Flapping

“Phooey, those racist bigots kicked the Muslim woman out and sent her careening down an alley way.” Aaron had enough of the Donald Trump rally and decided to hit the road. He might’ve been just as pasty-white, blue-eyed, and red-headed as any of the pathetic drones at that rally, but somehow he thought they’d turn on him as soon as they were done with the brown people.

He found the time machine behind a range of bushes and jumped in, cranked on the ignition, pressed the pedal, and waited. He turned the dial to March 2016 and then positioned the pointer on his map for home – ah, San Francisco, so nice to go home, he thought. And then he had an idea. So he cranked the dial all the way to the right, all the way to January 2017. And he repositioned the pointer to Washington, DC.

He just had to know. Aaron knew it was against the rules. He could only go into the past, but what of it? What the consortium didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. He’d come back quickly to the present. And if the election turned out wrong, maybe he could help change the course of events. When he pressed on go, the machine sputtered, smoked, flapped its side panels up and down, jumped up and down, and then whooshed into the white light.

He landed in the middle of a blizzard wearing only jeans and his polo shirt. “Drats, it’s bloody freezing here. And where the hell am I? Can’t see a damned thing.”

He began to shiver, but could see a wide avenue in front of him. In the distance, there were people on either side, and then he saw lights coming toward him, slowly, very slowly. And then he could hear the cheers begin to rise. Yes – he’d made it to the presidential inauguration.

Had to get the time machine out of the way. It was right in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue. But it wouldn’t budge. Too much snow and nice. The procession approached more closely. Aaron could now see the figures of a tall man and a much shorter woman with long hair approaching him. They were waving to the crowds on either side, walking in front of the limousine with all the lights. But who were they?

He couldn’t leave the time machine in the middle of the avenue. As soon as he started pushing it again, he felt a rumbling of the earth beneath him. A voice spoke from the sky, “Aaron Aardvark, you’ve violated Plenary Rule No. 3385. No future time travel. We’re taking you back to the consortium for a judgment.”

Just before he felt the machine whoosh him away, he took a look at the approaching procession. He could see the man and the woman now. He recognized the famous smile of the white-haired man and the wide-eyed excitement in the eyes of his wife.

“There is a god after all.”