depends on my dad's old Zippo lighter, a flashlight with brand new batteries in it, my trusty Victronox Swiss Army Knife (you know, the big one with all the neat attachments, my brother's old Boy Scout Handbook, a good, strong nylon rope, and a compass.

Now the only question is, can I survive here long enough to get back home?