The Time Riders: Part 3

What happens when you mix clock-block with priapism?

Based on a post by BiscuitHammer, in 16 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Explicit Novels.

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Ain't Nobody Got Time For That Shit!

Mark and Becky sat in the small cottage, looking around in
wonder. They were still in Seventeenth Century France, but found themselves
surrounded by technologies that they hadn't even heard of. The walls were lined
with clocks, some of which were mechanical, some seemed to be digital or
binary, while others told time in ways they couldn't fathom. Sitting across
from them at the stout, round oaken table, Chester Edgerton smoked a pipe and
observed them casually.

"How; how can you have this all out on display?"
Mark asked, still gaping. "I mean, isn't it against the rules to have this
sort of tech from the future lying around where the locals might bump into
it?"

"That's the beauty of it, my' boy," he said
cheerfully, exhaling a cloud of smoke. "They can't see it."

"Well, I get it if you try to restrict entry to your
house," Mark pressed, wanting to understand. "But what if you're gone
and bandits break in? Becks and I can account for banditry in this day and age,
for sure."

"Mayhap," the man replied. "But I brought you
through the door that leads to my actual house. The front door, the one the
local peasantry sees, leads into a simple cottage, typical of the period, and
owned by a pudgy man of indeterminate nationality."

"Your; house is in two places at once?" Mark
asked, trying to understand.

"No, it's the same place," Chester answered
simply. "Two different times, however. We're sitting in my actual abode,
Twenty-First Century."

Mark shook his head. "That's some weird Tardis shit
right there."

"Only at first." Chester allowed.

"I notice you have all your windows shut," Becky
remarked. "You said we're in the Twenty-First Century, but I take from
further ahead than Mark and I are from, so you're not showing us?"

"Clever girl," mused the man, smiling. "While
I won't absolutely stop you from looking or even going outside, I would warn
you that if you do and see something you don't like, you're committing yourself
to that future, no matter how hard you try to undo it."

"We'll stay put then," she said readily. "You
were kind enough to bring us here and sort of explain how we might acquire
goods in the time stream?"

He nodded. "I know it might seem counter-intuitive, but
the simple fact of the matter is that if people are going to insist on time
travelling, the least they can do is be well-prepared for it so they don't hurt
themselves or others."

He leaned forward. "The first question you need to ask
yourself is, why are you so intent on time-travelling to begin with? Is it
simple curiosity? Are you planning to make a living somehow? Are you just trying
to get laid?"

He looked at Mark during this last question and the young
man blushed, while Becky giggled and patted his hand. "Mark was a dud in
Physics in his last year of high school," she explained. "Come to
think of it, he was in little or no danger of getting into any post-secondary
education facility."

"Thanks." Mark muttered.

"But, then he found his time machine, something called
a Holmes Field Device, and he resolved to go back in time a few months and
convince me to give him an A in Physics with the promise of earth-shaking
sex."

"This story sounds worse every time I hear it."
Mark complained.

"Fortunately, I acquiesced, rather than disemboweling
him for breaking into my home, and not only did we become lovers, but now we're
adventuring the time stream together."

"Hmm, a teacher and a student, eh?" mused the man,
smiling at them as he smoked. "Teachers and students are plentiful, of
course, but they're usually from the far, far future and on very
strictly-controlled excursions into the past. Hands-on history classes, if you
will."

"That makes history sound kinda fun." Mark said.

"Oh, I daresay it is," agreed Chester.
"Nothing quite as exciting as going back to the Cretaceous Period and
taking a ride on the back of a trained Styracosaurus. Or watching Dromer
races."

"Isn't that screwing with the timeline?" Becky
inquired. "I mean, humans weren't around for another sixty-three million
years following the demise of the dinosaurs."

"It's all very carefully regulated on remote
islands," Chester explained. "It does nothing to mess with the
ecosystem and the specimens are trained to interact with humans, for the most
part."

"Riding one of those big horned dinosaurs would be a
kick." Mark mused, grinning.

