Science Fiction

[darmstadt]

THE MASTER OF TIME AND MOTIONS
by Ferne J. Welles

An extract from a hitherto-lost Victorian Science Fiction Romance

My heart pounded as I fled from the baying mob of grey-suited 'Poltax'
officials, with their coarse and brutal cries of 'Unregistered!',
'Ineligible for benefit!', and 'Defenestrate him!' ringing in my ears.



Rounding the corner past a barred and shuttered ex-hospital, I at last
came upon my time-sphere, standing amidst the waste ground where I had
left it. Where once, in my own era, had rose a proud and thriving
whalebone corset factory, now was only desolation, with a large and
garish sign reading:

Site for new
McBurgers Vom-O-Rama Multiplex
1-Stop Shop-'n-Eat

I knew not what this cabbalistic gibberish meant, but I was sure it
foretold a development that would make decent men sick to their
stomachs.



I hastily ingressed into my vehicle, and slammed the portal behind
me. As I manipulated the controls of the Temporal Throbulator and donned
the throbbing purple Helmet of Transdimensional Intercourse, my mind flew
back over the horrific sights I had seen since I had landed in this
hateful epoch - the strange daily propaganda sheets filled with ladies'
bosoms (well, pictures of them) and preaching worship of the Sky God
Mur Dok...hideous tribes of 'Yups' with their cordless communications
devices, childless marriages, and brainless dinner parties...the travesty
of the Royal Family, loved by a Prince who loved vegetables (at least he
had the sense to pick a suitable wife)...the hordes of shambling,
aimless, unemployed, under-educated, loutish, ill-mannered, drunken
boors I had met at a 'Coming-Out' party...the sick, the dying, the
helpless, the hopeless, the feeble, the flatulent, and the one or two
other members of the Political Opposition...the screeching dictator
Twatcher and her husband Pennis, selling their countrymen into the
demons Mammon, Max-Well and Mac-Don-Ald...



The 'Poltaxers' were hammering on the door of my time-sphere, joined
now by a savage tribe of 'Es-Tate Agents', crying: "Sell us this bijou
luxury one room spherette!"



I yanked on the glistening knob of my Durational Vibrator and adjusted
my Epochal Orifices. Everything span round, I felt nauseous and dizzy. I
regretted eating the raw egg and Camembert curry I had purchased from
Edwina Salmonella's takeaway that morning.


Then, with a lurch, a groan, and an expulsion of gas from the sphincters
of my time-engine, I slipped once more into the Fourth Dimension. I
praised the Lord that I was heading back to my own era, where Victorian
Values still held sway. I prayed that my trip to the future had been
naught but a nightmare, and that my vision of 1989 would never come to
pass. I couldn't believe that the British people would be so stupid to
let it happen.