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Message-ID: <45581asstr$1069794607@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
From: "smilodon" <smilodon@postmaster.REMOVEco.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 15:43:24 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: {ASSM} New Story - The Time Machine Voyage 2 - Roman in the Gloamin'  (Attempted humour)
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 16:10:07 -0500
Path: assm.asstr-mirror.org!not-for-mail
Approved: <assm@asstr-mirror.org>
Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories
Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d

The Time Machine

   Voyage Two - Roman in the Gloamin'



   Cleopatra was a chubby little tart with something of a moustache.  She
had a single eyebrow that seemed to be crawling across her forehead like a
demented millipede and a bloody great nose.  In short, she was the kind
only a brother could love - but that was the Ptolemys all over.  Yes,
you've guessed it: the Prof and I were at it again.  We spent a few days
working on the Temporal Interface Terminal - T.I.T.  for short.  Well to be
honest, the Prof did all the real work - I just supplied the muscle.  I
might not be very clever but I'm good at lifting things.  He fiddled about
with coils and inductors and I humped large metal objects back and forth
and endured a stream of sarcasm.  It came as quite a relief when he
pronounced himself satisfied.

   "Well, Jonty, my boy, I think we're ready.  The Q.U.I.M.  appears to be
functioning perfectly."

   "Quim?"

   "Quantum Universe Indicator Matrix.  It will tell us if we stay in this
branch of the continuum or go elsewhere.  Look here, I've calibrated it so
this universe is number one.  The one where we met that odious version of
Socrates is provisionally number two, although the Q.U.I.M will eventually
determine its true relationship to the baseline."

   "But how many are there?"

   "Oh, infinity minus one, I should hazard a guess, but I could be wrong."

   I have trouble getting my head around numbers as big as my bank
overdraft so I just looked suitably impressed - or tried to.  The old Prof
squinted down his nose me and inquired if I was suffering from a bad case
of gas.  There's no pleasing some people.  Anyway, I duly presented myself
at the Prof's pad the following day.  The mad old bastard had surpassed
himself in the sartorial stakes yet again.  He was wearing a wretched
polyester safari jacket in a shade that I can only describe as dog-shit
brown.  Actually 'wearing' doesn't quite cover it.  It was several sizes
too large so he was more walking around inside it.  The shoulders of the
jacket seemed to change direction a few moments after he did.  It gave the
impression that his head could perform 360-degree rotations - like he'd
just escaped from the set of The Exorcist.  I was expecting projectile
vomiting at any second - on my part!  It was the bilious yellow Lycra
cycling shorts that did it.  With his skinny little legs, he looked like a
variegated turd on stilts.  I won't even mention the sandals with socks.

   "OK, Boss, where're we going this time?"

   "Ancient Egypt, Jonty.  I have a mind to establish once and for all
precisely how the Pyramids were built."

   Who was I to argue?  He screwed that damned C.U.N.T.  (Compact Universal
Neural Translator) into my ear again and we entered the T.I.T.  as before.
I eased myself into one of the over-stuffed armchairs and leapt out again
with a yelp.

   "Whatever is the matter you with now, Jonty?  If I had known you were
going to be such a fidget I would never have taken you on."

   I didn't say a word but gave him a very pointed look as I removed eight
inches of rusty upholstery spring from my posterior.

   "Well I'm buggered!"

   "No Prof, I am."

   The T.I.T wobbled and I felt that now-familiar nausea.  The Prof was
working like a one-armed paperhanger as he dashed from one side of the
control console to the other.  I sat back and watched him - from a
different armchair.  There was a strange moment when the T.I.T seemed to
bounce suddenly and then everything returned to normal.  The Prof stared
angrily at a blank VDU and then smashed his palm down hard on the top of
it. Some fuzzy writing emerged, flickered briefly, blazed brightly for a
nanosecond and then disappeared leaving a blue screen on which the words
'Windows general protection fault, press any key to continue,' appeared.

   "Bollocks, balls and balderdash!  The C.L.I.T.'s still playing up."

   "Come again?"

   "The Combined Location In Time array.  I set it for the time of Cheops
and when do we go?  Bloody Ptolemaic Dynasty, that's all.  It really is too
bad, Jonty.  Bloody Microsoft!"

   "Oh, come on, Prof.  You surely can't blame Bill Gates for this one?"

   "Of course I can.  I wrote the programme using all the redundant bits
from Windows 98.  Bloody thing has never worked properly."

   "That's what you get for using Princess Di software."

   "Princess Di?"

   "Yeah, you know, consumes masses of resources and very prone to
crashing."

   "Jonty, sometimes I find your taste very questionable indeed."

