NUMBER ONE : DRAGOR AND THE CAUSALITY VIOLATION
"Oh shit! Shitshitshitshitshit!" screamed Dragor, running for the
bus stop. "Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit SHIT!" He pulled out
his lucky bonsai tree, and started screaming at it in particular rather than
the world in general. "I'm meeting my girlfriend today for the first time, I
was meant to arrive in Leeds an hour ago, it's raining -"
Snow began to fall.
"Forget that, it's fucking snowing now! and, and..." Dragor's face
suddenly took on an unexpectedly dreamy and wistful look. "I'm nervous."
"Hahahaha That's Bugger!" replied the tree.
"That's helpful. I might just have well asked Fizban something
about Unix"
"Fizban must be unhelpful shite!"
"You're right there."
"Hahahaha That's Bugger!"
"Look, you're my good luck charm, can't you be of any help?"
"I must be a help to you. You can telling me your problem."
"I already told you! Oh for fuck's sake, do I have to use words of
one syllable?" Dragor took a deep breath, and was about to repeat his
plight, when the tree butted in again.
"One syllable must be helpful to me" It's branches turned up a
little, as if it was grinning.
"I NEED TO GET TO LEEDS! AN A HOUR AGO!"
"You must getting to Leeds! That's long journey for Taxi Cab"
"A Taxi Cab? Have you any idea how expensi..." Dragor suddenly
remembered a small card in his pocket. He pulled it out and looked at it.
G.M.I. - Taxi Cabs
Anytime, Anyplace,
Anywhere
|
"They'd better be right about that, or I'll have the Trading
Standards Office onto them like a pack of wild dogs," Dragor muttered,
"Bonsai tree, you're a genius"
"Boom! A Noising Fart!" the tree said enigmatically as Dragor
stuffed it back into his pocket.
Two minutes later Dragor arrived back at his house, ready to phone
for a cab, only to find that he'd left his keys inside and that everyone
else in the house had disappeared on an impromptu shopping trip to Grimsby.
"Bollocks!" he exclaimed, and ran off to find the nearest phone box.
The first phone box had its buttons jammed with dried Ronson's wood
seal. The second had evidently been used by a couple the night before for
having sex - they'd enjoyed it so much they were still in there. The third
had been placed on top of the nearest telegraph pole as part of a student
prank. Dragor tried shaking the pole, desperate to dislodge the phone box,
but decided to stop when a passing Policeman threatened to arrest him for
Unlicensed Telephone Repair.
There was a muffled mumbling from his pocket. He pulled out the
tree again.
"What do you want?"
"You must shouting Dragor - Boom! A Noising Fart!"
"I'm not shouting that." Dragor stopped to think for a minute. He
realised very quickly that by now he was desperate enough to try anything
once. He took a deep breath then shouted at the top of his voice "BOOM! A
NOISING FART!"
He was rather surprised when a small car with a sign saying "GMI
Cabs" on top of it appeared in front of him.
Mutley jumped out, wrestled Dragor's bag from him, then shoved it in
the car boot. "Be in Leeds, by 11am, sir?" Mutley asked.
"Erm, yeah. How did you know?"
"Got a phone call from Leeds at 10.55. A Mr Dray Gorr needing
to be picked up from Cottingham at 12.15 to be in Leeds for 11. Just look
for the nutter shouting about farts, he said"
Dragor frowned. The bonsai tree started laffing. "Dragor must be a
nutter cause his shouting about farts."
"Oh shut up." Dragor muttered, stuffing the tree in a hitherto
unused pocket deep inside his coat.
"You can shut up too. I've got a busy schedule today." Mutley said,
bundling Dragor into the back of the car. "Fizban didn't wake up until 1pm
and the Open Day he's helping at started at 11. I've had to severely muck
around with causality today on account of you two."
Mutley got in the car, did a three point turn, then drove round a
passing roundabout and onto the A(63 + 29i).
"You said you had Fizban in here earlier on?" Dragor asked,
struggling to cope with the mental strain brought on by cross-dimensional
travel.
"Oh yes. Apparently he's found out a way to use LaTeX as a weapon
of mass destruction. I didn't catch all the details but apparently if the
source code is written on the casing of a nuclear weapon it doubles the
destructive power of the device."
Dragor sighed, realising that Mutley had switched to cab-driver mode
and would be talking for however long it took them to get to Leeds.
Mutley carried on. "He wanted to try the same with the source for
Windows95 but the research money ran out."
