Read Time and Again: A Collection of Crazy Chronology Page 5

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  I awoke to the sound of lightning and thunder.

  And screaming.

  My eyes opened to see a man in strange attire – a deep blue uniform of some kind, with brass buttons, and a rapier at his waist.

  “Tell me the year – the year!” I rasped.

  “Sir, it’s 1862.”

  “Where am I?”

  “Fairfax, Virginia. United States of America.”

  “United States of What?”

  “Sir, my name’s Phillip Dummer. My family came to this land from France seventy years ago when they escaped the revolution. With them, they brought a most unusual piece of cargo – your body. It has remained in our family, with the explicit instruction to revive you with this-here body sauce when the going gets tough. Well, it don’t get much tougher than this.”

  A bomb exploded outside the window to punctuate his point.

  “What is happening?” I asked. I tried to sit up, then remembered that was a mistake.

  “It’s quite possible the world is coming to an end,” said Phillip. “The Rebel Army is at our doorstep.”

  “Phillip,” I said, “you must provide me some context! I do not even know what a reblarmy is!”

  Phillip paced back and forth as he spoke, his black boots scuffing the hardwood floor. “Okay, okay. Um, let’s see. The country is being torn apart. Brother fighting brother. The southern states have broken away. And those explosions you hear – that will be our death.”

  “Our death? Our death? But not everybody’s death,” I said. “What good is that? Are you telling me that this is just another war among men?”

  “Well, uh, I guess,” he said. “But it could very well spell the end of the Union.”

  “The Union,” I spat. “Unless this union of yours encompasses all of mankind, I suggest you put me back to sleep.”

  Phillip shrugged. “Whatever you want, Sir.”

  He started to paste the salve across my body, and as I was slipping away once again, I said (with quite a slur), “Be sure your progeny understand how this works. Only revive me if it is really, really the end . . . ”