The XXX Time-Traveller

The not too distant future...

"Boo!"

"Shit!" Charise yelped and jumped in her office chair, nearly toppling backwards. After barely steadying herself, she glanced back and snapped, "Dunlop! Can you stop doing that, for fuck's sake!"

"Only if you stop falling for it," the elderly man chortled, leaning his chin over her shoulder. Ignoring the bristling vexation of his young lab assistant, he smiled, further wrinkling his weathered face like crepe paper, amused with himself.

"What the hell do you want, old man?" Charise clucked, her emerald eyes burning a hole in his forehead. She and the geriatric inventor had been working together for a while so they were both accustomed to her being short with him. She refused to call him 'Professor Dunlop' since he behaved more like an immature frat boy, despite looking every bit the octogenarian he was.

"Busy?" he asked.

Her autumn-orange brows pinched above her dark-rimmed glasses, barely signaling the tip of her annoyance. Gesturing impatiently towards her computer she grumbled, "I'm entering the data you told me to enter."

It was perturbing just to have to tell him. It was obvious that ninety percent of her time at the 'lab' was spent inputting the gibberish he had scrawled in a mountain of notebooks, aka 'data'. One percent of the time was spent helping him with actual work, which was basically carrying junk around the broken-down warehouse he called a lab. She was kept busy fending off his geriatric flirtations for the remaining nine percent.

"Good. So not busy, then," he said, standing upright. He beckoned, curling his knobby-twig finger at her. "I NEED you."

She could tell he was attempting to sound provocative. "I'm not letting you cop a feel of my boobs," she warned.

He tilted his head like a puppy and blinked. "I wasn't going to--"

"You will. I just wanted to get that out of the way for today."

"True. Smart thinking," he chuckled, then beckoned her, "Follow me."

With an exasperated groan, Charise dropped her head back, her red hair cascading over the rear of the chair, before she reluctantly peeled herself from her seat.

"Come on!" Dunlop declared and scurried off practically dancing upon his arthritic knees, a result of his 'wilder' days of sexual conquests, according to him. Right.

"This is what you get for answering a want ad for a 'part-time lab assistant'," she sighed to herself. Then she thought, 'No, this is what you get when you answer the ad, accept the job, and hang around for almost six months just to get paid by some lunatic who fancies himself a 'mad genius'.'

She doubted Dunlop was an actual professor or a scientist. Mad, possibly, but not a legitimate scientist. Fortunately, and to her own chagrin, it was exceptionally good pay, especially for a college student like her who was basically being asked to do nothing except type gibberish into a computer. The crackpot was somehow loaded.

She ambled towards the sound of Dunlop's rambling chatter emanating from somewhere amongst the clutter in the abandoned, dilapidated warehouse. She walked through a maze of tables and shelves full of dusty electronic devices and wires that were apparently scavenged over many years. Down another aisle was an assortment of 'inventions' he had started and dropped.

She steered clear of the makeshift office where she knew the dirty codger spent a couple of hours each day locked inside watching porn. It probably took him that long to get it up and squirt out a thimble's worth of love juice, but kudos to him for still trying without breaking anything.

"Where are you?" she bemoaned as she shuffled along endlessly.

"By the time machine!"

Charise paused, then raised her exasperated eyes towards the cavernous ceiling. "Fu-uuck."

She rounded a corner and emerged in a space occupied by Dunlop's 'baby', his 'masterpiece', the invention he dubbed, "The Chrono-Jump Chamber."

It was an old refrigerator with crap superglued to it.

Charise crossed her arms. "Please don't tell me we're trying this shit again?"

Dunlop busied himself adjusting knobs and flicking levers affixed to the sides of the refrigerator. On the top was an array of electrical circuits and tubes with coils of wires that led all the way up to the ceiling, connecting to a generator on the roof. Dunlop grinned at her. He was trying very hard to look maniacal but appeared more as if he had just passed gas.

"Today, we make history!" he declared with an upward stab of his finger.

"I'm spending the next ten minutes stuck inside the fridge again, aren't I?" she remarked dryly.

"Ten minutes and thirty-three seconds," he corrected. "You saw my calculations."

"You mean your hieroglyphics on the box of cereal?"

"Every minute in the machine takes you back in time five years."

"Can't we use a plant or something to test this out?" she asked. "A gerbil?"

Dunlop blinked at her. "That would be cruel. I abhor the idea of lab testing with cute furry animals."

