Elvis is Dead: Saving the World Takes Time was originally a ten-minute sci-fi comedy I wrote in 2014. I wrote it for the Dewey Decimal Festival and the Friends of the Chappaqua Library in Chappaqua, New York. I decided a few years ago to start adapting some of my plays into short stories and novels and I’m glad to say this is the first one of my many short plays that I’ve finally managed to transfer from the stage to the page. There are many more to come.
Elvis is Dead: Saving the world takes time.
A short story by James Hutchison
Please God, let this work, prayed Dr. Fred Bunson as the capsule he was in shot through time and space heading into the past. The fusion blast that had sent them into the time vortex had exerted a far greater force than had been anticipated and some of the systems had failed. Nothing critical like life support or the espresso machine but the toaster was well – toast, and the Navicon control panel was lit up like a fire truck with several alert buttons flashing red, but it was still keeping them on course and was operating within normal parameters.
The capsule itself was surprisingly quiet. Outside all the stars and galaxies looked like they were being seen through an array of prisms. Light and time were being stretched and bent as the time portal wound its way back through the quantum realm towards earth on July 3, 2017. Doctor Bunson certainly wouldn’t have minded an espresso about now, but he was strapped in, and Commander Frump, Bob, his long-time friend and colleague hadn’t put the remove seatbelt sign on, so he’d have to wait.
Commander Robert Frump had been proudly serving in the time travel division of World Wide Space and Time Corp for more than twenty years and he was honoured to be the pilot on this mission. If everything went according to plan, they’d land in front of the Remington Central Library at noon. The system computer better know as Vortex announced that they would be arriving at their destination in approximately three minutes and that all passengers should remain seated.
“I think I might have to take us in manually,” he informed Dr. Bunson. “I’d rather do a controlled landing. We don’t want to come out of the vortex at our current speed other wise we’ll look like a meteorite streaking across the sky and burn up on re-entry. With the shape the Navicon is in, I’d feel better if I landed this one myself.”
“Alright Bob, that sounds good,” answered Dr. Bunson. He was more nervous than he’d liked to admit. The mission could go wrong in a thousand different ways. They could end up in the wrong place or at the wrong time or even burn up in the sky as Bob had mentioned or smash into the ground and be obliterated if they were even off by a nano second.
“We will be arriving at our destination in approximately two minutes,” announced Vortex as Commander Frump began hitting dials and checking readouts, “please remain seated.”
The capsule began to shake and when the brakes were applied it knocked the breath out of Bunson. To go from travelling ten years a minute to going one minute a minute and landing safely in front of the Remington Central Library made your insides jostle about like a Jello salad being thrown to the floor. Thank God they had their specially designed cranial protective gear on to keep their brains from being bashed about and turned to mush thought Bunson.
Outside the time capsule things came into sudden focus and the time machine landed. Farump! They were behind the bushes off to one side of the Memorial Day Gardens in front of the library. It had gone just as planned although instead of arriving at noon it appeared to be much later in the day.
“We made it Fred, thank God, we made it,” said Commander Frump in a relieved voice. “I must say, not bad for a first time try. I spent a lot of hours in the simulator preparing for just such an event. It looks like all that training paid off.”
“Yes, yes. Thank you, Bob. Excellent landing,” said Bunson as he undid his seat belt and staggered to his feet. “We need to get into that library and find that book.”
As Bunson and Frump hurried into the library they were still wearing their time suits and feeling a bit out of sorts. It was quiet. Which was good as Dr. Bunson didn’t want to attract attention. This was an old stone and brick library with a beautiful grand entrance that led to the central check out and information desk. At the moment the information desk was empty, but the librarian had to be around here somewhere. A calendar on the desk confirmed the date, July 3, 2017.
“Look at that Bob. Proof that it worked!”
“You sound surprised Doctor.”
“I must say, I had my doubts. The chimpanzee we sent through the first time-portal a week ago couldn’t actually tell us where he’d been now, could he.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“The big question is, has the time pulse changed history in any way?”
