The monthly story of Reginald, who catapults through the whims of time, courtesy of the Department of Science and Research’s rather audacious experiment. Reginald waves a rather puzzled goodbye to the year 1993 before being dumped into the bewildering bosom of 2025.
It’s here in “Wokerland”—a world so dizzyingly politically correct that even the pigeons tread carefully—that Reginald embarks on his misadventures. Armed with nothing but his wits (of which he has a questionable amount), our intrepid time traveller sets about trying to make sense of a world where the rules have changed, the goalposts have moved, and everyone seems to speak a language that makes Klingon sound straightforward.
Reginald perched uncomfortably on the sort of chair that seemed designed by someone who had a personal vendetta against comfort. Clasping his hands so tightly you'd think they were plotting to escape, he drew in a lungful of second-hand ambition from the smouldering Marlboro lounging in the ashtray. This act of inhalation was less about a craving for nicotine and more an inadvertent homage to the art of breathing in the essence of his superior’s smoke signals.
His boss, Mike Nail, was staring out the window of his office in the Department of Science and Research, an establishment that sounded impressive but was mostly involved in misplacing important documents and making coffee.
Here was Reginald, an arts dropout with a linguistic cocktail of failed French, barely passable Italian, and just enough philosophy to ponder the existential dread of unemployment.
Yet, astonishingly, his prowess in Klingon—a language as useful in daily life as a chocolate teapot—had somehow landed him this job just a month ago.
Mike turned from his harbour view and beamed at Reginald with the kind of smile one reserves for surprising lab results.
“Reginald,” he announced, “you’ve been chosen for the alien mission.”
“The what?” thought Reginald, his brain doing a somersault. The alien mission? He hadn’t even mastered the office coffee machine yet.
A trickle of drool made its undignified escape from the corner of Reginald’s mouth as he grappled with the impending reality of an encounter that, up until now, had been firmly lodged in the realm of late-night movies and dog-eared comic books.
He watched Mike press a button before the door to his stationary cupboard swung open, revealing a corridor that looked like it had been borrowed from a spaceship in need of a good clean. He gestured for Reginald to follow, with the casualness of someone leading the way to a surprise birthday party.
Reginald’s mind raced.
His heart banged to be let out of his chest. Did Mike have aliens stashed somewhere between the staplers and the printer paper? The department was rumoured to be in the know about extra-terrestrial matters, but Reginald had expected his alien encounters to be limited to dusty files, not actual, potentially reptilian beings.
As he followed Mike down the grimy corridor, Reginald couldn’t help but wonder what lay ahead. Meeting an alien? This was the sort of thing you daydream about while stuck in traffic, not something that happens on a Tuesday afternoon at the office. “WOW,” he thought a word that seemed wholly inadequate for the occasion.
Mike, moving with the kind of desperate haste usually reserved for men about to miss the last train home after a night out, came to an abrupt halt, causing Reginald to sidestep with the grace of a one-legged duck. Mike opened a door and Reginald followed him outside into the car park.
He looked into the sky expecting to see a saucer-shaped contraption with emerald-hued gentlemen that one might associate with a decent alien invasion. Instead, all he found was Mike, now nonchalantly draped over a motorcycle like some misplaced prop in a budget sci-fi film. And not just any motorcycle, but a Harley Davidson—the kind that screamed mid-life crisis louder than a toupee in a high wind. There Mike stood, the picture of casual indifference, as if leaning on a Harley in the midst of an interstellar escapade was the most normal thing in the world.
Reginald couldn’t help but feel a twinge of disappointment; where were the flashing lights, the ominous hum, the extra-terrestrial drama?
Reginald’s knowledge of bikes was limited to the fact that they usually had two wheels, but even he could recognise the iconic logo.
He sighed, the kind of sigh you might emit upon discovering that the “gourmet dinner” you were promised turns out to be a reheated sausage roll. This was not the alien encounter he had envisioned.
“We’ve fused the temporal displacement unit with the bike. It’s less conspicuous than a car,” he said handing the keys to Reginald.
Reginald’s admission of being somewhat of a champion bike rider was now coming back to haunt him. He'd meant a bicycle, the kind with a bell and pedal brakes, not this roaring mechanical beast. While he’d ridden motorbikes before, he was none too steady on them.
The bike was the least of his worries. A temporal displacement unit? What was this? Time travel? Not space travel?
On the ground lay a backpack, presumably not for sandwiches and a thermos flask but as Mike informed him, stuffed with $10,000 in cash.
“You just need to find an alien, nick a bit of its skin, and set the time on the bike for an hour later than now,” Mike said, as if he were giving instructions on how to make a cup of tea.
Reginald stood there, his head spinning with more questions than a game show host. Aliens, temporal mechanics, motorbikes, and a backpack filled with enough cash to make a small-time crook weep—it was all a bit rich for a Tuesday morning. Or was it Wednesday? The very concept of time seemed a bit wobbly at the moment.