Dragor sighed again, then curled up and tried to sleep. It wasn't
possible. Now that he'd got over the initial problem of trying to get to
Leeds he now had time to remember how stressed he was about his iminent
meeting with Dippy. He'd only ever spoken to her using a crystal ball he'd
found kicking around a year or two ago in his loft that he used to access the
Outernet. They'd fallen madly in love straight away and now had decided to
take the big step of actually meeting each other. Why in hell they'd
decided to pick a meeting of people from all over the Outernet was beyond
him. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. After all they had known
each other for a month or so, so meeting up was probably a good idea,
particularly since they'd got engaged.
He stared out the window, and tried to get his brain to accept what
his eyes were seeing. He was looking at a normal kind of British Dual
Carriageway, which was easy enough to cope with. What was slightly harder
to deal with was the fact that it appeared to be part of a road network
through history, linking the distant past with the distant future. A
thought occured to him.
"We're travelling though time, right?" he asked Mutley.
"Time travel, that's right. Sorry it's taking so long, there's a
bit of a hold up on the M(62 + 21i) between 11.23 and 11.25, we're having to
take the long way round."
"If we're travelling in time, can't you take me to the future to
find out how things turn out with me and Dippy, so I can decide if it's
worth going."
"Haven't you noticed the sign on the inside of the doors - 'No
Causality Violations'. I'd lose my license if I did that. No, I'm sorry,
but if you'd wanted to tamper with the flow of history you should have gone
to 'Honest Jon's Time Travelling Taxis', mind you then you'd have been lucky
not to have found yourself in the Pliocene, very unreliable service at
Honest Jon's. I picked up one guy, this was the other week, they'd dropped
him off a week early. Can you believe it?"
Dragor grunted and went back to his musings. Most of them were
unprintable. This calmed him. Wild uncontrolled lewd thoughts were much
easier for him to cope with than either the fact that he was travelling back
through time or that he was about to meet the woman who was the love of his
life and fiancee. Defying the basic principles of experience and common
sense he decided to consult the bonsai tree again for advice and reassurance.
"Come on you worthless piece of foliage, reassure me."
"Foliage means I am a plant in pot."
"You'd better do better than that."
"I must be doing better. I am a good tree." The tree grinned again,
then, much to Dragor's surprise, it managed to blink without having any eyes.
"For fuck's sake, you're shit." Dragor said, winding down the window
and hurling the tree out of it. "'Good Luck Bonsai Tree' it said in the
shop," he commented to Mutley, "I've had nothing but trouble since I got
it. You know, I feel much better already."
Mutley watched in the mirror as the discarded tree bounced off the
carriageway into the timestream. "You're bollocksed mate. Excess fee for
polluting the timestream. It's fifty quid extra if you throw up, two
thousand for discarding litter into undetermined periods of history.
Besides, you're going to need that tree."
"Why?"
"Because, shit or not, it's still a good luck charm, and now you've
thrown it away you're subconcious is going to start thinking you've made
yourself unlucky. Whether it was lucky or not, your subconcious will jinx
you."
"You mean I'm ruined already? Can't we go back for it?"
"Too late, we're just arriving in Leeds."
"FUCK! Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck."
"I'm just a taxi driver."
"How much do I owe you?"
"Erm, nothing. You paid in three weeks time."
"Why three weeks?"
"It takes a while to save up to pay a two thousand quid causality
violation fine. Just keep buying lottery tickets for now. But make sure
Dippy chooses the numbers."
"You mean? Me and Dippy?"
"I'm just a lowly taxi driver sir, far be it from me to predict the
future. Now, I'm dropping you by a phone box, you've got to ring up and make
a taxi booking. Yes, before you ask, the time is 10.50am, the station is
round the corner and you've made it. Just remember to book this cab."
"Thanks." Dragor muttered, gasping with relief. He jumped out of
the cab and ran to the phone box. A familiar shaped plant pot was sat on top
of the phone.
"You can't throwing me away! I am a plant in pot!"
Dragor felt a brief sinking feeling in his stomach, but then realised
that it wasn't so bad after all, and that he felt a lot luckier. He grinned
a little. "Phone, Phone, Phone. Got to make the phone call."
Five minutes later, Dragor strode bravely into the station to meet
his love.
"BOOM! A NOISING FART!" trumpetted the bonsai tree happily.
...to be continued.
"The Bonsai Tales" © 1995 GMI/Bibble
Written by Gareth D Layzell