   I didn't mention the Lycra shorts.  Unless your idea of meat and two veg
is a cocktail sausage and a couple of frozen peas.

   We stepped out of the T.I.T.  into blazing sunshine.  My ears were
assaulted by a babble of voices; peddlers, pimps, drunks, curses, laughter,
threats you know, the kind of thing you can hear any Saturday night in the
West End.  Except this was Egypt around 46 BC.  I like it when we go BC -
it makes me feel less of a heathen if JC hasn't been born yet.  What the
locals made of us I hate to think.  How would you feel if a silvery dome
suddenly materialised in the middle of your used donkey lot and two
strangely dressed apparitions just lurched out of the walls?

   The citizens of Alexandria reacted in the predictable way of big city
folk at any time or place.  They ignored us, stepping out of our way with a
slight shrug as if we were just another pile of camel poo on the pavement
to be avoided.  Not so the local goon squad.  Policemen everywhere must
take ugly pills along with lessons on how to be obnoxious and aggressive
without raising a sweat.  I felt like an ethnic minority.  Before you could
say 'knife' we were taken down town and banged up in a cell with an evil
looking goat molester and a confused menopausal Alexandrian housewife who'd
been caught stall-lifting in the local bazaar.  The professor was trying to
make his protests in what, he assured me was ancient Egyptian but wasn't
getting very far.  I haven't had too many brushes with the Long Arm of the
Law but even I know that saying " Oi, monkey-cunt!  We got rights.  My
grandmother was a hippopotamus God while yours wore army boots," isn't
going to exactly endear you to the local fuzz.  The Prof assured me that
what he actually meant to say was that we were very important people and
should be taken to see someone in authority.

   It was fortunate that the locals could barely understand his accent and
contented themselves with giving us a good kicking - I'd have hated the
Prof to have made them angry.  We spent a sleepless night getting
acquainted with the resident micro-fauna - fleas, to the likes of you and
me - before being dragged up before the Beak next morning.  He turned out
to be a decent sort and suspended the sentence of castration with a rusty
razor.  Fortunately he was Greek so we didn't have any trouble making
ourselves understood.  Apparently the charge was 'making the place look
untidy,' they obviously had the same reaction to the Prof's outfit as I
did. The Magistrate must have thought we were vastly amusing and he sent us
up to the palace to entertain some visiting bigwigs.  The Prof was going to
protest until I reminded him of the alternative by stomping hard on his
besocked foot.

   We hung around in an anteroom for a while.  The Prof made a big deal of
studying the murals while I ogled a couple of serving girls.  It was very
frustrating not being able to chat them up.  The C.U.N.T only allowed me to
understand what was said, not to speak anything other than my native
English, although the Prof disputes that I do that with any fluency.  I was
getting on OK.  I had at least, by dint of sign language of the 'me Tarzan,
you Jane' variety, established that one was called Charmione and the other
Iras.  I was trying to work up the courage to ask the Prof what the Greek
was for 'fancy a shag, darling?' when we were summoned to the presence.

   I've already told you my first impressions of old Cleo.  The others
present were obviously Romans and the Prof became ecstatic, rattling away
in Latin and having a right good laugh.  I'll say one thing for Cleo, she
was a bright lass.  She told the Prof she was fluent in nine languages,
which put his snout out of joint a bit, as he could only muster eight.  The
Prof jauntily dismissed me as his body-servant.  I couldn't let that go.

   "I've never served your fucking body in my life and well you know it!"

   "What did he say, Magus?  What language was that - if such a barbaric
tongue can even be called a language?"

   "Ah, that was British, Your Majesty.  A small Island off the coast of
Gaul."

   One of the Romans piped up:

   "Ooh, I've been there.  Horrible place, wet and cold and they all paint
themselves blue.  You there!  Why aren't you painted blue?"

   "I know who you are, bastard.  You're Julius bloody Caesar.  You're the
one who called us weeny, weedy and weaky."

   You can see I know my History.  The Prof looked exasperated.

   "He was speaking Latin, Jonty.  Vini, vidi vici.  It means, 'I came, I
saw, I conquered.' Really, your ignorance is truly appalling at times."

   He turned to apologise to Caesar but the bald old bastard was grinning
happily and nodding his head.  On the strength of that, we got invited to
dinner.  I ended up sitting next to a bloke called Marcus Antonius who was
a right laugh.  He drank like a fish and kept up a ribald commentary on his
Boss and Cleo, whom he thought was a real fright.  I thought it was pretty
rich, knowing what was in store for him in few years!  Still, I dredged
around in my memory and found a couple of words of Latin that had been left
there from some book I once read.  I tried them out on him.

