trilobyte

There were four of us at Chick's house. Myself, Girly, Dude, and of course Chick. Drinks and substances may have been consumed. While I wouldn't say abused per se, it's pretty safe to say that each of us was under some kind of influence at the time.

Girly had gone outside for a smoke. I find it hilarious that even when certain controlled substances are smoked indoors frequently, people still go outside to smoke. Maybe it's a subconsciously masochistic move, maybe it's just ridiculous.

Dude had gone to the bathroom as I came into the room and sat down on the couch. At Chick's request, I'd popped a disc into the DVD player, and was fumbling for the remote which had gotten itself mixed up among the various glasses, bottles, jewel cases, and other artifacts on the coffee table. Along the way, I bumped a DVD case and inadvertently knocked it from the coffee table.

Chick seemed startled. "Whoa," she said.

"Whoa?"

"Yeah, whoa." Staring at the spot where the DVD case had just been, she contnued. "You don't understand. That case had the stash sitting on it. Dude *just* moved it before going to the bathroom."

"Where did he put it?" I asked as I located the remote.

She pointed to a small pile, sitting on a CD cover a few inches away.

"Whoa!"

"Yeah."

My brain had kicked into overdrive, and analyzed the situation in record time. "Do you know what this means?"

"It means you didn't knock over the stash."

Girly came back inside as I proposed my theory. "Well, yeah, but it also means that Dude is a time traveller!"

Chick looked at me quizzically, so I explained. "You said he moved the stash right before going into the bathroom, right?"

"Right."

"But look where he moved it. It's no safer, it's just gone from a DVD case that could have easily been knocked over to a CD case that could probably get knocked over even more easily than the DVD case."

Girly brought up a good point. "Maybe he could just see into the future, and had a premonition?" I liked this girl before, but her quick wit attracted me even more. It was at that moment that I decided I would do depraved things to this woman later in the evening.

"That's possible, but we can figure that out easily enough." My timing was perfect, as Dude was just now returning from the bathroom. "Dude, can you see into the future?"

You could tell from his expression that this was probably the last question he expected to hear. "Um, no."

I turned back to the girls. "So if he can't see into the future, he must be a time traveller. Only a time traveller would have known that the spill was going to take place, and so he slipped back in time to make his subtle move."

"Where do you suppose he keeps the time machine? Girly wondered aloud.

"It's probably disguised, so it doesn't attract any undue attention. In fact, I'll bet it's the toilet!"

"The toilet?" she asked.

"Yes, the toilet. Probably using a combination of gestures and flushes to make it go." My logic was becoming clear to them, and we started putting it all together. Over the next ten minutes we debated how one would control a time-traveling commode. Eventually, we agreed that a single flush would take you forward while two successuve flushes would bring you backwards in time. During the conversation, Dude remained silent save for the occasional chuckle.

Finally, though, he tipped his hand when he suggested that if we wanted to stop time, we'd need to stop up the toilet.

Ah, the powers of deductive reasoning.

odi omnes