A Crinkle in Time

I was flying in my hovercar to Las VeryVegas for one of those Alien Monster shows and I was already running late. I decided to take a shortcut through one of the forbidden zones. Crossing the Null Forrest would save me more than an hour and I could get to my destination before the show even started.

Half way through the dark forest a thick fog appeared out of nowhere. My GPS detected an auto in trouble down a side road 20 miles away. Just a 5 minutes detour. I was flying solo anyways, so under the prospect of finding a date for the night I decided to offer the stranger some help.

The auto in trouble was no hovercar or any other flying model but a really old convertible from the 20th century. It didn’t use antigravity engines, but old fashion wheels. And the wheels were stuck deep in the mud.

I could see somebody moving inside the car so I got out of my hovercar and approached it. My anti-G boots kept me one foot above the mud.

A woman got off the car visibly flustered. Clearly she was headed to some old vintage show. She was wearing glasses on her face, her hair was straitened, her clothes were made out of some not plastic material, and she wasn’t floating but walking. On heels no less!

She looked at me like I was the alien and made some bizarre comments about my clothes and hair. I figured somebody like her–so dedicated to the vintage lifestyle–wouldn’t know much about the latest Venusian fashion.

“I just took a detour,” she said. “I’ve never been here before. I was trying to get to Reno. I took this side road and this grey fog came out of nowhere… Am I a dead?”

“Excuse me?” She didn’t seem to be high but she wasn’t making much sense.

“What year is this? Am I in the future?”

I started considering she might be slightly off her rocker so I just smiled politely at her. I got one of my anti-gravitons off my trunk and lifted her vintage car up in the air. When I finally got her car out of the mud, she just stood there with her mouth open.

Any hope I had for a date were gone by now so I decided to get back in my hovercar and find my way back to VeryVegas. I waved at the woman who by now was back into her car, running away like the devil.

Once the fog cleared out I run into a long caravan of old vintage cars. Just like that woman’s. I started thinking about what she had said. If I didn’t know better I would think that it was me who had traveled back in time. Soon after I saw a strange sign that read “Reno 130 miles”. I had a terrible feeling that I would not be on time for the Monster Show at VeryVegas after all.