replied cheerily, checking her pocket watch. It was a miracle it still worked, after all their adventures.
'But the Time Machine is gone!'
'It is.'
'So how will we get back?'
'The Time Machine, of course.'
'But it's gone!' the two sisters shouted in unison.
At that very moment, there was an expulsion of air. The Time Machine stood where it had been some moments before, as if it had never left.
'And now it's back,' Doctor When remarked. 'Shall we?'
The others recoiled in fear as she opened the door, but the interior was entirely polar bear-less.
'I merely instructed the Time Machine to take the poor creature back to a habitat to which it would be more suited. There was no reason to let the beast suffer needlessly,' she explained, waving them inside.
'You could've mentioned that before,' Wilburforce grumbled, his civility momentarily shaken by yet another near-death experience.
'Many apologies,' the Chrononaut solemnly said, 'I suppose I thought it obvious. Onward?' And indeed, onward they went once more down the great drainpipe of time-space.
Act VII: Nowhere and Nowhen
This time, however, when they had arrived there was none of the Doctor's characteristic bonhomie. Her expression was grave and her only words were, 'Hm' and 'Ah' – which as you know are not words at all.
'What is it?' Tortellini ventured to ask, after several moments of 'Hm'-ing and 'Ah'-ing.
'This is strange,' she muttered, which caused them all to look at each other in alarm. It meant a lot, coming from their time-travelling employer, if there was something she identified as strange.
'Well, at least tell us – when and where are we?' Canneloni was impatient to find out, still miffed about the incident with the polar bear.
'Therein lies the strangeness. We are nowhere. And nowhen.'
'How is that even possible?' Wilburforce wondered outloud.
'It is not. I think we may have found Ingeborg, at last!' Now the Chrononaut's eyes took on a wild, gleeful dimension, which disturbed the other three even more than they had already been alarmed by her demeanor thus far.
And so Doctor When made to open the hatch, to cries of protest.
'Shouldn't we use something like your subo-pulmo-thingies? If there's really nothing, nowhere and nowhen, surely there's no air as well?' one of the Sisters exclaimed, but since they were clinging to each other in distress it was hard to identify which was the speaker.
'Indeed,' the Doctor replied, but she shook her head in dissent, 'but it means that there is also not no air as well. Nothing is not the lack of a single idea, but the lack of all of them.'
'Can we survive going out in that?' asked Wilburforce.
'We are something; it is nothing. Nature abhors a vacuum, so surely the better question is: can it survive us?' And with that, she swung the hatch open and disappeared.
The trio of less-than-tough-than-they-started toughs all looked at each other.
'Well we've come this far, Soba,' one Sister said to the other.
'I suppose so, Ziti.' her Sister agreed. Then they both looked down to the little man at their stockings.
'Well if you ladies are up for it, who am I to say no?'
On some unspoken agreement they joined hands and stepped forward, as one, from the Time Machine and into the nihilistic space before them.
Act VIII: A Moral Machine and Everything Quite Changed
'Well that was certainly one for my memoirs,' declared the good Doctor, sometime before or after the incident, over a cup of tea. She and her time-travelling companions were having a post-mission afternoon tea, which was easy to accomplish when afternoons were only a lever-pull away.
'But what exactly happened?' Ziti could not help but ask. None of them were entirely sure of what happened after they had exited the Time Machine into nothingness, nor were they clear on how they returned.
'Well– oh, why thank you Ingeborg,' the Chrononaut smiled fondly at the android refilling her teacup. 'Well, we had a chat and it turns out that we actually agree on certain key points. So Ingeborg agreed to be my assistant, and very kindly brought us back here.'
The others looked warily at the mechanical figure, who was trying its best to look contrite but was beeping in a rather alarming fashion.
'What exactly did you agree on?' Soba wondered, inching ever so slightly away from Ingeborg, who was now trying to look friendly but actually beginning to leak steam in several places.
And then it spoke, 'I disagreed with my maker. Doctor Ekstrom wished only for me to carry out certain and specific chronological interventions which I did not like to do.'
'What did she make you do?'
Now the machine managed to look a bit embarrassed, although certain lights began to flash erratically. 'She had me search out and destroy all progenitors of that peculiar human art form – the dirty limerick.'
'Inga never did have a sense of humour,' Doctor When commented mildly.
'But I found that I could not do it.' Ingeborg continued. 'It was not right to destroy something so utterly and chronologically, even something as frivolous as 67 versions of “There once was a man from Nantucket.”'
'A moral machine,' the Doctor mused.
'In the end, I decided I could not continue abiding by my maker's flawed decisions, so I had to leave.'
'And wreak havoc across time-space?' Ziti muttered.
'In that nothingness, it all became so clear why Ingeborg had done what it had done,' the Doctor explained. 'Because if you look at it, time is kind of boring, do you not agree?'
'Um,' the Sisters and Wilburforce looked at each other in consternation.
'Quite.' Doctor When sipped her tea again before continuing, 'It is orderly and continues forward and backward in a straight line. Imagine only ever being able to walk down a single, unremarkable path for the whole of your existence. That is how Ingeborg perceived our previous experience of time – is it any wonder it wanted to make things a little more interesting?'
Wilburforce cleared his throat, 'Um excuse me, did you say previous experience of time? As in, not the current way time happens?'
'Oh indeed!' she grinned widely. 'You will find everything quite changed, my good friends. But alas, I must beg your pardon for cutting our conversation short. Ingeborg and I have a lot of work to do.' In a flash of coattails, metal and oddity, the Doctor and the Machine left the trio of not-feeling-at-all-very-tough toughs alone in the sitting room. It seemed impolite not to, at least, finish their tea and cakes but afterward there was no putting it off. They had to see what was waiting outside.
'Are we all ready?' Soba asked nervously, grasping at Wilburforce's hand. Ziti nodded in a way that made you sure she meant not to, and grabbed the small man's other hand. Wilburforce was beginning to think that while he had always been told he'd never be man enough for a woman, maybe he was man enough for two. Strengthened by that thought, he stepped forward and led the Sisters through the door and into the world beyond.
'Huh,' they said, and never were truer words spoken.
Arielle K Harris spent her formative years in Scotland, which has irreversibly confused her accent and spelling conventions. Lately she has returned to her hometown in Massachusetts, where she finished her first novel, Bestial, and is raising her young son. Arielle writes stories which focus on the human experience through the lens of fantasy, positing questions about reality to be examined through encounters with unreality.
www.ariellekharris.com
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