A GOAT IN TIME

Jodphurs K. Bingo opened his eyes for the first time in two hundred years, and blinked. A nurse told him to close them again and take it easy for a few minutes, whilst they defrosted him. From the short glimpse of the Utopia he had just seen, he was sure he had done the right thing- selling the Great Monk to the organ donation bank in return for cryogenic storage had been a great idea. In fact, he couldn't think of any ideas of his, previous to that one, that even came close to the mark. Abandoning Anthea in British Home Store's had been fairly good, but this was on a whole different scale.

"You can open them again now", came the voice, soft as treacle (treacle that wasn't smeared on a monk). Jodphurs blinked again. He was in a gleaming white laboratory, surrounded by nubile young nurses. In front of him was a large, panoramic window looking down upon a perfectly arranged town by the sea-side. Gleaming machines flashed past the window at intervals, carrying bikini-clad goddesses and tanned surfers. Jodphurs reached out to the small table next to his chair, and picked up a hand mirror. Looking into it, he hardly recognised himself- true, there was something goat-like in the line of the jaw, but it was a good strong jaw; beneath a handsome, rugged face.

"We've made some modifications", said the treacled nurse, "I hope that's alright with you sir." Jodphurs was having trouble taking it all in, and began to wail like a handsome, rugged, Yamaha 350 with a broken tail-pipe.

"Things are bound to seem odd to you at first, sir", said another nurse, "You've been asleep for two hundred years, you know." Jodphurs looked up at her kind, smiling face. He was just so happy it felt unnatural.

"Do I owe you people anything?" He asked, tentatively. Even in the year 2250, this kind of service must cost something, he thought.

"Would you like to review your current credit status?" Jodphurs nodded. To his surprise, a small rectangle just an inch from his nose began to glow red, and three figures appeared inside it in black. It read 0.00.

"Sir", chirruped a third nurse, "It appears you have no credit. If you wish to proceed, you must insert money now."

Jodphurs looked the nurse up and down, in confusion. Insert money where? He had no money anyway. At that point he noticed that the figures in the little red box had changed. 10, it read now. Now 9. Now 8. A quiver of suspicion ran up Jodphurs newly muscular physique. He stood up and took a long look at the perfect world through the window. 4, 3, 2, it was perfect, no need for Moose at all; 1, 0.

"Get up, Goat-head." Jodphurs didn't feel the need for a mirror this time. The origin of this voice- a squat woman with a beard- pulled him out of the sweaty bucket seat and continued; "Those cryo-bastards, they keep dumping you sods in here. Reckon it'll soften the culture shock, only they piss-off without putting any money in the meter. 'Scuse love", she sneered, ripping the electrodes from his scalp. Jodphurs stumbled forward, pushing his way through the forest of bucket seated zombies, towards the door at the far end of the hangar. It had a sign strung over it, reading "Reality- abandon hope, all ye who enter here. Thank you for flying Trans-Real."

Back in 2050, Anthea was tiring of BHS's selection of carpet slippers. He was beginning to wonder where Jodphurs had got to- surely the Great Monk couldn't be taking that long to decide on cardigans. Anthea wasn't sure why Jodphurs had to help him with them anyway- Anthea was far better suited to that kind of thing. He had watched every edition of the Clothes Show twice during their little get together in the shed, including Selina's cardigan special with Alan Titchmarsh. One minute Jodphurs is raving about Moose's, and the next he decides he's a fashion guru- Anthea began to think he should have given him a dose of the bazooka when he had the chance. At that point, he looked up from the Mickey Mouse underwear, just in time to see the millinery section explode.

