Bang!

I had to act, and act fast. I could only override my doomsday "death to Fakiegrind" programming directive for so long. Now that my true identity had been revealed I was beset with an overwhelming desire to press the "delete blog" button at the bottom of the settings menu.

I sifted my way through the Vaults of Oldness, searching for the item I knew to have been deposited there so long ago in happier, brighter days. Pushing over a stack of old Cream magazines from '76, I came upon a box with favourable markings. Tearing it open set a small cloud of dust flying into the dank, stuffy air, but within the carton was the object I sought: Dr. Flavour's One Use Only Time Travel Belt. The invention was one of those brilliant ideas that never really went anywhere, simply because no one at Dept. H was brave enough to try the thing out.

With nothing to lose, I strapped on the belt. In the same box was one of Flavour's experimental Devo III Brain Transfibulator guns. In theory, anyone hit by a blast from this weapon would mentally devolve to a lower rung of the evolutionary ladder. I knew that once I hit the switch on the buckle of the belt, there would be no going back (or forward, depending on the timeshift). I set the chrono-gauge to the exact day and year I knew would lead me to my prey... Yes, my prey. My former master, the Xister and his mistress, that trollop Spirella, would pay dearly for using me as they did. And I knew just where to find them...

November 22, 1989. A tall dark-haired man with neatly trimmed sideburns and goatee, sporting an atavisitc monocle and black smoking jacket is standing in a queue before a movie theatre. Beside him is a svelte brunette in a tight green skirt with round-lensed sunglasses and a flashy red sequined purse. The movie the two are waiting to see is "Back to the Future II". It is the plot of this ridiculous film that will first impress the idea of time travel into the mind of the man and his date. The seed will grow into an obsession that will eventually, some sixteen years later (once the delicate art of actual time travel has been perfected by the brilliant Dr. Flavour of Fakiegrind Corp's government-sponsored affiliate Dept. H), lead to their hijacking the world's first known working time machine and using it to indulge in a devastating, pan-temporal crime spree.

But this pair of fledgling hypnotist/criminals will never see that day, because just then (thanks to the One Use Only Time Travel Belt), an angry rogue android, the recently exposed circuitry of his true face only partially concealed behind a makeshift cardboard mask, appears as if out of nowhere. Wasting no time, and battling the inherent directives of his wiring all the while, the renegade assassin-bot turns his weapon on his startled, future masters and lets fire a beam of shimmering pale blue energy. Hardly knowing what to make of the sudden turn of events, the man and woman start to twitch and convulse, feeling the devolutionary effect of the potent transfibulator ray.

In mad panic, the woman starts tearing at her hair and cloths. She stares about her in blank incomprehension of her surroundings, then bounds off down the street, lunging and lumbering like a primate. The dark-haired man makes to call out to her, but his tongue is suddenly struck numb as his devolving chromosomes dredge up ancestral memories locked deep in his DNA code. Suddenly, the man collapses to the ground and, arms outstretched, begins slithering towards the closest fresh water source.

Though lacking synthetic skin upon his face, the android's mouth servo-mechanisms generate what would normally translate into a smile. His mission is complete. The Xister and Spirella are undone. A riot of electro-impulses suddenly flood his servo-circuits, all the suppressed directives of his original programming which dictate he aid and defend the very entities he just rendered impotent. Unable to fight off the anarchy of conflicting drives any longer, the android uses what little free energy remains in his motivation generator to turn the Devo-ray upon himself.

Suddenly, the android is awash in blue light, the energy of the Devo-Ray crackling through his exposed circuitry and sending sparks flying in all directions. The crowd waiting for the movie is aghast, first at the weird transformation of the would-be Xister and Spirella, now at the pyrotechnics emitted by the android. But in mere moments the defibrillator has done its work, reducing the android to a more primitive state of evolution, and a large, beige computer monitor sits on the sidewalk where the android once stood.

"Hey look," says one of the kids who had been standing in line and took the whole spectacle to be just another P.R. stunt in an age of pop cultural excess, "a Commodore 64!"