Time Machine

The interior was small and curvilinear and white.

Anthony and Kayda Matsushita sat down in the two white chairs and looked at each other. A vague sense of apprehension filled the silence.

‘Junko Shimada?’ he asked.

‘Of course. You only wear the best when time travelling: “timeless fashion far from the diktats of trends”.’

‘1627,’ he mused, ‘– I guess the lords will be wearing white lace ruffs and tights and puffy rompers like a bunch of woofters.’

‘And,’ Kayda finished for him, ‘the peasants will be wearing track pants and hoodies.’ She gave a little moue and wrinkled her elegant nose at him.

‘How does it work?’ he asked. Again.

‘Dude, how does a pocket calculator work? There is a reason everyone in the modern world is so alienated. For a million years everyone knew how to hunt and gather, and which stones made fire. Now no-one understands how their toaster works. “How does it work?” – you enter the time and place, and press “go’’.’

*

The Jaktorow Forest in Poland in 1627 was not entirely as they had expected. The trees were huge – giant oak and linden, such that if the pair of them had held hands they could only have encircled half the trunk. Fallen trunks and branches, thick undergrowth and many pools of water made movement deeper into the forest almost impossible, but, on the edge of a clearing, the sun poured down and the most striking thing was the number of butterflies – they swirled through the air like flakes of paper rising from a fire, a many-coloured shimmer of vibrant life. Everything was green, birds called, and everywhere flowers of all kinds bloomed.

It took them a while to find the aurochs. It sat darkly at the edge of the clearing, mostly obscured by vegetation.

Kayda straightened her pale-yellow skirt and squatted down a few metres away from the great, dark bulk. Rheum had collected around its eyes and its wet nose flared and its laboured breathing rattled.

The two humans watched. They sat in the long grass. After a while, they held hands.

At last the flickering of the giant cow’s eyes ceased and everything was silent.

The pair sat for a long time in silence before creeping forward and tenderly stoking the dead beast’s shaggy neck.

‘“Moved by the infinite pity,”’ Anthony quoted, adding – ‘Saint Isaac the Syrian.’

‘They had already been hunted to extinction in Greece by the time of Herodotus,’ Kayda said.

‘And now we’ve seen the last one die.’

He stood.

‘Where to from here?’


Dhiraja