"Fried mouse?", asked a greasy man from the gutter; "Get'em while they're steaming." Jodphurs walked quickly on, past a woman selling lizard kebabs, and a man in a suit offering chemically reconstituted cow. When he had checked his pockets, he'd found that he had only a ten Adolf note- thanks to inflation, that wasn't even enough for a fried toe-nail. He'd tried haggling, but the guy had just laughed. Jodphurs was ravenous, but in this Basildon of 2250 you needed to mortgage your mother just to pay for a glass of water. Jodphurs' mother was long since dead of course, and even if she wasn't she'd kill herself before helping him out. So Jodphurs trudged on, through the sun-baked but distinctly un-gleaming streets, hoping someone would mug him and he could get a meal in hospital. They'd finally rebuilt Basildon, and it wasn't post-holocaust or deserted anymore- it was just shitty. The streets were made of plastic, and every second paving slab had the word "Smile" embossed on it, next to a swastika and a picture of Edolph the 13th, in faded pink neon. He had found where the old Esso garage had been- in its place was a large Dresden Fried Chicken restaurant, surrounded by limousines which hovered around it like flies. Inside he had seen the rich people- they were paying for their Bucket Feasts with cages full of poor people.

In BHS, everyone had gotten over the shock of the explosion, and were getting around to the serious business of panicking. Anthea was going along with it, running around screaming, and stuffing a few silk shirts into his bag as he passed them. All of sudden, the Great Monk dashed out in front of him; his clothes were blackened and charred, and the treacle had caramelised. Anthea was shocked-

"I told you that I should pick the cardigan- I don't think I've ever seen such a violent clash." The Great Monk sighed to himself, and spoke.

"Shut up and listen, you tart. I've just been caught up in a chronological dimension vortex- that", he motioned to the smoking pile of hats in the distance, "was me, dropping back into this reality. Now, there's not much time- are any of your relatives German?"

" They're all German, treacle-nose. Everyone is German; they- we- rule the world." Anthea was confused.

"Yes, yes, I know we are all "German" citizens; what I am asking is, did your family come from the original Germany, after the holocaust, or were they originally English?"

" English. Same as Jodphurs. Basildon born and bred. But what does that matter now?" Anthea was getting still more confused, and wished he could carry on shopping.

"It may well matter a lot", replied the Monk, looking at his watch; "very soon. It could make the difference between you existing, or not. You see-" Anthea looked down at the Monk's watch, just in time to see the second hand stop.

"Stop right there", barked the heavily armoured policeman. Jodphurs looked up at him, from his pool of blood on the ground, and blinked.

"I've been mugged." Jodphurs felt that the officer should already have noticed this, but was willing to play along with procedure.

"They get much?", asked the policeman, feigning interest.

"Well, they took my ten Adolf note, but then they gave me a twenty, laughed, and beat the crap out of me. Can I go to hospital and have a meal?"

"Do you have a major credit chip on you, sir?"

"No. But then, if I had, they'd have taken it." Jodphurs wasn't feeling too confident.

"Well piss off then, you bloody socialist", replied the officer in a friendly tone, "before I do you for loitering."

"Do I get to go to prison and have a meal?", Jodphurs asked, hopefully.

"No, I get to shoot you with my gun", the officer replied, fingering the large holster dangling from his belt.

Jodphurs got up, wringing some of the excess blood from his shirt, and walked in the direction of a large neon sign accross the street. When he got closer, he read it: "Time Tours, Plc. Visit us Anytime. No Chidren, Dogs, Vomiting on the ride, or Meddling with the space-time continuum." Jodphurs dragged himself inside- he had a cunning plan. It was way cleverer than anything he had thought of before, too.

***

"Piss off, dick-wit", said the man in the sharp suit at the back; "thats a great fat paradox." Jodphurs didn't understand. It'd all gone so well- he'd snuck into the Time Tours shuttle, stood up and said it was a hyjack, everyone had screamed- and then of course, he'd had to explain how he was going to hyjack them without a gun; but that was the cleverest part. He'd told them that he was simultaneously holding a gun at the head's of all their grandparents, during previous time-tours. If they didn't do as he said, he'd contact himself on the sub-time radio he had up his sleeve, and pouf!' They'd be sucked into non-existence. The woman with the big hat at the front had swallowed it- she'd gotten a family photo out of her purse and started praying. But there was always one smart-arse in every bunch of tourists.

"If you've already had access to time travel", swaggered the sharp suit, "then how come you need to hyjack us? And besides, if you've already been to see our grandads, and then you came here, and here we all are, that proves you haven't killed anyone. Don't worry ladies, no-one's going to be wiped out of existence", said the smart-arse. He sat down, smugly, and was promptly wiped out of existence. Pouf. Jodphurs' eyes bulged more than most as the sharp suit was vapourised in his seat.

