His dress was discordant with everything around him, but nobody paid much attention to that because it was the Argonauts' Fair, an event that attracted visitors from all over the world.
"What did you tell me your name was," asked the old man curiously.
"Astro."
"It's a very strange name, I had never heard it before."
"I am a foreigner..."
Astro was a time traveler, he had damaged the quantum compass that marked on his ship the place in time where he wanted to go. That meant he was adrift, lost in time, making random jumps without being able to control his temporal destiny.
Recharging the proton batteries often wreaked havoc on the sorrounding land [source]
Deep sadness filled his heart every period he spent in a place in time other than his own, so he would always set off again on the adventure of another blind leap, hoping to see his daughter again, a dream that was practically impossible with the atrophied resources he had.
He was a physicist in the year 2741. The ship that carried him, designed and built by himself, was a kind of complete, self-sustaining ecosystem, capable of sustaining the lives of three crew members indefinitely. It was pyramid-shaped and capable of creating energy from several different sources, including air, earth, water, light, cold and heat. Recharging the proton batteries often wreaked havoc on the sorrounding land, so he chose remote regions for that operation.
"And where do you come from," the old man asked.
"I come from a city called Disneyland, do you know it?" answered Astro, trying to get an idea of the time he was in.
"Well, I don't. It must definitely be a very far away place."
"You can't imagine how far."
Astro had chosen to stop at this time because he saw a lot of people wandering around in a valley as if they were having a party. At each jump, he could preview his destination for a few seconds before stopping time travel. This was a safety feature to avoid stopping time in the midst of a catastrophe. Without his compass, each time jump was often preceded by hundreds of attemps and previews.
He positioned the ship in a clear spot, but knew that no one could see it, as the cloaking system showed to any eye what was behind it, making it virtually invisible. He decided to walk towards the crowd and blend in among them. But first, from outside and using a voice command, he ordered the ship to rise into the air fifty feets high, so that no one would stumble upon it. The ship's sensor was able to hear and recognize his voice from several miles away.
Suddenly, as he spoke to the old man, shouts were heard:
"Here comes the race! the Argonauts are coming!"
Astro looked up and could see some small ships that looked like snails. He was distracted enjoying the spectacle, but he remembered that in that direction was his ship, suspended somewhere and he did not know exactly where. He only managed to say:
--Colossus, go up!
He didn't know if the ship listened, or if he failed to be specific in his order; the instant he finished speaking, a small explosion was observed in the sky, then another, and others... But all of them were absorbed by a gigantic explosion, of great dimensions. People were running to get away from the place, but Astro's reaction was to run towards the explosion.
He only managed to take ten steps, when the image of the explosion he was seeing suffered a rare distortion. Astro stopped immediately, that phenomenon was not strange to him. What he recognized as a time bubble opened and two people appeared, a man and a woman.
The woman spoke:
"At last we find you, Astro."
Surprised, Astro answered:
"And where do you know me from?"
"We've been following your tracks for two years. We've been repairing the fissures you left on your journey, but it was this catastrophe that has allowed us to know with certainty your exact location in time."
"And you're what? Some kind of time police?"
--It's a little more complex than that. The less you know, the better. Just as we've already fixed the rifts you left in time, we're going to fix this mess. We're going to take you back to your time, but there's not going to be a time machine anymore.
They invited him in, and he went in...
---o---
Astro knocked on the door of his house. When it opened, his daughter shouted:
--Daddy! where had you been all this time?
Astro stopped to think, and answered:
--I don't know. I can't remember...
Text credits: Amaponian Visitor (