   "Canis major, Tone, don't you think?"

   He fell about laughing and had to be helped back onto his couch by a
couple of Nubian slave girls.  He took his time over it.  He then bellowed
to all his Roman mates that I thought the Queen was a big old dog and they
all fell off their couches.  The ones served by the eunuchs got back on
pretty quick; can't say as I blame them for that, though.  Old Tone then
regaled me with a blow-by-blow account - and I do mean blow-by-blow - of
his erotic progress through the Roman Empire and expounded the theory that
world domination was only an excuse to get to try out loads of exotic
pussy. He was modest enough to admit that if it had been up to him, he'd
probably have stopped at the German border - all those hairy armpits kind
of turned him off.

   "What's the totty like in Britannia, then Jonty?"

   I gave him the thumbs up and sketched a shapely figure in the air.  He
gave me a wolfish grin.  Our Tone was something of a sex maniac, it seemed.

   "Still, how do you find it if they're all painted blue?"

   I shook my head and pointed at my own unpainted flesh.

   "Old Caesar's telling porkies again, then, is he?"

   I nodded.  A bloke called Brutus looked sharply interested for a moment
or two and then went back to brooding, as he had been doing all evening. 
Tone took another gallon of wine from a passing slave and grinned at me.

   "Well, we're all off for a nice cruise up the Nile tomorrow with his
nibs and the Queen.  From what I heard, you and your master will be joining
us."

   The rest of the evening passed in an alcoholic haze.  I had to be
carried to my bed by a couple of hefty slaves and don't remember much else.
I was awoken by the Prof at the crack of sparrow-fart.  I could tell the
old boy was really excited.  My head was thumping and my mouth felt like
the crotch-piece of an Arab's underpants so I wasn't in the mood.





   "Jonty, my boy, don't you see?  This is the chance of a lifetime!"

   "Gerroff!  Oh fuck!  My head hurts.  Prof, do something useful and fetch
me a priest.  The last rites are in order."

   "Serves you right.  I never indulge in strong liquor and look at me
today."

   I gazed at the double image of the Prof that swam in out of focus in my
bleary vision.  At that point it became necessary to park my custard in a
convenient lay-by.  When I finished throwing up I felt marginally better
than spoonfuls of warmed-over death but totally unprepared for a romantic
cruise with the bald bullyboy and his big-nosed trollop.  Mark Antony
looked even worse that I felt and even Brutus was a little tattered around
the edges.  We boarded the royal barge and set sail, if one can still sail
in a bloody great rowing boat, up the Nile.  Caesar and Cleo were hidden
away in a pavilion at the stern.  The rest of us lay about on the decks. 
Only the Prof was still full of piss and vinegar and he kept up a running
commentary on everything and everyone we saw.  Eventually, old Tone had
enough of the Prof's ramblings and offered to help him lose twenty pounds
of ugly fat instantly - by cutting the old wind-bag's head off.  Silence
returned and I fell asleep.

   I woke to the sound of leather thwacking into flesh and a recurring pain
in my ribs.  Someone was kicking me in the side and demanding that I get up
as it was 'time for the show.' There stood one of Caesar's henchmen glaring
at me like I was something he just scraped off his boot and was none too
thrilled about it.  The Prof was already up and looking as happy as the man
who killed his father.  I struggled to my feet and shambled over to him.

   "What gives, Prof?"

   "Jonty, my boy, I hardly know how to tell you this but they seem to
believe we are some variety of mountebanks and insist that we perform for
the Queen and Caesar.  I really don't know where to begin."

   "Leave it to me, Prof.  You just translate what I say.  I've had to do a
bit of stand-up in my time."

   Precisely three minutes and fourteen seconds later there were two hefty
splashes in the Nile.  I think it was the one about 'what do you do if your
husband has a fit in the bath?  - Throw the washing in and save on the
electricity.' Of course, it could have been the Prof's translation, because
that one normally goes down a storm in the Pub.  Anyway, how was I to know
that Caesar was epileptic?  I towed the old boy to the bank before the
crocodiles could get indigestion and we squelched our way back to
Alexandria.  He belaboured me all the way for my 'execrable taste and
shoddy humour.' I took it as a compliment - at least I was better than
Socrates.

   We made it back to the T.I.T.  ahead of the Alexandrian goon squad and
that familiar stomach-churning wobble began and then all the lights went
out.  The T.I.T.  bounced and the Prof and I were flung around like a
couple of rag dolls on speed.  We came to a stop with a pronounced thump. I
had ended up in the corner with the Prof on top of me, his arse on my face,
which, by the way, is not a fate I would wish on my worst enemy!  I heaved
the old boy off and staggered to my feet.  There was smell of burning and a
faint trail of blue smoke was coming from one of the panels.