Commander Frump began running a number of tests on the PCP he’d taken with him from the time capsule. PCP stood for Portable Control Panel and was directly tied into Vortex the mission computer and the time machine itself.
“Scanning but so far everything looks good. The President of the United States is Bernie Sanders, the Best Picture went to La La Land, and the Atlanta Falcons won the Super Bowl. And…mmmm. No, that’s the same. That checks out. Okay, everything looks good. Oh, hold on a second. I might have spoken too soon.”
“What is it?”
“Hang on.”
“Is it something good or something bad. Please be something good. Please be something good.”
“It is something good. Elvis is alive!”
“Elvis is alive!”
“Elvis is alive. Yeah, can you believe it. Holy cow! And look at all the music he’s recorded in the last forty years. Wow.”
“He didn’t die in 1977 like in our original timeline?”
“No. And that looks to be the only significant change I can detect so I think we’re good. It could have been much worse. You know when I was a student at Sturgeon University I made extra money on the weekends as an Elvis impersonator.”
“I remember.”
“Oh, my God! It gets even better. He’s still performing, and he’s got a concert the day after tomorrow at the MGM Grand in Vegas. We should go. I love Elvis.”
“Sorry Bob, but we’re not here to see Elvis in concert. We have work to do and the sooner we get started the sooner we’ll be done. How much time do we have left?”
“You sure we don’t have time to see Elvis. We’re not that far from Vegas. What’s a couple of days out of a two-week mission? And really this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I mean Elvis. Alive. And still performing at his age. That’s incredible.”
“It is incredible and we’re extremely lucky that Elvis being alive seems to be the only thing to have changed in the timeline, but we have important work to do, and I’d like to start by confirming exactly how much time we have before we need to head back. Okay. A day makes a difference.”
“Alright, I’ll have a look,” said Bob as he ran some calculations on the PCP and Dr. Bunson started to look around the library.
There were shelves and shelves and shelves of books. More than he’d ever seen. Few books survived in the future and all of those that did survive were in the private collections of the elite. He himself had only seen a book once in his life when a copy of Bossypants by Tina Fey had been put on display at the Museum of Ancient History a few years ago.
It was stunning to see so many books all in one place and the first thing he had sensed was the intriguing smell. It was, he knew, the actual smell of the books. The smell of paper and bindings and glue that held them together. He hadn’t even thought about how a library would smell. But as he and Bob had entered the library they had been met with the soft, earthy scent of aged paper and one might even say history if history actually had a smell.
He picked a book up off the nearest shelf and opened it and flipped through the pages enjoying the feel of this ancient artifact. Here in his hands was the thing that made man different from all the other species on earth. Books and their ability to transfer knowledge such as the thoughts of great philosophers like Plato, Confucius, and Schopenhauer or the theories of great scientists like Darwin, Einstein, and Pasteur or the poetry of great poets like Shakespeare, Milton, and Plath had all until a few centuries ago, existed pretty much only in these beautifully bound and lovingly crafted volumes. This book, part of that great literary tradition and record of human knowledge, was titled Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James and promised readers an erotic and explicit journey into the world of BDSM.
Fred stopped flipping through the book and looked about the library trying to figure out how the whole thing was organized. “You know I have no idea how this library system for the twenty-first century works, do you?”
“I think it was based on something called a Dewey Decimal System although I’ve no idea what a Dewey is,” said Frump as he gave a perplexed look at his screen.
“There must be a way for us to check an inventory or a catalogue of some kind.”
“Oh dear.”
“What is it?” asked Bunson as he put the book he was holding back on the shelf.
“Looks like Elvis is sold out.”
“Would you stop looking up information on Elvis and double check the time remaining on the mission.”
