The Time Machine Did It by John Swartzwelder Page B
Authors: John Swartzwelder
than it is to bluff your way through real life.
They would ask me, for example, to
run along a steel girder 20 stories above the pavement carrying a bucket of
rivets. And I would, using this same example, fall off. So there goes that job.
But just when I was thinking I’d
never be able to make any money in this time period, I found exactly what I was
looking for. I was walking down the street, fingering the 3 cents I had in my
pocket and discovering that I now only had 2 cents because I had fingered one
of them to pieces, when I passed by a window with a sign in it that said “Day
Jobs: No Experience Necessary”. Other signs in the window were even more
encouraging. “No Experience? No Problem!”, “Prison Record? Hooray!”, “Can’t
Read? Read This!”
I went inside and in almost no
time I was earning real 1941 style money. My first job involved being set on
fire in a vacant lot so the fire department could practice putting people out.
I made five dollars doing that. And the sign in the window was right. No
experience was necessary. All I had to do was stand there and scream. Anybody
can do that.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Things were looking
up for me now. I had five dollars. But I felt I was making money too slowly and
painfully, and they hadn’t discovered antibiotics yet. This was what gave me my
big idea.
It occurred to me that the big
advantage I had here in the past was that I knew what the future was going to
look like. None of these jackasses did. I had been to the future, and even
taken a picture of it. I could use that advance knowledge to make myself rich
overnight. All I had to do was pick out something that was common in my time
but wasn’t available here yet, and then “invent” it. It would be hard luck on
whoever was destined to really invent the thing, but I figured screw him.
I got some sheets of writing paper
from the lobby in my hotel, then started writing down all the things I’d
noticed weren’t available in these primitive days. The list was surprisingly
long, starting with the ball point pen I asked the guy behind the registry desk
for. He’d never heard of such a thing and looked at me like I was a witch. So I
settled for a pencil.
1941, I wrote, didn’t have ball
point pens, transistors, long playing records, TV dinners, electric
toothbrushes, push button telephones, tubeless tires, microwaves, penicillin,
VCRs, or almost anything made out of aluminum or plastic. Those were still
exotic materials in this time period. Practically everything in 1941 was made
of iron, wood, glass, or mud.
For the next few nights I worked
feverishly, spending all my spare time and all the money I was making on my day
jobs, trying to build a high definition television. Finally I gave up on that
and switched to a ball point pen. After my prototype had flown to pieces for
the fourteenth time, embedding the little ball in my cheek for the ninth time,
I pushed all my inventing equipment out of the window and went out to get
drunk. At least I had the skill to do that.
I hadn’t realized that I never
actually had a clue as to how any of the inventions of my era worked. Why
hadn’t somebody told me I was ignorant? What was the big secret?
After I’d had a few beers, and had
taken out my anger and frustration on some smaller drunks, I started to cheer
up again. I realized the mistake I had made was in trying to duplicate the
actual important achievements of my time, the things that made life better, the
things with moving parts. I could make just as much money, maybe more, by duplicating
the crap of my era.
So I got to work again, trying to
cash in, in advance, on some of the nationwide fads that I knew were coming.
Davy Crockett hats, disco, that sort of thing. But I’ll tell you a secret –
most people wouldn’t tell you this, but I will. I’m your friend - it’s hard to
get a nationwide fad going. The nation is a big place. You can get, say,
Cincinnati whipped into a frenzy about your product, but
They would ask me, for example, to
run along a steel girder 20 stories above the pavement carrying a bucket of
rivets. And I would, using this same example, fall off. So there goes that job.
But just when I was thinking I’d
never be able to make any money in this time period, I found exactly what I was
looking for. I was walking down the street, fingering the 3 cents I had in my
pocket and discovering that I now only had 2 cents because I had fingered one
of them to pieces, when I passed by a window with a sign in it that said “Day
Jobs: No Experience Necessary”. Other signs in the window were even more
encouraging. “No Experience? No Problem!”, “Prison Record? Hooray!”, “Can’t
Read? Read This!”
I went inside and in almost no
time I was earning real 1941 style money. My first job involved being set on
fire in a vacant lot so the fire department could practice putting people out.
I made five dollars doing that. And the sign in the window was right. No
experience was necessary. All I had to do was stand there and scream. Anybody
can do that.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Things were looking
up for me now. I had five dollars. But I felt I was making money too slowly and
painfully, and they hadn’t discovered antibiotics yet. This was what gave me my
big idea.
It occurred to me that the big
advantage I had here in the past was that I knew what the future was going to
look like. None of these jackasses did. I had been to the future, and even
taken a picture of it. I could use that advance knowledge to make myself rich
overnight. All I had to do was pick out something that was common in my time
but wasn’t available here yet, and then “invent” it. It would be hard luck on
whoever was destined to really invent the thing, but I figured screw him.
I got some sheets of writing paper
from the lobby in my hotel, then started writing down all the things I’d
noticed weren’t available in these primitive days. The list was surprisingly
long, starting with the ball point pen I asked the guy behind the registry desk
for. He’d never heard of such a thing and looked at me like I was a witch. So I
settled for a pencil.
1941, I wrote, didn’t have ball
point pens, transistors, long playing records, TV dinners, electric
toothbrushes, push button telephones, tubeless tires, microwaves, penicillin,
VCRs, or almost anything made out of aluminum or plastic. Those were still
exotic materials in this time period. Practically everything in 1941 was made
of iron, wood, glass, or mud.
For the next few nights I worked
feverishly, spending all my spare time and all the money I was making on my day
jobs, trying to build a high definition television. Finally I gave up on that
and switched to a ball point pen. After my prototype had flown to pieces for
the fourteenth time, embedding the little ball in my cheek for the ninth time,
I pushed all my inventing equipment out of the window and went out to get
drunk. At least I had the skill to do that.
I hadn’t realized that I never
actually had a clue as to how any of the inventions of my era worked. Why
hadn’t somebody told me I was ignorant? What was the big secret?
After I’d had a few beers, and had
taken out my anger and frustration on some smaller drunks, I started to cheer
up again. I realized the mistake I had made was in trying to duplicate the
actual important achievements of my time, the things that made life better, the
things with moving parts. I could make just as much money, maybe more, by duplicating
the crap of my era.
So I got to work again, trying to
cash in, in advance, on some of the nationwide fads that I knew were coming.
Davy Crockett hats, disco, that sort of thing. But I’ll tell you a secret –
most people wouldn’t tell you this, but I will. I’m your friend - it’s hard to
get a nationwide fad going. The nation is a big place. You can get, say,
Cincinnati whipped into a frenzy about your product, but