   "Oh dear, oh dear, Jonty, my boy.  I fear we are, to use a highly
technical term, in deep shit."

   I could only agree.  The T.I.T.  had taken on a drunken angle and seemed
to sag.  The Prof fiddled around in one corner and emergency lights
flickered into life.  There wasn't much I could do but rearrange the
furniture as the Prof started ripping open panels and poking about with a
voltmeter as he tested the circuits.  He gave a cry of triumph and leapt
back.  He was dangling a newly fried rat by its tail.

   "Here's the culprit!  Little sod chewed through the insulation.  Nothing
I can't fix."

   "But, Prof, if I might make so bold as to ask, where and when the fuck
are we?"

   "Haven't a clue, old boy!  But first things first, what?"

   He stripped away the melted wiring and replaced the worst of it.  I'll
give the old boy credit; he could work quickly when he wanted to.  Twenty
minutes later, power was restored and he moved to the keyboard.



   "By God!  There's a slice of luck, Jonty, we're in Rome.  If I remember
my history aright, Caligula is the Emperor."

   "If I remember my movies aright, Prof, he was nasty little bastard who
either screwed you or killed you and sometimes did both."

   "Oh, pish and tosh, my boy.  I'm sure his reputation was grossly
exaggerated by his political enemies."

   We staggered out of the T.I.T.  into another world.  We must have
arrived at the imperial palace smack on orgy time.  All around I could see
heaps of naked bodies.  The place stank of spilt wine and overpowering
cheap perfume.  There was also a strong smell of fish.  Nobody paid the
blindest bit of notice to the two strange figures that suddenly
materialised in their midst.  Nobody, that is, apart from a spotty looking
individual in a purple robe with a golden laurel crown sitting somewhat
askew on his low forehead.  He looked like the worst kind of teenager - all
pimples and attitude.  He muttered something to a couple of armoured
bruisers and the next thing we knew we were thrown at his feet.  He was
obviously drunk and he'd spilt half his dinner down the front of his robe.
Somehow, he reminded me of the Prof.

   "Who the fuck are you?  Assassins, eh, come to murder the emperor?"

   The Prof started rattling away in Latin.  It was obvious that the
possibility of time-travel hadn't yet occurred to the world's greatest
empire.  The spotty little lunatic looked at us as if we were barking mad.
I suppose, in the Prof's case, he had a point.  The Prof gave up on the
complicated stuff and settled for telling young pizza-face that we had come
from Britain.

   "Liar!  Great-great-uncle Julius went to Britain and he said you all
painted yourselves blue.  You're not blue, are you?"

   "Um, we've rather given up on the technicolour skin, Your Excellency."

   "I think you're more of those bastard Christians.  They all smile and
grovel all the time.  Well, I just so happens they have a few vacancies on
their team for the next games.  What's their record this season, Bilius?"

   "Played six, lost six, sir."

   "And how are the Lions doing?"

   "Top of the league sir, played six, won six."

   "There, I told you the Christians could do with a bigger squad."

   The little shit was starting to amuse me and before I could stop myself
I burst out laughing.  Caligula turned his watery gaze on me.

   "What's so funny?"

   "Prof, please translate for me.  It's like this, your nibs, I am not and
have never been a Christian and I certainly wouldn't be any good against
the Lions.  If I get anywhere near cats I start to sneeze and break out in
a rash."

   The Prof faithfully translated my words and Caligula seemed to ponder
what I 'd said but it could be he just went vacant.  Bilius, the head guard
expressed his sympathy, he was allergic to cats too and also added that the
lions stank something awful.  Caligula's face suddenly lit up and a mad
grin stretched across his spotty features:

   "How about bears?  Bilius, don't we have some bears?"

   "Uh, no, Excellency.  If you remember, that little Greek quack told you
that bears' pizzles were a potent aphrodisiac and, well, they didn't
survive the donor experience."

   "Bugger.  Well I can't him have sneezing and scratching himself all over
the arena, it would make me a laughing stock.  Haven't we got any thing
else?"

   "We did have some wild horses, Excellency, but unfortunately, uh, let's
just say that your experiments to cross them with lions weren't a complete
success."

   "Oh, what a pity!  I like horses."

   The emperor fixed his gaze on me once again:

   "D'you know, I made my favourite nag a senator?"

   "I think I heard that, Your Worship, I bet he always voted neigh."

   This seemed to crack Bilius up.