“Sorry, I thought I’d check for tickets. Just in case. Can you blame me. I mean we took that road trip to Graceland about ten years ago. Remember Fred.” Bob continued to tap the screen and run checks on the PCP. “I thought if they had tickets…you know…maybe we could go because they’ve got libraries and bookstores in Vegas. But here in Remington they don’t have Elvis. And you like Elvis. Oh my God!”
“What now?”
“Oh no, oh no, oh no. This can’t be right.”
“What can’t be right?”
“According to the on-board computer we’ve only got fifteen minutes left before the time machine returns to the future. With or without us.”
“How can that be. The mission was originally planned for fifteen days.”
“That’s true and while I don’t want to draw any hasty conclusions just yet, it does look like I might have made a slight miscalculation,” Bob said as he frantically ran some new numbers and checked the results.
Bunson hurried down to look at the screen, “You idiot. The entire world. All of mankind is depending on us and now we’ve only got fifteen minutes to find the book we need and return to the future. How could you have let something this catastrophic happen?”
“Excuse me but time travel isn’t an exact science, you know. Don’t go blaming me.”
“Who the hell else am I supposed to blame! You’re the commander! You’re the pilot. I’m just along for the ride.”
Librarian Sally Knowlton Remington Central Library
Elvis is Vegas
Time Travelers Commander Robert Frump & Dr Fred Bunson
Sally Knowlton was looking forward to celebrating Independence Day along with her family and friends down at the Central Plaza across from city hall where there would be food trucks and street venders and music and plenty of fireworks to celebrate the 241st birthday of the United States.
She counted herself lucky to be living in a nation that valued education and freedom and literature and science and art and knowing a lot about history was thankful that tomorrow she along with the rest of the citizens of Remington would be celebrating the nation’s birthday and the values and foundations that made America a great society such as the right to free speech, the right to vote, and freedom of the press.
Yes, there were problems, but things were moving forward, not backward. After all America had elected its first Black President Barrack Obama, and she truly believed that despite some troubling events the future looked bright and that the start of this new millennium would usher in a century of greater peace, economic prosperity, and equality not just in America but across the entire world. She loved her country, and she loved books, and she loved libraries, and she loved her job, and she thought life couldn’t be better.
Sally was just about to lock up the library for the evening when she heard some rather loud voices shouting over each other. She headed towards the front desk to see what the ruckus was about and when she turned the corner, she came across two men dressed in what could only be described as Halloween costumes.
There was a tall man with wire rimmed glasses, brown eyes, and an intense expression on his face. Beside him was a shorter stockier man holding some sort of electronic pad that he seemed to be looking up information on. Both wore what appeared to be crash helmets and jumper suits that were puffy like winter down jackets. The tall man’s suit was orange with blue stripes along each arm and the shorter man’s suit was blue with orange stripes along each arm. Sally stepped forward and drew their attention.
“Excuse me gentlemen, this is a library. Please keep your voices down.”
“How can we keep our voices down when the future of mankind depends on us,” said the tall man in an excited voice.
“Even so,” said Sally, “we should be using our inside voices.”
“This is a very emotionally distressing situation and while I appreciate that libraries have a no shouting policy sometimes in life there are things to shout about. And this is one of those times.”
“Is it? Well maybe you could do your shouting outside. Are you two on your way to a costume party?” asked Sally.
“A costume party? No. You don’t understand. I’m Dr. Fred Bunson and this is Commander Robert Frump. We’re time travelers from the future and we’re here on a mission to retrieve some books.”
That had been an unexpected answer. Not that Sally hadn’t run into several odd characters while working at the library. There were always eccentric people who believed the oddest things about the world and how things worked and unfortunately while their views had been confined to themselves in the past, these days access to the internet meant they could easily spread rumors and lies and connect with others that might think the same way. Such a network of delusional crackerheads, she feared, would plunge the world into a storm of misinformation, magical thinking, and pseudo-science that could, if left unchecked, drown out any rational form of thought.