"You've already got a perfectly good horn I like to ride,"
Becky giggled, squeezing his hand again. "Besides, this is where our host
tells us that it won't be possible for us any time soon."

"You're a very perceptive young lady," he allowed.
"We can't have just anyone mucking up the time stream, you know. It's
especially difficult when people who lived before time travel was commonly
accepted try to get involved. They inevitably get exposed to technologies they
shouldn't be aware of, or events that weren't known during their own time;”

"I'll give you a tiny example," he said, leaning
forward now, as if he was confiding a secret. "Have you heard of the
Tunguska Incident?"

"Sure, the Tunguska region in Siberia, 1908,"
Becky answered, nodding. "A large meteor slammed into the ground, creating
a blast equal to sixty megatons and flattening everything for nearly a hundred
miles around."

"No, that's what you need to think," he
corrected, pointing the stem of his pipe toward them. "It was, in fact, an
advanced weapon that was stolen from a future date, and before temporal agents
could recover it, the thieves blew it up to cover their escape. Granted, there
are people in your time who have conspiracy theories about nuclear blast,
nearly forty years before the first atomic tests, but they're wrong as well. It
wasn't a nuclear device, simply a weapon with an incredibly high conventional
yield by your age's standards."

"So; why can you tell us this now?" Becky asked.

He grinned and spread out his arms in a gesture of farce.
"Who would believe you?"

"So how did you know that we were time travelers?"
Mark asked as they followed their host and guide through the woods.

"Well, I heard snippets of your conversation,"
Chester said as he led the way. "But to be honest, even though your
outfits might pass with locals for 'reasonably authentic', you couldn't
possibly hide your origins from a fellow time-traveler. Mark claimed to be
Spanish, he doesn't look at all Spanish, certainly not from this era. Miss
Rebecca is remarkably tall for a woman."

"Well there's something I don't hear very often back
home!" she giggled.

"And you're both in strangely good health, with
unblemished skin and full heads of hair," Chester added. "I was
relatively certain, and then I heard you discussing your relative inexperience,
so I sought to introduce myself."

"I'd' have thought that you wouldn't introduce yourself
to newbies," Mark stated, helping Becky over a log. "Isn't it safer
to keep your chatter to people who know what they're doing?"

"It's actually the exact opposite," replied Chester.
"The best thing you can do around veteran time travelers you don't need to
talk to is to not talk to them. Their timelines are probably very intricate and
you don't want yours getting snarled up with them. Newbies, as you call them,
probably still have linear experiences that are simple to understand and
educating them about what awaits is the simplest way to keep things from
getting weird."

Getting up to leave the cottage, Mark asked; "So this
device the time cops gave me," Mark stated, holding up his chronometer.
"It's actually pretty useful then, because it warns me when I'm getting
too close to myself or something I've affected."

"That was very generous of them," Chester said in
a serious tone. "They don't do that for just everyone who shows up suddenly
in the time stream. Sometimes they let matters work themselves out, if you know
what I mean."

Chester’s Forest Farewell.

 The meadow they stepped into, had a mature lush forest
further back.

They reached a small clearing in the forest they'd been tromping
through and stopped for a bit, sitting on a fallen tree trunk. Chester looked
at them both and slapped his hands on his thighs. "Now then, I've brought
you here so that you can witness a casual event that is due to happen just
outside the woods. Nothing major, but it will give you a taste of what can
await you. I have something to attend to and should be back in a few hours.
Just stay out of sight and don't leave the tree line."

"You're leaving?" Mark protested. Chester turned
to look at him.

"It might be that the events you will see unfold work
better for me if I am nowhere near them," the man replied. "Fear not,
I shall return. Enjoy yourselves."

And then he walked into the woods and was gone. Mark looked
around and finally sighed. "Helluva way to mentor someone," he
muttered as he stood to take in a panoramic context. "Take 'em somewhere
and then just fuck off? Nice."

"He’s not your mentor, Mark," B