   "Ha ha, do you get it?  Voted neigh, oh that's good."

   Caligula rolled his eyes.  He did that rather too well for my liking.

   "Oh well, allergies or not, it will have to be the lions."

   So it was that I found myself armed with an oversize dinner fork
standing about in the middle of the arena with a bunch of sorry-looking
individuals all awaiting our fate.  Even a tumble with Cleopatra was
looking appealing by comparison.  The other victims were supposed to be
Christians but after exchanging a few words with them, it soon became clear
that they were nothing of the sort.

   "It's that mad bastard Caligula," one told us.  "All the bloody
Christians moved out years ago but he wants to keep the league going so the
bloody Lions can win the series again.  Anyone he doesn't fancy ends up
here on the Christians' team.  It's so humiliating!"

   Just then, there was a huge roar from the crowd and I didn't have to
look round to know the lions had made their entrance.  But I looked round
anyway.  Five large dun-coloured beasts were making their way into the
arena.  They didn't prowl, they didn't bound; they minced.  I tell you no
lies, those lions wafted into the place in a sort of limp-pawed way that
would have made me laugh out loud if I hadn't been the first course on
their menu.

   As they got closer, I became aware of something very odd indeed.  They
looked distinctly moth-eaten and really quite un-feline.  The biggest of
them approached me and I gesticulated with my dinner fork.

   "Oooh, you're the butch one!  Look at this one, Hideus.  Don't wave your
thing at me like that, ducky."

   My chin hit my chest.  It's not everyday that you get spoken to by a
lion but a camp lion?  Incredible.

   "Oh, I know!  They haven't let you on the secret have they, sweetie? 
The real lions disappeared years ago.  The Emperor's bodyguard, Bilius sold
them to a travelling circus from Barnum.  Old 'Little Boots' up there is as
blind as a bat and can't see anything more than a couple of paces away from
the end of his big nose.  So we got rounded up to stand in for the big
pussies.  He doesn't know the difference"

   "What?"

   "Oh, yes, it's quite true.  Me and Hideus and the rest of the girls were
on our way to a Saturnalia fancy dress when we got grabbed by the
beast-master.  Didn't we, Hideus?"

   There was a grunt of acknowledgement from the lion's back end.

   "Hideus is sooooo lucky!  He always gets to be at the back.  Anyway,
don't you be a silly girl and watch what you're doing with that trident. 
All you have to do is scream in pain and panic when Hideus and I jump on
you.  The beast-master's assistants will come and drag you away to the
dressing rooms and the Emperor will go home to his supper feeling lovely
all over."

   I didn't have to simulate my screams of panic as the 'lion' jumped on
me. Hideus and his mate were altogether too free with their paws for my
liking.  I don't like being groped in public at the best of times but by a
gay pantomime lion?  Leave it out, Guv!

   I took extreme care not to drop the soap in the showers afterwards, I
can tell you.  As it happened, the gay lions turned out to be decent enough
blokes and they helped us scurry back to the T.I.T as soon as it was dark.
Another orgy was in full swing as we crept from pillar to pillar across the
palace.  The head guard, Bilius, spotted us and went white to the roots of
his hair.  He shot over towards us flapping his arms like he was trying to
pre-date the Wright Brothers by a couple of thousand years.

   "What are you two doing here?  If the Emperor sees you, he'll have my
guts for a toga!"

   I got the Prof to translate for me.

   "We won't give away your little scam if you help us get into that
machine we arrived in."

   Bilius looked pissed off but agreed and we were back inside the T.I.T
before you could say 'Circus Maximus.' The Prof, still badly shaken by his
first ever encounter with the Roman counter-culture, whizzed around like a
demented horsefly and before I had even had time to fasten my seatbelt, the
T.I.T.  gave its familiar lurch and wobble.  The old boy was still a bit
green about the gills when we stumbled out into his workshop.

   "Well, Jonty my boy, we made it home!"

   "That we did, Prof.  Have you had enough adventures now?"

   "Oh, I think not.  We might, perhaps, leave the ancient world to its own
devices for a spell, though, what?"

   "Suits me, Prof.  By the way, which continuum was that little lot in?"

   The Prof consulted the read out on the Q.U.I.M.

   "Bless my soul, Jonty.  We stayed in our own reality all the time."

   "So you mean, the Christians never really got thrown to the Lions,
then?"

   "Black propaganda, Jonty, or so it seems."

   "Same time tomorrow, Prof?"

   "Of course, my boy.  I've a mind to see the New World."

   I suppressed a groan as, like Elvis, I left the building.







   smilodon

   (They'll be back!!!!) 

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