"...odder than your oddest joint.
In short, it doesn't disappoint."
-- Anon
(To access larger views of the time-travel contrivances
described and pictured below, click on their individual figures.)
I
"Welcome to Le Temps Ouvroir!
Nous sommes a workshop, not a spa,"
said Monsieur Greeter at the door
as I set foot within his store.
"Willkommen zur Zeitwerkstatt!
Wir sind a foundry; spa we're not,"
he spoke again, in Deutsch and loud,
then click'd his heels...then smiled...then bow'd.
"Say 'Privet!' to OuVoTePo!
A spa...? Nyet! Ah-h-h-h, but that you know,"
the genial gentl'man spoke once more,
repeating stuff said heretofore.
He finger'd, then, a ring-rimm'd ear
as if to ask, "You're not from here...?"
Whereon, receiving answer none,
he kept at what he'd first begun.
"Our bent...? Potential time machines.
A specs inspection...? By all means.
The staff includes a pair of pairs.
Of Roddenberry they're the heirs.
Next step...? I'll rep to you today
those four -- and, more so, what they say.
Young Szell (as do all elder Szells):
excels in chann'ling H. G. Wells.
Though fav'ring Ages pre-Victorian,
Szell expounds Doc Brown's DeLorean..."
Then, as near as I could tell,
he morphosed into...Xander Szell.
 |
| Fig. 1 Alexander Szell's Commode-O-Chron |
[X. Szell] "Top tool to travel on...?
Just get a load: Commode-O-Chron.™
Its like...? Ne'er hinted hitherto:
its cockpit acts as porta-loo!
One drawer holds manual controls.
A second hordes spare tissue rolls.
Some future choose (or pick some past).
Then move your bowel! But move it fast:
my crack millennimeter tracks
how quick the C-O-C™ reacts
to warps in time's morphology.
Create your own horology!"
Perhaps, though, you'll elect to stay
within this moment, hour and day,
nor not drop in on distant times
(nor suffer soporific rhymes).
But on the chance you change your mind,
more fit contrivance ne'er you'll find
than this: Malmud Bialyad™
(near-Arabic for 'hand-held rod'),
of late created by a man,
who's Lawrence's most rabid fan.
Within some picture palace dark,
Abdul Ali caught T. E.'s spark."
And then, as near as I could see,
he changed again. Voila! Ali:
 |
| Fig 2: Abdul Ali's Malmud Bialyad |
[Ali] "'Tis like a whipping stick.
On camel drives it does the trick.
But plainly it's a paradigm
for subjugating space 'n' time.
With Farsi fabric modified,
'twill awesome space-time trips provide.
Its mini-tent just crawl within,
then take 'er for a space-time spin."
"Wait! Arab gimcracks not your style...?
Perhaps you'd give this tool a trial,
o'er which four score 'n' seven flipp'd.
Consider, please, the Tryptychrypt.™
Its architect, Frau Vera Vier,
a space-time travel pioneer.
Like Szell, Vier's scouted Wells's work
and from it scrubb'd away the murk.
Through R&D Vier's learn'd to tell
her TARDIS from her diving bell.
She's grasp'd the wiring (byzantine!)
of Mr. P's WABAC machine,
and, in the end, uncompromised,
her Tryptychrypt she's realized."
Once more he seem'd to disappear
as, facing me, stood... Vera Vier.
 |
| Fig. 3: Frau Vera Vier's Tryptychrypt |
[Frau Vier] "At heart a tri-fold box,
my Tryptychrypt's unorthodox
in that it sports a pair of doors:
a catafalque with pocket drawers.
Once one's inside, it's like a bed.
(It works, as well, when one is dead.)
A user simply climbs aboard
(there's magazines if one gets bored),
manipulates the handy dials
to specify how many miles
and years ahead or back one'd go,
a pref'rence (either [FAST] or [SLOW])
as to the pace of "gettin' there"
and "Who-osh!" one's off to who knows where."
V
Frau Vier withdrew from view just then,
with Mister "Hi-ya!" back again:
"The final faber of the four
cranks out contraptions by the score.
His card reads 'Sgt. Smithe-Magee,'
our top designer, all agree.
His popular Hip-Bathysphere™
he hatch'd as accolade to Lear.
His Pocket Singularity,™
a space-time travel rarity,
he carries in his vest, seal'd tight
within a sleeve of cavorite.
This portable black hole he built
from plans glimps'd in a crazy quilt.
The laurels, though, "Sarge" rests upon
surround his TempusFugitron.™
 |
| Fig. 4: Smithe-Magee's TempusFugitron |
[Sarge:] "My TempusFugitron
is, most concur, sine qua non
for temporal galactic travel --
nor'll be brook'd oppugning cavil.
Some insist it's untoward,
constructed like a teeterboard,
one balanced on a fulcrum placed
halfway along and Janus-faced
in such a way as to allow
a trav'ler, seated at the bow,
to launch himself into the blue.
What's more, it has a feature new,
in no one else's widgets found:
that fulcrum also spins around,
allowing trav'lers, smartly hurl'd,
to spiral all around this world,
until arriving at a place
completely new in time and space..."
 |
| Fig 4a: Smithe-Magee's TempusFugitron (detail) |
VII
But here I interrupted: "Stop!
I really came into your shop
with something quite precise in mind,
a gizmo of a diff'rent kind
I'd heard of -- read about, perhaps:
I follow sev'ral blogger chaps --
a time machine to end all others.
'That's the boy, if I'd my druthers,
I'd deploy to conquer space
and time,' said I, "and ditch this place.
I wonder, Sir, if you've heard tell:
Does 'WanderGate' ring any bell...?"
 |
| Fig. 5: WanderGate |
(a work in progress)