Just that morning Sally had been dealing with the American Emperor a small elderly gentleman from Nome Alaska known as Cedric the Great who claimed to be descended from the stars and believed he was the true ruler of America. The new king. The last thing America needed was a king. The last thing any nation needed were kings and dictators and strong men. And while Cedric becoming King of America was an unlikely prospect these two claiming to be time travelers was a new one.
“So, you two are time travelers, are you? Well, welcome to the past. We’re glad to have you here. What books were you looking for, precisely? Something on where to eat in the Middle Ages, or perhaps the top ten things to do in ancient Rome.”
“No, we’re looking for one book in particular,” replied Commander Frump.
“Yes. Quantum Time Fluctuation Theory by Dr. Otis T. Kwack. It’s an extremely rare book, but if my calculations are correct, you should have a copy here in the library,” said Dr. Bunson.
“Why don’t we check the terminal and see what it says,” suggested Sally. “I’m not familiar with that particular title but that doesn’t mean we don’t have it.”
“You’ve never heard of Dr. Otis T. Kwack,” said Dr. Bunson, “the father of time travel.”
“No,” said Sally as she scrolled through results on the library terminal.
“Well, Kwack was considered a bit of a nutcase in his day. He spent most of his life in an asylum.”
“Roommates were you,” Sally said with a smile.
“Hardly,” answered Dr. Bunson.
“Oh, here it is.”
“Thank God for that,” sighed Dr. Bunson as a wave of relief washed over him. “If nothing else being able to retrieve that book would make our mission a success.”
“But I’m afraid it’s been signed out.”
“Signed out?”
“Yes. It’s not due back in the library until the day after tomorrow. You could always put a hold on it, if you’d like.”
“Is that your only copy?” asked Dr. Bunson, with his hands clasped in front of him as if he were praying.
“It is I’m afraid,” answered Sally.
“Well, that’s just great,” said Dr. Bunson. “Now what are we going to do?”
“He has written another book called Peter Penguin and Polly Pachyderm’s Time Travelling Adventures. Would that help? There’s an entire series.”
“No. We need his other book.”
“Why? Don’t they have books in the future?” asked Sally.
“No, we don’t, as a matter of fact. Everything’s gone digital.”
“You mean, like Kobos, Kindles, tablets that sort of thing?”
“Exactly. Everything including literature, music, history and science has been transferred to quantum drives – or I mean – will be transferred to quantum drives.”
“Even Bridges of Madison County.”
“Is that a book?”
“That’s debatable.”
“It’s not on my list,” said Dr. Bunson as he checked his own small glowing screen device.
“What list?” asked Sally.
“I have a list of over ten thousand books I’m supposed to bring back to the future with me. There are a lot of scientific journals and some literary classics like The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Suez that I’m supposed to try and retrieve but none of it will matter unless I can get Dr. Kwack’s book on time travel.”
“Well, Dr. Bunson even though this is a lending library, I’m afraid, you can only sign out twenty-five items at a time.”
“Hey, I have a question,” asked Commander Frump as he stood in front of the popular fiction shelf holding a copy of The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, “where’s the power button on these things.”
“Books don’t have power buttons,” answered Sally as she glanced over the list on the device that Dr. Bunson was scrolling through. “Is that the new iPad Pro?” asked Sally. “I don’t have one, but I’ve heard they’re amazing.”
“No, it’s a dynamic portable knowledge transport. Better known as a Dynamo. This is their latest version. This one comes in navy blue, but you can also get it in forest green, or dusty rose.”
“Okay, I’m confused,” said Bob, “if they don’t have a power button then how do you turn them on?”
“You don’t turn them on. You open them up,” said Sally. She wasn’t sure if these two were having her on because not knowing that a book doesn’t have a power button seemed like an odd thing for someone from the future not to know. Even if books were rare.
Commander Frump opened the book, “Ah, now I see. That’s simple. Right. Okay. Easily done. Um, just one more question. How do you adjust the text size?” asked Commander Frump as he looked at the words on the page.