She spiked a brow at her. "But you're okay testing your shit out with cute, red-headed lab assistants?"

"We've gone over this. You won't be harmed because you are the exact weight and shape required for the test subject," he explained while scanning her body with a lecherous eye.

"Uh-huh. I know that you've been ogling my 'shape' for months. That's why you check my measurements weekly and do 'imaging' tests with me in my underwear," she droned, calling his calculation bullshit for what it was. She was sure he jacked off to the images from those tests, too.

"Exactly!" He nodded, shaking his thinning, scraggly, silver hair. "You were specifically chosen for this!"

"I was the only one who answered the ad!"

Ignoring her skepticism, he waved her over to the machine. "Put on the Chrono-synchronizer Band," he said. She scoffed as she watched him slip a modded fitness band onto her wrist. As he often did, he had stolen the idea from a movie, this 'time bracelet' having been inspired from the classic action movie, Avengers: Endgame.

"Here," he continued and handed her a small pouch. "Inside are some tokens from that time for the buses and the address I want you to go to after you arrive."

Charise didn't bother asking for further instructions since they were always the same as when they attempted the time-trip three times previously: Go to the address then ask for some dude named 'Barry'. Everything else will sort itself out. The synchronizer was time-stamped to her individual 'Chrono-DNA' and would return her automatically to the present in three hours 'jump-time'. For Dunlop, seconds would've passed.

All of this timey-wimey garbage didn't matter to Charise because she knew she wasn't going anywhere. In a little over ten minutes after entering the contraption, she was going to step right back out having not gone anywhere either in distance or time.

Dunlop opened the fridge door. He paused, regarding Charise while tapping his lips with his finger. "Almost forgot. Remove your clothes."

"What?" she replied, her tone flat-lining. "Why? I didn't have to strip the last time we tried."

"I've surmised that only organic materials can go through the jump," he explained. "It's likely the root of our previous failures was due to the fact that you didn't go through the process while... ahem... naked."

Charise could tell he was trying to sound clinical, but the subtle lick of the tip of his wormy tongue across his withered lips and the build up of drool at the edges told a different story.

"You got that from The Terminator," she noted.

"Possibly," he said with a sheepish glint in his blue eyes.

Squinting back at him skeptically through her glasses, she dangled the pouch. "Then tell me, genius, how am I supposed to bring this and the Chrono-synchronizer? Stick them in my ass?"

He froze, obviously entertaining the idea, and then grinned and shrugged. "Nevermind."

"Lying creep," Charise muttered.

When he walked away to the control console, she shook her head. Despite everything, a slender grin slipped upon her red lips. The man was incorrigible, but harmless, just a frisky coot. Physically ravaged by time, she could probably blow him a kiss and he would fall over, albeit with a smile. Also, she had heard more overt and vulgar sexual come-ons at Pub Nights at her university. Besides, she'd be lying if she said she wasn't somewhat amused by his feeble attempts to reclaim his youthful vitality. Some men just wouldn't let go of their libido.

Besides, to her own frustration and chagrin, those vulgar come-ons from guys at Pub Nights often worked on her.

Refusing to indulge his whims to see her naked, she eventually climbed into the fridge/time-machine wearing her cut off jean shorts and t-shirt.

"So, any last reminders about time-traveling?" she asked. Aside from the minimal instructions he gave her, he never bothered running through the obligatory time-travel rules to avoid messing with the "space/time continuum".

"Like what?" he had asked in reply to her questioning if there were any.

"I don't know. Don't step on bugs? Don't pick the flowers? Don't kill anyone?"

He eyed her, curious. "DO you intend to kill anyone?"

"No."

"So, then..." he said, shrugging.

She sighed and mumbled to herself, "Okay. Don't fuck with the timeline."

Once settled in, she gave a reluctant thumbs up. The door closed and the machine coughed then whirred to life. A blue light lit up the interior. Thank goodness she wasn't claustrophobic, but Charise called on her yoga-breathing exercises to stay relaxed for the next eleven minutes and thirty-three seconds before inevitably exiting on the same day and year she got in.

As the seconds ticked by and the fridge continued to thrum monotonously, she eventually lost track of the time but figured she was well past the halfway point. She sighed, expecting to escape her confinement soon enough. Suddenly, the blue light intensified and the whirring noise picked up in tempo and pitch. That was different from last time. A tickle of concern twitched her nose.

"Dunlop?" she called out. "Uhh... everything okay? Is it supposed to sound like this?"

