Free The Time Machine Did It by John Swartzwelder Page B

out the rest of my money on the
counter, and invited them to take their pick. They didn’t like any of those
bills either. Then, after they had called the bank about the check I tried to
write them and were told that my checking account didn’t exist on this planet,
and had stared at my American Express card for several minutes without
comprehension, they began to lose all confidence in me as a customer.
    They had a brief meeting, to which
I was not invited, then gave me the bum’s rush out into the street, hinting I
should never return.
    While I was picking myself up off
the pavement and dusting myself off, a couple of policemen arrived and asked if
I was Frank Burly, the guy trying to pass the funny money. I said I was, and
asked their names. They grabbed one of my arms each and escorted me to their
squad car.
    They kept me in a cell for a
couple hours, during which time I learned from another inmate how to kill a man
with a walnut. No time spent with a man who knows his craft is wasted. Then
they pulled me out for interrogation. I sat down in the interrogation room.
Somebody had been eating their lunch in there and there was, among other
things, a walnut on the table. I picked it up. You never know.
    Fortunately, the police lieutenant
who was questioning me was a science fiction fan, so he was eager to believe my
story. After I told him all about the world of the future, with it’s death
rays, rocket cars and flying nuns, he was putty in my hands. I knew the kinds
of things he wanted to hear.
    He asked if the Martians were ever
going to attack the Earth. I nodded and said 1958. I said the Martians were
tougher than the Crab Monsters and the Ghost Robots From The 2ND Dimension
(Width), but that we managed to beat them in the end by tying their feelers
together and screaming in their floppy ears until their brightly colored asses
blew off. That satisfied him a lot. It gave him a real good feeling about Man’s
Fighting Future. I also told him that in the future all the women wore really
short pants, shorter than was safe, a fashion development which I was prepared
to sketch for him. He ate it up. This was great. All his suspicions were
confirmed. Hooray for me and the future.
    He agreed to let me go if I would
write down all the World Series winners for the next 62 years for him. I tried
to look reluctant and said I kind of owed it to the space/time continuum not to
divulge important crap like that. His face fell and it looked like he was about
to toss me back in the can again, so I communed with myself and said I guessed
it would be all right. As long as he didn’t share this important information
about the future with other people at the casino. He agreed enthusiastically.
    I wrote down all the winners for
him, neglecting to write down the fact that I don’t remember that kind of stuff
very well. I’m not even sure there is a baseball team named the Blue Pants. And
I didn’t tell him that I knew he was destined to get killed a year later in one
of those police station cave-ins. I’ve always thought people shouldn’t know too
much about their future. Especially people who are about to let me go.
    I handed over the list and was
released immediately, with profuse apologies. They expressed the hope that I
held no hard feelings towards them. They pointed out that they were only doing
their jobs, and that this was a career their parents had chosen for them. They
had wanted to grow up to be nice men, like me. I said that far from having hard
feelings, I planned to name my first child after their police department –
Coppertina if it was a girl, Fuzzy if it was a boy.
    So we parted on amicable terms.
The lieutenant shook my hand and got his picture taken with me, making out in
the photograph like we were great buddies who went everywhere together. We
vowed to visit each other often in the future, not just when I was being
arrested. Then he hurried off towards a casino.
    I sat down on a park bench to
enjoy my freedom and