From time to time being a geek of extraordinary abilities, I do things that seem... impossible. Impossible only because you exist in a world where you've closed the doors of possibility to that which is... in reality just around the corner from you... right this very second.
How many ancient devices have you seen in an antique shop that you decided against tinkering with for fear of breaking and then having to pay for? Perhaps you don't go into these wondrous little jeweled caves of antiquated treasure, but me... I dig through old Quack Medical Devices... Old WWII radio equipment.... I live for this stuff.
I have traveled through time before with Moriarty and his flower-powered bean bag.... having to piss out the banana flavored jellybean and suffering the most torturous pain imaginable. The experience taught me one thing.... NEVER TIME TRAVEL WITH A SADISTIC OLD FART AGAIN!
Figuring if that bumbling old fool could tool together a time machine, then dagdangit, somebody else has as well. Imagine my joy when I walked into this wondrous Antiques Shop off of Manor Road here in Austin and found.... such delights that I could barely hold back my geekgasm. The place was called N.E. Mercantile.... The man behind the counter was balding with longhair and a beard, he had a tiny son with red hair and then the store keep's wife was a strange Janis Joplin look alike. The man had a 3 sheet of Howard Hawks' THE THING hanging in the back, tons of old pulps and magazines... It was truly amazing. One sheets for TRANSATLANTIC TUNNEL and THE RETURN OF DR X.... boxes and boxes of Golden Age comics, an original Carl Barks Uncle Scrooge in one of his Money Bins painting.... Ahhh, the stuff of dreams. Amongst it all was this old... military looking machine.
There were knobs and levers... switches and wires. There was a mud dobber nest on the side of it, and a dusty identification plate.
PHILADELPHIA - X7QA-2963-VR13-BHYT
PROPERTY: DEPARTMENT OF WAR