Oh, shit. The thing wasn't going to explode, was it?

"Hey! Maybe we should stop?" she hollered again, pushing and knocking against the door.

The contraption began to shake while a tingle of crisp electricity scurried under her skin.

"Dunlop! Can you hear me? Let me out!"

Wiry tendrils of glowing energy wrapped around her limbs and body. Now panicking, she whacked her palms on the door shouting, "Fuck! Dunlop! Let me out! Dun-..."

FFZ-ZZT!

"-lop!"

Charise stumbled forward a step, hands still up, suddenly outside of the fridge. She froze, her eyes wide and skittering around, while her glasses slipped to the tip of her nose.

She was still inside of the warehouse which didn't quite look like how she remembered, still jammed with crates and stuff but not nearly as disorganized or rundown. It was also very loud with the sound of activity.

"Out of the way!" someone shouted.

She turned and yelled "Oh, shit!" as a forklift stacked with crates rumbled towards her.

It required the grip of a rough hand around her arm to yank her from the path of the oncoming vehicle.

A gruff looking man-bull in overalls shook her, sneering. "Who are you? What are you doing here? How'd you get past the gate? You're trespassing!"

"I-I-I..." Charise stammered as he dragged her to the exit of the warehouse.

Once outside, he hauled her towards the security gates. She quickly scanned the environs. The abandoned warehouse she knew was bustling with activity with workers and vehicles moving all over the place.

Her aggressor shouted ahead to the security guard, "Call the cops. We got a trespasser!"

"Cops?" Charise exclaimed. That finally jump started her into action. With a swift pivot, she turned and drove her knee into his groin.

The guy released her and tumbled over, moaning in agony like a castrated ox.

Immediately, Charise broke into a sprint towards the gates, avoiding the security guard easily as she ran past. Without looking back once, she dashed to the nearest bus stop and hopped on the next bus just as it arrived.

---0---

"Ahh-choo!"

Charise rubbed her nose, raw from all the sneezing and blowing she had subjected it to. She never realized how allergic she was to cheap hairspray. Possibly it was because practically everyone on the bus was wearing it.

It took a few minutes while sitting there for her to realize what had happened. She swayed in her seat in a daze, bumping her arm against a gigantic portable stereo that she had to ask a teen with a jheri-curled mullet to move so that she could sit down. The stereo played music that sounded like it had been composed on a dishwasher control panel. She stared at the ads posted in the bus: neon-font lettering, geometric shapes in pastel colors, and big hair and bigger shoulder pads took up a third of the images. They advertised everything from designer jeans to cigarettes to New Coke.

People around her wore leg warmers and sweatbands (were they all going to the gym?), ripped jeans, and clothes in an assortment of pastel colors detailed with tassels and frills. And spandex. So. Much. Spandex. The thought of the material clinging to and suffocating her skin made her itchy.

Checking her cell phone, she frowned at the screen. It displayed the time but there was nothing but a row of zeroes where the date should have been.

"Bitchin' calculator," the teenage girl seated next to her said, peering at her device, while gnawing on a wad of pink bubblegum. Her spiked hair nearly poked out Charise's eye.

"Oh, umm, thanks," Charise said, pocketing the phone. "Uh, can you tell me what today's date is?"

The teen clicked her bubblegum then said,"June 17?"

"And the year?"

The girl looked at her and blinked, flashing her chrome-blue eye shadow. "It's, like, 1985?" she said then paused as if she was wondering if she had won a prize.

"1985?" Charise was stunned. "1985? You're sure?"

To be honest, the way the girl talked, she made everything she said sound like a question.

"Ye-ahh? Fer sure," the woman replied suspiciously.

Charise turned and gazed ahead, agog.

"A stoner, totally," she heard the woman whisper to her friend. The two of them quietly shifted aside.

"That crazy son-of-a-bitch," Charise muttered, staring ahead in amazement.

---0---

With her phone unable to help Charise find her way, she relied on the bus drivers to guide her to the address Dunlop had provided on a piece of tissue. It turned out to be some sort of electronics store an hour away from the warehouse.

She looked at the sign: 'The Video Lab -- TV and VCR repairs'. What the hell was a VCR?

Another sign on the front read: 'Closed for Lunch. Back at 1:00 p.m.'.

It was 3:00 p.m.

She peered through the window. There was no one to be seen inside. Deciding to try the door anyway, it was a small blessing when it actually opened.

"Hello? Anyone here?" she said as she entered.