Dr. Bunson shoved his Dynamo into his pocket and feeling rather agitated crossed over to Commander Frump and shoved the book into Frump’s face. “Like this. Does that help Bob?”
“Well, I’m sorry Fred. I’ve never seen one of these things before. How am I supposed to know how they work.”
Dr. Bunson turned to Sally and spoke with a great deal of passion and urgency, “Listen you’re a librarian so you must have an appreciation of literature and knowledge. If we don’t come up with some way of getting these books into the future, they’ll be lost forever. No more Hop on Pop. No more David Copperfield or The World According to Garp or The Handmaid’s Tale. The world would be greatly diminished if these great works of literature were to disappear forever.”
“Okay, I’m confused,” said Sally, “I thought you said everything had gone digital.”
“It has, said Dr. Bunson, or it did might be a more accurate statement. The first time-travel experiment was conducted a week ago with Bobo the Chimp and when the time portal opened it created a time pulse, and unfortunately, that time pulse destroyed all the quantum drives on earth and all of man’s recorded knowledge. Everything’s gone. From how to make gingerbread to Dr. Kwack’s time travel formula.”
“We have to find that book so we can shut down the time portal,” added Commander Frump.
“Nobody thought to memorize the formula?” asked Sally.
“Why memorize something when you can look it up,” replied Commander Frump.
“We’re a little technology dependent in the future,” added Dr. Bunson.
“And nobody thought to write it down?” asked Sally.
“In hindsight,” said Bunson, “it might have been a good idea to have had a hard copy of some sort.”
“Hey, you know what this means,” Commander Frump suddenly blurted out, “we’re the first humans to travel through time. You and I, Fred, are the ones history will remember. Our names will live on for eternity just like Lance Armstrong’s, the first man to walk on the moon.”
“Don’t you mean Neil Armstrong,” corrected Sally.
“No, I don’t think so. Do I?” asked Commander Frump.
“She’s right. You’re wrong. Lance Armstrong was a disgraced athlete who used steroids to help him win the Tour de France. Neil Armstrong on the other hand was the first man to walk on the moon.”
“Yes, Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France seven years in a row but in 2012 he was stripped of those titles because of a doping scandal.”
“Listen as much as I’d like to chat about history and the psychopathic behaviors of some celebrities and politicians and athletes we need to get that book. Is there any way you can help,” asked Dr. Bunson.
“Do you have a library card?” asked Sally.
“No,” replied Dr. Bunson, “do we need one?”
“If you’re going to sign out any materials or put a hold on a book in our collection, time travelers or not, you’ll need a library card.”
“We don’t have time to get a library card. In less than – oh my God – two minutes our time machine will return to the future with or without us.”
“I’m sorry gentlemen, but as much as I sympathize with your situation it’s already past nine o’clock and the library is closed. Your mission to save mankind will have to wait until tomorrow.”
“You don’t understand. It’s not that simple. Every time we use the time portal, we risk changing history or worst-case scenario, we could quite possibly destroy the universe.”
“Alright,” said Sally, “who put you up to this? Steve.”
“Nobody put us up to anything,” answered Dr. Bunson.
“Is there a camera somewhere? Are you going to put this up on YouTube?”
“How can I prove to you that time travel is real?” asked Bunson.
“Oh, that’s easy,” said Sally.
“Is it?” asked Bunson.
“All I need to do is put one of our give-away books in a time capsule and bury it at the entrance to the library. You simply return to the future – dig up the time capsule – then return to me here – right now – and show me which book I buried.”
“And risk destroying the universe.”
“I figured you’d say something like that. You’re not really time travelers, are you.”
“Come on Fred we’ve only got thirty seconds. We’ve got to get back to the ship.”
“Alright we’ll do it, but if anything goes wrong God help us,” said Dr. Bunson.
“What could possibly go wrong?” asked Sally.
As Bunson ran out the door he shouted back over his shoulder, “Promise me you’ll bury one of those books.”
“I promise,” she shouted.
