Aaron tip-toed across the hallway beyond Aunt Wilhelmina’s snoring, downstairs past the servants’ quarters, through the kitchen, and to the other side of the garage. No one heard him, or if they had, they’d grunted and turned over.
He entered the password, started up the time machine, and turned the dial all the way to the right. Here goes. The biggest adventure of them all yet. No one had told him whether he could take the time machine there, nor did the user manual give any instructions. But Aaron wanted to try. He had too many questions that needed answering.
Did Scarlett ever get Rhett back? What happened to Mrs. Danvers after Manderley burned down? Did Boo help raise Scout and Jem after killing Bob Ewell? Did Elinor Dashwood and Edward Ferrars live happily ever after? Who became King of Denmark?
He had to get to the world of fiction. So he pushed the Dimensions 4 button of the machine and started to feel the usual blur. He pushed the dial as far to the right as it’d go. And the machine began to shake, then bounce, then jump up and down, then quiver, then shake again. The air pressure dropped and the heat rose – then it dropped below freezing. Aaron felt wind and hale and rain and sleet. And the machine jumped and sputtered and grinded to a crashing halt.
He landed in a dark world of cobwebs, cottage cheese, and electron firings. So this is what fiction was like. And then he began to hear random thoughts. Taxes too high. The debt ceiling. Bailouts bad. Balance the budget. No gay marriage. Bring back Bush.
“Damn!” he said aloud, not caring if the brain heard him. The machine had made another mistake. It had landed inside the mind of the average Republican voter.
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