She stepped gingerly through the unexpectedly large interior of the store. It was filled with assorted electronic equipment, not just boxy televisions. Most of the junk Charise didn't recognize outright but there were several stacks of chunky units which she presumed were the mysterious 'VCRs' as well as old recording equipment, more huge stereo boxes, speakers the size of coffins and even a few video game cabinets. The cluttered surroundings seemed very familiar.

Once more she called, "Hello?"

God, don't tell her she came all the way for nothing.

"We're closed!" a man shouted, just as a door behind the service counter opened.

Charise jumped back, startled when a guy suddenly emerged, rubbing his glasses on his vest. He sported a salad bowl-shaped head of hair and a thick brush of a mustache swept above his lip. He looked and smelled like he had been sprayed with grease. He squinted at her.

"I, uh... the door was open," she stammered.

"Oh," he said, putting on his glasses and finally getting a clear look at her, "you answering the ad?"

"The ad?"

"You're early. The ad said 4:00."

"What ad?" she insisted.

Clearly absorbed in other thoughts, he continued to scan her like a specimen, whistling in appreciation.

"Holy smokes! Didn't think we'd get a chick of your caliber for the money we're offering," he said shaking his head and cocking his caterpillar brow, "but good on Barry for suggesting we put the ad out anyway."

"Barry's here?" Charise asked, hopeful. Finally, some progress on this ludicrous quest.

Eyes still glued to her milky legs, the guy pensively stroked his mustache. "He's prepping in the studio."

"Studio?" she continued to parrot, perplexed yet definitely piqued.

"Yeah... you know what?" he said as he came around the counter, walked past her and locked the front door, "We don't need to audition any other candidates. You've got the job."

"Ohh-kay," she replied hesitantly. "What's the job?"

A devious snicker slipped from his throat as he took her by the elbow and led her towards the door behind the counter. He said, "Come on. We can get started a little earlier."

"So I'll finally meet this Barry dude?" she asked as she followed along.

"Yeah... you'll 'meet' him," he remarked, again with the snicker. "Just don't call him Barry while on the job."

Charise's ginger brows twisted. "What do I call him?"

----0----

"Apollo Cream."

"Holy shit," Charise muttered the moment she was introduced to the man who also went by the less conspicuous name, "Barry".

"Holy shit," she said again, as she looked around the 'studio' which was apparently fronted by the repair shop. It was decked out as a bedroom set barfed out of a retro Barbie Dream Home commercial: cheap brass and pressed-wood veneer furniture, plastic plants, marshmallow pillows, shag carpet, mirrors. The swanky set was awash in pastel pinks.

"Holy... SHIT," she exclaimed for a third time. She propped up her glasses while she gawked at the camera and sound equipment set up pointed squarely at the satin-covered mattress. It finally dawned on her that she likely stumbled onto some low-rent porno production.

Boy, did she ever have a penchant for getting thrown into oddball situations answering tiny want ads.

Returning her attention to "Barry", her eyes widened as she gave him the full once over. She believed the vernacular for the time was "Beefcake" or "Stud". His face was all sharp cheekbones and perfectly placed dimples, radiant blue eyes and glossy red lips. His silvery-blonde hair was meticulously spiked seemingly strand by strand. A lean but reptilian muscular body peeked through from between his vest, all tan and oiled up. All of this manly goodness funneled down towards his designer jeans, shrink-wrapped onto his hips and legs. They did nothing to hide the generous billy club the guy was apparently carrying at his crotch.

The dude oozed sex, and Charise's mouth --among other body parts-- watered the moment he smiled at her. Never mind that he was likely a shriveled piece of liver maybe four times her age back in her present time, if he was still alive.

Right now in 1985, he was a sizzling hunk of prime steak. 'Beefcake', indeed.

"Apollo... Creed?" she squeaked, half dazed.

"Cream. Apollo Cream," he said, with a sly wink.

"Like from the Rocky movies?" she asked.

"Yep."

"Wasn't he black?"

He shrugged. "It's an homage. Better than 'Barry Cream'."

He wasn't wrong.

He nodded at her. "And your name is...?"

"Oh, uh, Charise," she stammered while still gawking at him.

He pouted his lower lip and nodded thoughtfully. "Awesome. Like 'Cherries', right? We'll figure out a good name for you later."

"A good name? Later? What...?" she started to ask, but he had already walked past her to the guy she had met first at the front of the store, the greasy fellow.