literature

Of Toasters and Time Machines

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I know this is going to come as a shock to everyone, but the truth is, the Egyptians built the pyramids entirely on their own. No alien assistance required.

    As there are sure to be countless historians that would love to get their hands on my sources, this discovery is not why I felt compelled to write you today. It is, in fact, another matter, one more serious than you could imagine. For this reason, I will divulge, in full, how I came by this startling information.

     

    There’s a Dr. Adam Farrow of the University of Rochester in New York. He’s a professor of physics and astronomy during the day. At night he works on this thing called a time machine. Yes, a machine that, you guessed it, allows you to travel in time.

     

    Though an engineering student at Rochester, I knew Dr. Farrow by reputation only. My roommate, a grad student doing his thesis on quantum entanglement, had taken a course with him last semester. Apparently he was the worst professor ever.

    The obsession of my roommate was this thing called product testing. It’s an activity I don’t exercise regularly, but found relatively interesting: give them ten seconds of your life and take home a free gift.

    I was browsing through a number of these product testing agencies, and took note of one ad in particular. It sounded sketchy, but when they’re offering you a free hot dog toaster, you just nod and say, “Yes, sir. Thank you for the free hot dog toaster, sir.”

    Seriously. It’s a good deal.

     

    Oh, and there was this confidentiality clause, too. I didn’t read the fine print on the contract they handed me while sitting in the waiting room, but there had conveniently been a non-disclosure agreement located in the bottom right corner. As you may have guessed, I blatantly ignored it. There were other people in the waiting room with me too. I guess I wasn’t the only one who wanted a free toaster.

    By the time my name was called, I had seen about seventy toasters leave. And if you’ve taken a math class before, you know that comes out to about 750 seconds of chair sitting. If you really just got out your calculator to check– you know who you are– you would find that it took about twelve and a half minutes, not including time spent walking to the chair and back out of the room, before it was my turn.

    I wanted that hot dog toaster.

     

    The chair, if you could call it that, was more like a miniature car. It even had cup holders and a small tray to hold your mid-trip Twizzlers, Sheryl Crow CDs, and free hot dog toasters. To put it plainly, it was a box with windows.

    It was then that they handed me another box, my new prized possession. Yes, I’m talking about the completely free hot dog toaster. All I had to do was sit down for ten seconds and it was mine to keep. Cakewalk.

    Personally, the chair was a bit rigid for my taste, for which I didn’t hesitate to inform them. Their reluctance to write it down showed how much they really cared about the chair. Truly, it was something else they wanted to test.

    And then they turned it on.

    A massage chair perhaps? Fat chance. No, this one was built for trips though time, not trips through the mall. For a second, I felt like that guy from 2001: A Space Odyssey in his maintenance pod, hurtling through space. Then I felt like I wanted to vomit.

     

    On a side note: if the makers of the “chair” decide to put it on the market one day, they could use some seatbelts. The view from the floor was not as great as the one from the chair, but I did learn some key information. There was one of those icons that they have on computers and ipods that show how much time is left before it’s fully recharged. I had a good four hours to kill before going home. Luckily, I had my free hot dog toaster to keep me company.

     

    Outside, there was a desert. It looked pretty much like any other desert. Except that there were almost-naked people trying to drag huge stones over to where other huge stones were sitting. Except they weren’t just almost-naked people trying to drag huge stones over to where other huge stones were sitting, they were almost-naked people trying to drag huge stones over to where the pyramids were being built. Yes, I had been transported back in time to ancient Egypt to see the building of the pyramids.

    Side note: the air in the box-chair was from the year 2016. The air around it was from ancient Egypt. What year was the air when I opened the door and they had almost instantly combined?

    Imagine that.

     

    I’d feel like the worst person on the planet if I didn’t walk over and lend a helping hand to my new pyramid-building pals. To be honest, it didn’t look like they needed the help. I mean, when you see them chatting it up with your friendly, neighborhood aliens, the last thing they should need is a helping hand.

    Oh. Did I mention aliens? Right. There actually were aliens present. But don’t prematurely call me a liar. I would hate that. These aliens weren’t actually that bright.

    Imagine this: if aliens were anything like humans of the 21st century, they’d be complete morons. Just think about it. Most of us don’t know anything about the products we use: cars, mp3 players, medical mumbo jumbo, you get the picture. I don’t have a clue how my brand new free hot dog toaster works, but I use it anyway. Unless we’re specializing in it, we don’t know squat. 

    Suffice it to say, these aliens knew as much about architecture and construction as your local dentist. I, like you, wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt, but production was at a stand still, and that meant no more pyramids for the future.

     

    It was then that I remembered that I, too, had an education. Thank god it was in engineering. Just watching these poor guys struggling to drag those stones was painful. However, when I got over there, I ran into a new problem.

     

    As much as I made the aliens sound like complete buffoons, they’re really not that bad. Heck, they could translate with the best of them. Which made my job of instructing the almost-naked ancient Egyptians that much easier. I would bark out orders, sometimes even throw in a traffic cop hand signal or two, and the aliens would translate.     


    Of course, I thought the aliens would stick around to assist in the organization and directing of traffic, but they booked it once the Egyptians got the basics of pyramid building down. I doubt if they were ever there to help at all.

    In fact, they seemed more interested in my free hot dog toaster than anything else. Which didn’t surprise me then, that upon returning to the box-chair that is actually a time machine, the toaster was gone. In its place was a note that read, “Thanks for the toaster, champ.”

    Show aliens a toaster once, and you’ll never see it again.

     

    By then, the aliens were long gone, and the box-chair was fully charged and ready to go. Even with a time machine, my toaster was history.

    The real issue here isn’t that I’m taking credit for the construction of the pyramids, or even that aliens exist and are awful at construction. It’s that they stole my free hot dog toaster, and as of this moment, I’ve yet to see a refund.

    No, I don’t want the cash equivalent. I want the toaster. I want the completely free, fresh from the box, hot dog toaster. I don’t want to hear anything about a no-refund policy in the fine print, because there is no such thing.                                                

    I checked.  

This story came about as a result of not knowing what to write about, and I found myself thinking back to my actual college roomate. Not because he was a grad student, but becuase he liked to watch the history channel show, Ancient Aliens. From there, my imagination went wild, and I wound up writing about a hot dog toaster-loving character and his trip back to ancient Egypt. 
Side note: there really was an ad offering a free hot dog toaster. I checked. 

The illustration above is of my own design, created for this piece alone. Please ask permission before use. Thanks!
© 2016 - 2024 LouisFriedman
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Tinkertoy97's avatar

Irony is, I'm watching Ancient Aliens right now. Loved the story, reminds me of Dave Barry or Jerry Harju.