The Cube
by Jonathan Worlde
On the outskirts of town I came across The Palace of Green Porcelain, a derelict museum with a collapsing roof, where a Hungarian caretaker was liquidating items. Dappled emerald light played on the cracked tile floor, dried leaves scuttled in the corners.
I examined an old Selmer saxophone, a Victrola phonograph and a stuffed shark. Dejected that I hadn't found anything that excited me, I was leaving when I saw, near the lavatory, a sorry-looking machine with an old hand-written sign: Time Machine--Still Works. The heavy metal sphere stood as tall as my shoulders. Crouching to look inside, I could see it would be a tight fit. Being an inventor myself, I felt I should be able to make use of it somehow, even if only for spare parts.
"Does it really work?" I asked the man, who was playing a game of solitaire. He answered, with a bored tone,
"It works all right. I've been back to the Cretaceous Period, when giant reptiles ruled the world; and I've been forward in time another seventy million years, where, guess what?"
I had an inkling of where he was going with this. "More dinosaurs?"
"Exactly, although a bipedal mammal, I hesitate to call them humans, coexist. They live in mud hovels, largely trying to stay out of the way of the dinosaurs, while gathering moss and berries to mush into a muddy paste for consumption."
"Grotesque! They cook it?"
"At times, but the fire gives away their whereabouts to the dinosaurs. I barely made my escape when a pair of neo-T-Rexes attacked. "
"What about our cities? Industry? Electromagnetism?"
"All gone, as though they never existed--our labors here are for naught. We threw it all away on greed and pride. How many mansions, boats, and planes can a man consume? We burn and pillage our forests and foul our oceans for a quick dollar. I've seen where it's all going, and I don't want any part of it."
I walked around the sphere again. "How much do you want for it?"
"Make an offer. Everything has to go."
"It's intriguing."
"What you want to use it for?"
"I want to be there when we manage to reach the moon. Jules Verne makes it seem inevitable."
He chuckled. "You can have it cheap."
"I don't have much money--will you trade for it?"