Commander Frump and Dr. Bunson came running out of the library and back to the time machine jumping through the hatch and leaping into their seats and doing up their seatbelts just as the time vortex activated and the time machine rose a few feet off the ground and then shot off into the evening sky and disappeared into the future.
Back in the library Sally wasn’t so sure she felt like going to all the time and effort of burying a book in the garden in front of the library. How deep would she have to bury it? What would she bury it in? How far into the future did these two come from if they did indeed come from the future, which was a preposterous idea to begin with. And then she thought, “What the hell? Why not play along and see where this leads.” So, she grabbed one of the books off the giveaway pile. This is perfect, thought Sally as she grabbed a pen off the counter and wrote something on the inside cover of the book.
She still wasn’t too sure what was going on but if this was a joke, then it was a pretty elaborate one. She’d seen some pretty elaborate jokes on TV over the years. But why would anyone pull this sort of joke on her. She was just a local librarian with a love for her country and a love for literature and was just about to get back into the dating world after having split up from her fiancé of three years last November. That had been a blue Christmas and the only thing that got her through the season was listening to Elvis sing Christmas carols and drinking rum and eggnog.
Suddenly there was a loud thud and a flash of light followed by a crunching sound and thirty seconds later Dr. Bunson and Commander Frump, still in their crazy time travelling outfits, came running into the library carrying a small, locked box.
“The lighting and sound effects look a bit cheap don’t you think,” said Sally, “do you have the book?”
“Yes. We brought the time capsule you buried it in. We thought it would be best if you opened it,” said Dr. Bunson.
“Are you magicians by any chance? Is this some sort of Reality TV show?” she prodded.
Dr. Frump handed Sally the time capsule. “No this isn’t a TV show. And I’m not a magician. I’m a history professor and scientist. Would you just open the time capsule.”
Sally took the time capsule and looked at it. So, this is what she had buried the book in at some point later in time she supposed, since she was still holding the book, she had inscribed in her hands. That would mean that an item that existed in the future had now returned to the past and that meant there were now two identical items in the present. But how could that be. Theoretically she thought the time capsule she was holding in her hand might be empty because she had yet to put the book into the time capsule because they were in the past before she buried it.
Fortunately, there was an easy way of finding out what was going on. She could open it and see. And even if it was there her first inclination was still to suspect that these two were pulling some kind of prank or magical trick on her. Sally undid the clasp and opened the lid on the time capsule and carefully reached in.
“Now, be gentle. It’s very old,” said Bunson.
Sally pulled a book out of the small metal box that was wrapped in a kind of bubble wrap that had yellowed and turned brittle with age and easily fell away from the book it was protecting. The book she held, though aged, was indeed the same book that just minutes ago she had picked up from the pile of giveaway books and signed.
“The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. That’s funny,” said Commander Frump.
“Alright smart guys I wrote something on the inside cover. Let’s check that, shall we.”
Sally took the book she had taken out of the time capsule and placed it beside the book she had picked to put in the time capsule and opened both to the inside cover.
“I don’t believe it,” said Sally.
“What does it say?” asked Frump.
Sally stood there too stunned to say anything, so Fred leaned over her shoulder and read the inscription, “To Fred and Bob, Happy to be a part of your time travelling adventures. Love Sally.”
“Hello Sally. Nice to meet ya. I’m Bob.” said Commander Frump.
As Dr. Bunson compared the two inscriptions he said, “See Sally, they match perfectly. Now do you believe us?”
“I don’t know what to believe,” said Sally. “How can this be true?”
“It’s true because we’re from the future. Come on Sally we need your help.”
“Oh damn,” said Bob as he looked at his PCP.
“What now?” Fred asked, fearing the worst.
“Elvis is dead,” said Commander Frump as he turned to Sally and gave her an accusatory look. “You killed Elvis.”
“What’s he talking about?” asked Sally. “Elvis has been dead for years. Long before I was born.”
