Time Deer

The Pekinolian interdisciplinary council on temporal study regrets to inform you that your request (Application number: A-65917301-9704) has not been chosen for the current spin cycle’s funding round. The application committee would like to make it clear that all consideration was given to your application, and that the number of applications in this cycle was the highest ever received, and of a generally exceptional quality. We hope that you will consider applying for funding again in the future.

Thank you

Dr. Akenel Chasing Light

Pekinolian City, Pekinolian

7581 Haves Hall, Council Complex, #7HYXZ

Nevil read and re-read the message from the council, denied funding, again. His application was given all consideration they said, there were an unexpectedly large number of applications this spin cycle they said, he should apply again next year they taunted. Nevil stowed the screen in frustration, then, almost without realizing he was doing it, summoned it back up, navigated to Davis and Marlys Time Taxis Limited and rented one for 2,814 years travel.

The Taxi apperated into his front lawn over the course of the next hour. While it was doing so Nevil printed and implanted every sub-cot he could afford. The best quality implants were far out of the meager salary offered to him as a professor, the mid levels ones were out of reach as well. Violent defensive systems had been outlawed on Pek ever since the fire rat incident three years earlier, so Nevil had to settle for the non violent puppy projector. 

When the taxi was complete Nevil Clavin, assistant professor of pteridology, recent recipient of Smallest egg eaten at a quaint dinner on Untatu, and proud owner of a fish, climbed into the cab, punched in Earth : 1373 C.E. : Italy and engaged the temporal pump. Energy oscillated back and forth through time, a controlled modification of entropy built on particle exchange was choreographed. The Taxi had flowed backwards along its modified time axis, and towards the point in space where earth had been 1407 years earlier. 

Nevil was enjoying the ride, which the computer reported would take a subjective 8 hours, he spent the time fantasizing about rubbing his publication in the faces of the smug, stuck up, all to closed minded members of the “council”. Around hour 6 Nevil was enjoying a warm cup of tiny egg when his world was wrenched simultaneously along a hundred time axes.

The taxi had been stuck by a time deer — creatures which resemble a particularly unpleasant mix between the general concept of confusion, the feeling you get when seeing a half eaten apple, and a moose — while passing through WWℵ0. The impact left the taxi, and Nevil with it, far off course, hurtling to an Earth of unknown time, with unknown dangers upon it.

“Woooah dude, now that, that is absolutely, uh….Oh! Out of this world! Yea man, out.of.this.world” The strange man in the bright costume said. Nevil had passed out during the uncontrolled decent in atmo, and had no notions as to where he might have landed, he realized the man was still talking “…for the man, man, yea, you and I brother, we are speaking the same language, wanna join my on my trip?” Nevil didn’t know where he had landed, but it was clear that there was no power source around that could top up the taxi, so, making the best of a bad situation, he agreed, hoping that in the course of the trip he and the strange man might pass by a power station. 

“LSD is amazing” thought Nevil Calvin, who has been high a supply produced by his sub-cots every moment since Indigo Ocean first brought him along. Now, with no way to power his taxi, and no way to power his other implants, lest his supply of LSD run short, Nevil lives in a carved out tree where he stares at his beloved ferns all day, watching them melt into eternity.