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A flap of a butterfly wing

At the invention exhibition 'Inventions you only dreamed about' many incredible breakthroughs were shown. Among the booths that attracted most of the visitors interests, a few must be mentioned. There where booths that showed

Jesper, however, didn't like to crowd, so he just visited the booths that didn't attract the interest from any others. He had just been at booth that had sold him a 'top whirler' that could make an ordinary top spin for hours. Now he was very anxious to test his new investment, but unluckily he had no top. He walk around for a few minutes, when he suddenly stopped at booth and read: Jesper wondered if there were any time machines that couldn't do that. Most of the other visitors at this fair were intelligent people, that knew that it was impossible to travel in time. Because of that the interest for the time machine was very low. Thus, the man at the time machine was very pleased that he finally got a visitor, and said:
"Come into my machine, and I will show you how it works."
Jesper, who had nothing better to do, followed the man into the amazing looking machine . The man, and the inventor of the machine, was an old man called Emmeth Albertson. He had a Ph.D. in General Relativity, and was very anxious to tell Jesper how the machine worked. He begun with introducing Jesper to the concept of Einstein's Equations, and how he, Emmeth Albertson, had found a solution to the equations that involved closed lines in space time. Furthermore, he had also manage to manufacture a flux capacitor that..."
Jesper, who never past 4th grade science, obviously didn't understand a word the man said. Instead his mind started to wander away to his top whirler. It was so annoying that he couldn't test it. However, the red wheel under the sign saying 'WARNING! DO NOT MOVE THIS WHEEL' seemed possible to spin around.
"Why not?", he thought and used he top whirler to give the red almost frictionless wheel an incredible spin. As the wheel started to spin the time machine started to shake. Inside the machine it felt like an earth quake of about 7.8 on the Richter scale for a few minutes, then it calmed down. It all became silent, very silent.
"God! Did you move the red time travel wheel!", Emmeth screamed furiously.
"Not God, but I might have touched it slightly", Jesper admitted.
"Don't you believe in signs! You have started the time machine. Well, since you just touched the wheel, and the length of the time traveling is proportional to how much the wheel has moved, we can't have moved far."
Emmeth opened the door, and they climbed out of the machine. It was coal black outside, and absolutely silent.
"Where are we?", Jesper whispered.
"I don't know. Are you sure that you just touched the wheel?"
"Sort of...."
Emmeth started to realize that Jesper hadn't told him everything. To make Jesper to tell the truth, Emmeth started an argument. The wild discussion, between two men representing each extreme according to evolutionism, was interrupted by an immense boisterous voice that said:
" LET THERE BE LIGHT!!", and then light appeared.
"Oops!", Jesper said.
Even though Emmeth was deeply affected by the visit of the beginning of time, he managed to say:
"What have you done with my time machine!"
Jesper felt ashamed of himself and looked down to the ground. He then started to kick a hole in the beautiful lawn he stood on.
"What have you done with my time machine!", Emmeth repeated this time sounding a bit angry.
"This?", Jesper said holding up his top whirler.
After a discussion that contained many words that is not suitable to reproduce in print, everything that had happened became clear to Emmeth. He sat down on the ground and hid his face in his large hands. Jesper, on the other hand, started to get hungry. He strutted away to find some food. Half an hour later he was back. He felt that Emmeth needed to be cheered up, so he said with his smoothest voice:
"I found a garden of paradise apple trees. In one of the trees the apples seemed juicier than I never seen before. I picked all those apples just for us, and I also picked this!" Jesper held up a big snake that he just had killed and added:
"I found this little fellow in the tree with all the juicy apples. I make some fire so we can grill him to eat with the apples."
So, they did. After the big meal Emmeth said:
"We must be very careful with what we do, else we might change history. Hopefully a few apples and a snake make no difference, but one never know. Some people even claim that even a flap of a butterfly wing can change history. We better go back to our own time before we do something fatal."
They walked back to the time machine. Emmeth managed to rebuild Jesper's top whirler so it could cause a spin in the opposite direction. Then he gave the wheel a good spin. The time machine started to shake again. It shook more and more and more. Jesper again heard an immense boisterous voice. This time saying:
" WAKE UP MY LAZY SON! IT'S HALF PAST SIX!"
Jesper opened his eyes, and climbed up from bed. His mother, Theresa, said:
"Hurry up! We are going to visit Wilfy today!"



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Next: Fijihere we Up: No Title Previous: The BETA remote



Patrik &
Thu Feb 26 10:10:12 MET 1998