"I didn't do that", he mumbled, to the awe-struck holidaymakers.

"Of course you didn't, Jodphurs", said an old man in a sombrero sitting next to the empty seat. He stood up, and displayed an expensive looking weapon. "It was me. I owe you a favour you see, Jodphurs- in fact, my life depends on it."

"I've never met you before in my life", remarked Jodphurs, feeling reality beginning to slip away from him again.

"You haven't met me yet. You were going to ask to travel back to 1940, yes? You thought the olden war days would be a nice and peaceful place to end your days, yes?" Jodphurs nodded.

"I was going to visit some of the old Bingo's. They used to run a Bingo hall; they were rich." Jodphurs became dewy eyed. "I figured that going back to 2050 would be hellish, and I'd just try to end the world again. The war days are the only other time I've heard anything about- my mother was obsessed with them. But how did you know?"

"I knew, Jodphurs, because I met, or meet, you there. I was a beggar in Basildon, you gave me a twenty"; Jodphurs felt the note in his back pocket; "of course it was useless. Money was in pounds back then. But the barman I tried to buy a drink from, Mr Himmler- or Proffessor Heinrich Von Himmler, as I later knew him- he recognised its true worth, and immediately signed over his Pub to me. I built the Pub into a chain of Pubs, and made myself millions after the holocaust, with which I sustained my youth and paid for years of cryogenics. And so I am here today, to make sure you make your trip, Mr Bingo."

"What did the barman do with my twenty?" Jodphurs had a feeling he wouldn't like the answer.

"He went back to Germany, broke the note down into its constituent parts and discovered Himmleridium, a substance entirely unknown at that time, and which formed the basis of the devastating weapon which desecrated Britain and brought Europe to its knees."

"This is going to be one of those moral dillemmas, isn't it?" Jodphurs asked the woman with the big hat at the front, who nodded solemnly. "Okay, lets go see 1940 then. You lot can leave if you want." The crowd shot out of the exit hatch, followed by the Sombrero man.

"Good luck", he called, over his shoulder; closing the hatch behind him. The craft hummed for a bit, and Jodphurs watched with interest as his watch flew apart. It was a Swiss job, and the cheap plastic parts weren't really built for high velocity chronological distortion.

"Bingo's Bingo", read the sign. Tacky, thought Jodphurs, resisting the temptation to go see the proprietor and tell him his suit looked crap. He walked past blacked out windows and bomb craters, until he came upon a young man in the gutter, outside a Pub called "The Himmler Arms". He looked down at him, trying to imagine the Sombrero in place, but failing.

"Spare us a quid, you great fairy, guv", came the bored request. Jodphurs had been undecided until that point.

"You'll never understand the full ramifications of what I am about to do", said Jodphurs, pausing for historical effect, "Don't be surprised if I dissapear shortly- and don't question my sexuality either, bastard." And with that, after checking that the twenty Adolf note was still firmly in his back pocket, he lifted his right leg and kicked the beggar in the groin, heftily.

"Ouch", retorted the beggar, in a voice like a beggar who had been kicked in the groin by a stranger who was now dematerialising in front of him.

A second explosion hit the millinery section of BHS, and was largely as unexpected as the first. It was louder, somehow, and people very quickly forgot that it had happened. Anthea, Jodphurs and the Great Monk were especially forgetful, and immediately set about buying cardigans with gusto. Jodphurs found he had a twenty pound note in his pocket, and was sure that he'd only had a ten when he had entered the store- this economic good luck made him rethink his latest scheme, and he decided not to sneak off and sell the Great Monk after all. Instead he purchased a large ammount of socks, and then went for a stroll in the town centre. The three of them had lunch at the Kentucky Fried Chicken and then took an American Airlines train into London to watch the McDonalds' changing of the Guard outside McBuckingham theme park. The pavements were plastic, and embossed with the word "Smile" next to little pictures of the stars & stripes, in faded pink neon.

"I've had enough", said Jodphurs.