“Yes, of course he’s been dead for years. We’re not blaming you. I think Bob would agree with me that as much as we love Elvis, his dying is a small price to pay for saving the universe. It could have been much worse.”
“Aw crap,” said Bob.
“What is it now?” Fred asked, bracing himself for some catastrophic change in the timeline.
“Donald Trump is President.”
“So?”
“You don’t want to know. Let’s just say there are consequences.”
“Alright then. Come on Sally. Together – you and I and Bob – the three of us can save humanity. What-da-ya-say?”
“You already have your solution. Instead of putting The Time Machine by H.G. Wells in the time capsule I can put Quantum Time Fluctuation Theory by Dr. Otis T. Kwack in there as well.”
“She’s right,” said Bob. “When the book gets returned day after tomorrow, she just has to put it in the time capsule.”
“Problem solved. We dig up the book in the future and voila we’ve got the formula, and we can close the vortex. Uh, that was way easier than I thought it would be,” said Fred with a laugh, “Oh, my God, I feel so much better. Thank you, Sally.”
“You’re welcome, Fred. So, what happens now?”
“We still have a lot of other books to collect,” said Fred. “That’s why we came back in the first place.”
“So, now we can get on with the rest of our mission,” said Bob.
“Exactly,” said Fred, “how much time do we have left?”
“Let me check,” said Bob, as he looked at his PCP and ran some calculations. “Ah, that’s interesting. There are a few other things that have changed in the timeline. The best picture now goes to Moonlight instead of La La Land and the New England Patriots win the Super Bowl instead of the Atlanta Falcons. And let’s see. Ah. Oh dear. Mmmm. Well, that can’t be right.”
“What can’t be right? You promised me we’d have more than fifteen minutes this time.”
“We do have more,” said Bob. “A lot more. Fifteen years more.”
“Fifteen years! That means we won’t be able to go back to the future until 2032. How did that happen?”
“While I don’t want to jump to any conclusions it does look like I might have made a slight miscalculation.”
“Slight? You call fifteen years, slight? What in the name of Otis T. Kwack are we going to do for the next fifteen years?”
“Well,” said Sally, “we could certainly bury an awful lot of time capsules and make sure those other books on your list survive into the future.”
“That’s a great idea, Sally,” said Fred. “That’s exactly what we’ll do. Oh, my God, you’re a genius.”
“I’m not sure I would call myself a genius, but I do think I’m good at solving problems.”
“Well, here’s another problem for you. Bob and I are going to be here for fifteen years. We’ll need jobs. We’ll have to blend in. What could we do to make a few bucks?”
“Have you ever thought of writing a book yourself?”
“I have written books. Several books. I write about history. But most of the history I write about hasn’t even happened yet.”
“Have you ever thought of writing fiction?”
“Fiction?”
“Yes, science fiction. I think you’d be rather good at it.”
“That’s not a bad idea. You know what, I think I’m going to enjoy my time in the past.”
“Glad I could help.”
“Hey, listen Sally, I know it’s late but maybe there’s a coffee shop around here where we could get an espresso.”
“Hold on a second,” said Bob, “before you two go running off, what am I supposed to do for the next fifteen years?”
“Maybe Vegas could use another Elvis impersonator,” suggested Fred. “What do you think?”
“If that’s the case then I think I better start working on my act. Do you have any books on Elvis?” Bob asked as he turned to Sally.
“We have a whole section,” said Sally. “Of course, you will have to sign up for a library card if you want to take anything home.”
“Sign us both up,” said Fred.
“Will do,” said Sally.
“Look out Vegas here I come,” said Bob, “thank ya – thank ya very much! And Elvis has left the building.”
The End
![PHOTO of Kurt Vonnegut sitting in the backyard – slide – from the library of congress. Credit line: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, photograph by Bernard Gotfryd, [Reproduction number e.g., LC-USZ62-123456]](https://jameshutchison.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/service-pnp-gtfy-04300-04376v.jpg)