“How exactly does one stumble upon an alien?” Reginald inquired, his voice tinged with the kind of scepticism usually reserved for people claiming to have seen Elvis flipping burgers at the local diner.
“Child’s play,” responded Mike, beaming. “Our models predict they’re prancing about, mingling with us in the future, just like overenthusiastic tourists in a souvenir shop.”
Reginald, who was beginning to regret boasting about his Klingon language skills during his job interview—because really, what were the odds that aliens conversed in a fictional language from a TV show?—then asked, “And the small matter of travelling to the future?”
“Piece of cake,” Mike said. “Just twiddle with the temporal displacement unit, hop on the bike, and when you hit 140 kilometres/hour, a light will appear. Zip through it, and hey presto, you’re in the future.”
“So, when am I off on this escapade?” said Reginald feeling like he did just before a trip to the dentist.
“Right now.”
Right now? Reginald was in shock. Was this really happening? To him of all people and why him?
“But shouldn’t I tell someone? Drop a postcard, maybe?” Reginald’s more reasonable side was making a rare appearance.
“No need for that. You'll be back in an hour or so. Time travel, you know,” Mike replied with a dismissive wave.
“Best of luck, sport,” Mike cheered, slapping Reginald’s back with a grin that hinted he either knew a great deal more than he let on.
Reginald surveyed Mike’s grin and mounted the motorised monster as if in a trance. Why was he doing this? Was it the dread of impending rent or the sting of romantic rejection? Perhaps flitting through time could add a sparkle to his currently lacklustre existence.
“Just one more thing,” Mike chirped. “Don’t ferry anything back from the future. Especially not the lottery numbers.”
“The thought never crossed my mind,” Reginald said putting the keys in the bike. He was going to do this and imagined his act of daredevilry was the sort of thing that would have had the Gods rolling in the aisles, if they hadn’t had better things to do, like creating nebulae or watching celestial paint dry.
He kick-started the engine, ready to embrace the unknown, fuelled by a mix of desperation and the faint hope that time travel might just be the thing to turn his romantic life around. He was out of the carpark and off.
At 140 kilometres, a light appeared that was so dazzling it could have been used for interrogation by particularly unimaginative security forces. Thoughts of his own funeral, undoubtedly a drab affair, were banished from his mind. Today was not the day for such morbidity. He shut his eyes tight. His body convulsed as if it were trying to dance to music composed by a tone-deaf thunderstorm.
And then, with the abruptness of a punchline, the light disappeared and the violent shaking stopped. Reginald found himself cruising down King Avenue, with the casualness of a man who'd merely popped out for a pint of milk from a corner shop in a parallel universe.
“That was quick. Am I really here?” Reginald asked, possibly to himself, possibly to a passing pigeon. He pulled over. A glance at his temporal displacement unit, which now blinked “2025” in a rather unimpressed manner, confirmed his temporal relocation. His stomach gurgled with a mix of elation and the memory of a questionable breakfast.
“No time to plan the funeral just yet,” he quipped. His eyes swept the heavens for flying cars, but the sky was as devoid of them as a vacuum is of sensible conversation.
All he could see were rainbow-coloured flags hanging limply lining the street. Had the future just become some sort of hippiedom he wondered, hopefully scanning the road for hover-boards.
Reginald stood there like a bewildered tourist who'd just realised he’s lost his passport as a moped chugged to a stop beside him. This wasn’t just any moped; it was painted in a jumble of colours that looked as if a rainbow had suffered a nervous breakdown.
A figure clambered off, sporting hair the colour of a blue rinse on a bad day, but lacking any extra-terrestrial features like green skin or stylish scales. The surgical mask they wore hinted at a career in cosmic dentistry or perhaps moonlighting as a space surgeon.
“nuqneH,” ventured Reginald, dusting off his best Klingon, under the assumption that the future had adopted the language of a fictional space opera. “No need for concern; I am fastidious at cleaning my teeth.”
The person brushed off his comment. “Pronouns?” they demanded, with the kind of urgency one might reserve for a burning soufflé.
“Sorry?” Reginald blinked.
“Pronouns?” they pressed.
Reginald, perplexed, wondered if he'd stumbled into a future where linguistic politeness was a high-stakes game. “No, thanks,” he mumbled, his confusion winning over etiquette.
“What do you mean, ‘no thanks’? They’re not pronouns,” the person snapped, their patience fraying like a well-worn carpet.
Convinced now that he'd landed in a dystopia ruled by grammar police, Reginald decided to play along; after all, he was no stranger to pronouns, thanks to his dalliances with French and Italian. “He/him/his ... she/her/hers,” he offered, hoping this linguistic salad would satisfy their bizarre appetite.
The officer, evidently unamused, whipped out a gadget that looked like it had failed an audition for a sci-fi movie and began tapping it with all the enthusiasm of someone filling out a tax return.
Reginald stood there, pondering the surreal turn his time-travelling adventure had taken, and wondering if perhaps he should have stayed in bed that day.
