It’s Always Later Than You Think

 by John M. Joyce (April 2011)

but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by.⁶

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***

[Tinkle of laughter.] Thank-you for your chuckles. Much appreciated.

Of course, and notwithstanding that we could recover the damaged documents, we still had to know what was responsible for stripping the temporality from them, so, naturally, I called in the best Physicists and Chemists in creation (literally). However, after ages (420,000 millennia, to be exact) spent studying the problem they confessed themselves baffled, and, what was even worse, we had discovered during that time that many more of our records had become unreadable due to temporal stripping.

Well, as you might imagine, I was somewhat perturbed by the revelation that the traps would be so expensive but I decided that there was nothing for it but to confirm, or otherwise, the presence of chronovoles in our archives. Regrettably, it turned out that we were positively infested by the pretty little beasts.

OffBrush issued an Enforcement Order which allowed just twenty-one days for us to eliminate the dratted, but beautiful, chronovoles. Due to an oversight on their part they failed to stipulate just which twenty-one days so, naturally, I advised my staff to select twenty-one days each of which were separated from any other chosen day by at least a milliard of perfectly ordinary other days as measured by ethnic Pldsfgwqytmds on their home planet (days on Antigropelos last for 4,900 Earth hours). Our Departmental legal team, Messrs. Shrow, Dinger and Khatt, informed OffBrush of our choice of days but we heard nothing further from them which seems to indicate that OffBrush officials can only think inside the box.

[Ripple of applause.] Thank-you, thank-you. The idea was quite simple really. Too kind, too kind.

[Polite laughter.] Thank-you, too kind. Just a little jest of mine. Thank-you, thank-you.

Our Special Commemorative Limited Edition Fine Hand-Crafted Golden Moments are available by contacting the Department of Time Merchandising Division at Unit 0, Limbo Industrial Estate, Pending, Everness-shire, Year of the Successful Breakfast AD2349. (No more than two Special Edition Golden Moments per household in any one millennium.)

[Scattered muted slowish handclaps and some desultory applause.] Thank-you. Thank-you.

 

Footnotes:

1) I believe he was one of the authors listed here, but I cannot be more precise because the documents recording his name have been temporarily withdrawn due to unforeseen vermin activity.

Tony Hendra.

6) James M. Barrie, 1860-1937 (Year of the Constipated Samovar to Year of the Uncertain Garderobe), British Playwright.

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