Chapter 3

The time machine, or Material Wormhole Destableizer (MWD) is in the building next door. For convenience the two companies have built a connecting travelator between the two situated in the basement. I decend the 700 floors accompanied by Franz Liszt and a court jester from Henry Vee Three’s court. He smells of pork fat and sweat. I watch the floor numbers clock down at mach 1. The elevator stops smoothly, not even ringing the bells on his hat. Underneath that smell he might be my best friend, or even someone I had sex with sometime. This is the wonder of the prosthetics department.

We step onto the travelator next stop, MWD. Franz Liszt is humming a fugue, I join in syncopating the notes. BooBopDeReBop. He scowls at me down his long nose. He takes the fugue up an octive and increases the tempo. I’m with him all the way. I like this cat. We should do a gig, get Prez in and maybe the Duke. The travelator drops down to walking pace and we step of. Don’t ask me how it does it, being able to have more than one speed at once. We can step of with no mishap and a cat twenty foot back can be travelling at 20k. Henry Vee three’s jester  waves his stick at us, with his replica head on it, and disappears into the room marked 0000-15000. What some people do for a laugh. This is the anti-room, it has many doors all marked with numbers representing the centuries. They have skimped on the décor. It is all a muddy green. I don’t suppose they thought anyone would hang around out here. If you you’ve got to go, then who cares about the colour of the walls. Well kill me for being sensitive. I like a bit of  thought. It costs enough. Half my fee goes on the transport, OK so they get me back in one piece but come on guys show some  respect for the punters. I’ve seen better decor in a washroom on Greece when I went as Demis Rousos. Never again. I was conned into it by double payment. It should have been treble and then some. What a fat prick. I was forced to eat half a sheep before the gig. My religion is forbidden sheep. Mind you, if I’m honest it tasted good. But my priest was not impressed at confession. Good job I was still in  costume to back up my story, other wise I would have been banned from having sex for an Illustrion week and that lasts 20,000 earth years. The 19th and 20^th century is in the same room, so and Franz and me enter together, I wonder what would happen if I was sent to his gig and vice versa. Franz Liszt at a fish fry, and Fats at soiree in Salzberge, or wherever. I can see them bewigged ladies fanning their faces at a fat black guy in a Derby pounding out saucy lyrics to a rolling beat. The cats at the fish fry would dig Mr Liszt,  no doubt he would have a ball too.

I am wondering when to turn up the power to be totally Fats, the chip is controlled from the small computer on my wrist, so I can switch him on and off at will, just now I am me in my zoot suit with a shimmering image surrounding me that is Fats Waller, as I turn up the power I disappear inside a solid outer shell that is Fats Waller or whoever I’ve been booked to be. I might add that I am a piano player of great dexterity in my own right, and might to the unpracticed ear sound like whoever I am impersonating, but the little nuances wont be there and of course I wont look like them, nor think like them.