From: mcirvin@fas.harvard.edu (Matt McIrvin)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology
Subject: Re: HOW TO REORBIT VENUS ?
Date: 5 Jan 1995 18:24:31 GMT
Organization: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

E Teflon Piano <rgriffiths@ubmail.ubalt.edu> wrote:

Stretch a really really big rubber band between Mercury and Mars and wait for Halley's Comet to run into the rubber band.

WHIT BISSELL

What's that appearing on the imager?

LEE MERIWETHER

I...I think it's Halley's Comet! But that's not possible! Halley's Comet hasn't been here since 1923!

WHIT

Could it be that we're looking at it... through time?

LEE

I don't understand! How could that be?

WHIT

Well, listen! This is a Time Tunnel, right? We can look at things in the past, even though we're in the present!

LEE

Why... I think you just might be right! Since the imager shows us images from the past, it can show us Halley's Comet, even though this is the present!

WHIT

That won't help us find Doug and Tony, though.

LEE

Maybe... Maybe it can!

WHIT

How?

LEE

Well, they're in the past right now, or so we think. So if we can view the past using the Time Tunnel, maybe, just maybe, we can view them.

WHIT

I don't follow you.

LEE

This is a Time Tunnel! So we can look through time.

WHIT

Oh, right, I forgot.

[Suddenly the image of Halley's Comet, a white fireball spitting sparks downward, veers crazily between the massive parentheses of the imager. Whit Bissell stands up, causing the matte line to curve gracefully to avoid his head. He peers into the stripey hole, looking shocked.]

WHIT

What's it doing?

LEE

I... I don't know!

[The cause of the comet's deflection becomes visible: an enormous rubber band, making a slide guitar noise.]

LEE

It's...it's an enormous rubber band!

WHIT

What about the comet's tremendous magnetic force? What if the rubber band sends that into the Tunnel?

LEE

Hold on!!

[A great wind blows thousands of heretofore unseen blank sheets of paper around the control room. Whit is knocked unconscious, and Lee grabs hold of two broken, spark-spitting wires and uses them to jumpstart his brain. Suddenly an invisible force picks up Lee Meriwether and hurls her into the Tunnel. An aged Michael Rennie, covered in silver greasepaint, materializes in the control room.]

MICHAEL RENNIE

If only I had gotten here a minute earlier.

WHIT

What got her? The force of the comet?

MICHAEL

No... Something far worse. [Holds up a dagger, with the word "NERO" written on the blade.] We have battled the menace of Nero's ghost for centuries on the world of Arcturion Zeta Zeta. The rubber band your people used to re-orbit Venus has provided him with transport back to your own millennium.

WHIT

What about Doug and Tony?

MICHAEL

We believe that the seat of the soul is in the duodenum.

WHIT

Why, that's an organ at the base of the spine!

MICHAEL

Correct. Doug and Tony are safe. Their duodenums have been removed for safekeeping and are stored in our Hive Computer in the year 22,469. Their bodies have been recycled for purposes of atmospheric regeneration.

WHIT

Yes, the body is over 90 percent air... But that's 20,300 years in the future! It's only 1983! Where are they now?

MICHAEL

Have you not forgotten that even you lesser beings possess the secret of time travel? Now they are in the year 22,469. But later they will be in the past, fighting Halley's Comet in the year 1922, when America was in the grip of the Great Depression and Stalin ruled the USSR, or United States of Communist Russia.

[Cut to Robert Colbert and James Darren, or their stunt doubles, doing a very slow tuck and roll on a conveniently located crashmat in 1922 Springfield, Indiana. In the next scene James Darren has halved in height.]

JAMES

Where are we?

ROBERT

The question should be: when are we?

JAMES

Looks like Springfield, Indiana. 1922, maybe 1923.

ROBERT

Let's look for distinguishing features. What did Springfield look like in 1923?

JAMES

I don't know. <---- THIS JOKE STOLEN FROM KIBO!

ROBERT

There's someone back there in the bushes!

[Carroll O'Connor emerges from the bushes, dressed as Louis XIV.]

JAMES

Who's that?

ROBERT

Looks like Louis XIV. Powdered wig, knee breeches... yes, that's Louis XIV, all right.

JAMES

Maybe he can help us find the ghost of Nero.

CARROLL

[who speaks perfect modern English, with a faint British accent]: You look like time travelers too! Perhaps you can help me. I am searching for the Fountain of Youth!

[Gangsters pull up in a Ford Model T, and chase them up and down the same alley, and around Bronson Canyon, over and over for 36 minutes, plus commercials. Then the spark-spitting comet appears in the sky.]

VIC TAYBACK

It's the end of the woild! [Gangsters drive off.]

CARROLL

It is no use! The Fountain of Youth cannot be found in this century. I shall devote myself to a life of total evil!! [Removes his wig and reveals himself to be Tojo.]

[Sound effect: BOING!!!!]

[Comet hits Venus, producing a born-again Earth. This is represented by a spinning hypno-disk with a spiral pattern.]

JAMES

Well, that was a close one.

ROBERT

Good thing the comet was destroyed. It was behaving as if it had been contacted via the Time Tunnel. If there were two Halley's Comets in one time, the resulting paradox could have changed the course of World War II as we know it, and who knows what could have happened?

[Their clothes suddenly become clean. BOING!!!! Cut to stock of James and Robert tumbling through a kaleidoscope. Their doubles now land on a crashmat deep in a cave with large visible seams on the walls.]

JAMES

Where are we?

ROBERT

We must be at the center of the earth!

[Suddenly a man in a cowboy hat and a suit of chain mail (or sweater simulating same) attacks with a halberd! Squibs go off all around. Freeze frame.]

Tune in next week for another exciting episode of... THE TIME TUNNEL!!!

-- 
Matt        01234567   <--  Indent-o-Meter
McIrvin         ^           Harnessing tab damage for peaceful ends!