1.
Trevor Smethurst is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most intelligent creature in the whole of the universe.
Unfortunately Trevor Smethurst is also, without the slightest atom of doubt, the stupidest person in the entire universe.
I don’t really need to explain this to you, as Trevor will do his absolute best to prove this himself in no time at all.
But … if you really do need proof…
Trevor has just invented, alongside Dr Lambton Arcania (probably the second most intelligent creature in the universe) a device called a Chunk. A Chunk is a computer made entirely out of wood, but as well as being the most advanced computer in existence it is also a functioning time machine, a compass, can make coffee and cola and knows all the words to every song ever written in existence (including the ones everyone would much rather forget about).
Brilliant, you might think, absolutely brilliant.
But Trevor being Trevor he decided to test the Chunk on himself…
…Which is why he is currently hurtling through time and space completely out of control.
This sounds extraordinarily exciting. It is not. All of time and space, all packed together all at once, is a sort of dirty beige colour, and by far the most interesting thing about all of time and space is Trevor himself.
Trevor Smethurst looks like a small tyrannosaurus rex dressed in a maroon blazer. In fact he is an alien called a Killian dressed in a maroon blazer. In one pocket he has five bars of chocolate, in another he has a Monkey Master Blaster collector’s edition ruler (Trevor’s favourite comic book) and on his right inside pocket he has a pair of spectacles. These spectacles are another astonishing invention (created by Dr Arcania) which transform the wearer into whatever species is on that particular planet in that particular time period – which is just about to come in very handy indeed.
2.
Trevor opened his eyes and found himself looking up at a ragged wooden hole through which white cloud floated across a blue sky. The first thing he noticed was the atrocious smell, the second thing he noticed was the rather odd, rather squishy something he was lying on.
The answer to both the terrible smell and his odd resting place became apparent when Trevor sat up and looked around. He was in a filthy old cow barn that stank of years and years of manure. Specifically he was sitting in a line of cows, the cows to his right and left looking at him balefully – the cow he had landed on was squashed underneath him with its legs sticking out and was … Well, it was as flat as a cow pat.
Trevor wondered briefly if he had landed in Prezema. ‘Hello?’ he said to the nearest cow. The cow looked at him stupidly and licked its wet nostrils with a long grey tongue, and Trevor breathed a sign of relief. Prezemans looked exactly like earth cows, and for a moment he wondered if he might be tried for ungulate slaughter instead of just malicious damage.
Trevor stood and stretched. He took a bar of chocolate out of his pocket, took a bite and looked through the hole in the roof, speculating idly how far he’d fallen when the big beige space time continuum had spat him out. Falling from extreme heights was not at all unusual in Trevor’s experience – he had often woken at the base of a tower or in the middle of a forest with a smashed trail of foliage above his head. Trevor was a Good Man, a sort of teenage superhero, and falling off high things was, he supposed par for the course – and being virtually indestructible falling from very high places didn’t particularly concern him…
‘D-D-D-‘
Trevor looked around, grinding chocolate between his wicked-looking t-rex jaws.
‘D-D-D-‘ Trevor’s eyes met those of a doughy-faced boy with long, limp hair, dressed in what looked very much like a brown carpet. ‘D-D-D-‘ the boy stammered. ‘D-Dragon!’
Trevor looked around. ‘Where?’ he asked – but the boy didn’t answer, he was too busy running out of the cowshed screaming at the top of his voice.
Trevor wondered briefly what a “Dragon” was, and then, as voices joined in shouts of terror outside, sensibly decided this was probably not the time to find out, and leapt vertically upwards through the hole in the ceiling.
3.
Trevor looked around, and found himself deeply disappointed by what he beheld.
He was stood on the roof a ramshackle cow barn, thatch tickling his huge reptilian feet. Oddly, Trevor noticed, there seemed to be more cows outside the barn than there were inside, all lined up in a row tied together by a length of brown rope. The land all around him was flat and brown, with the occasional patch of grey to break things up a little. The only landmarks in this flat and muddy country were a hill in the far distance, surrounded by leafless trees, and the equally distant glitter of a brown river.
Brown was a big colour here, Trevor decided. The land was brown, the trees were brown, the cows were brown, and even the armour on the knights who were clanking towards his with their muddy swords not glittering, was brown.
‘Fie!’ shouted one of the knights. ‘What manner of hideous Satanic spawn art thou?’
‘Eh?’ Trevor replied.
‘Thou mayest speak with the tongue of man,’ roared the dirty knight, waving his rusty sword, ‘but thou art the fire born spawn—‘
‘Do-you-speak-Eng-lish?’ Trevor enunciated carefully to the red faced man in the tight fitting armour.
‘I shalt take my mighty sword and smite—‘
‘Sorry! Can’t hear you!’ Trevor interrupted, taking a bite of his chocolate bar. ‘And I don’t speak berk,’ he muttered to himself.
The knights - there were four of them in all, two very thin and two very fat – clanked about waving their swords and calling for their lances, horses and pages, and achieving very little. Trevor sat on the roof off the barn, wiping cow dirt off his tail, eating this way through his bar of chocolate and watching the knights with disinterest.
He wondered vaguely where – and when – he was, and decided it didn’t really matter much. The Chunk would power up again in a matter of a few minutes and he could head whenever and wherever he wanted. That was a point…
Trevor reached into his jacket and pulled out a small block of wood, tied around his neck by a length of twine. ‘Chunk?’ he said to the featureless piece of wood.
‘YES?’
‘Where are we?’ Trevor asked.
The lump of wood hummed slightly, and then replied, ‘EARTH.’
Trevor sighed, and rolled his eyes. It was the oldest joke in the book among Good Men when you asked them which planet they came from they always replied “Earth” – because all planets were called Earth by their inhabitants, it was only aliens who ever gave them names like Zeta Reticula 5, or Dog Cheek Planet 73.
‘Are you trying to be funny?’ Trevor snapped savagely. ‘Do you want to be turned into a blinking pencil?’
‘SORRY, JUST MY LITTLE JOKE,’ Chunk replied in its flat wooden voice. ‘This is the planet Terra, third planet in the Sol System, located in the Western Spiral Arm of the Milky—‘
Trevor groaned. ‘I get the idea,’ he interrupted.
Monkey town, he thought miserably, planet of the blinking chimps. The knights had now rallied in a line and were marching forward and hacking at the thatch, several feet below Trevor’s feet. Trevor had lived on Earth five years before, surrounded by chimps and monkeys, and had been glad to see the back of the place. He had no desire to return to this particular planet at any point in its past and future – the climate didn’t agree with him, he didn’t like the food, and several people from Earth had sworn to kill him.
‘DO YOU WISH TO KNOW THE YEAR?’ Chunk enquired.
‘I couldn’t give a monkey’s chuff,’ Trevor snapped. ‘Just tell me how long it will take you to power up and get me out of here!’
Chunk hummed thoughtfully. ‘POWER UP WILL TAKE PRECICELY—‘
Chunk vibrated suddenly, and then fell silent. Trevor shook the time machine with a frustrated howl – and noticed that something long and thin was sticking out of its back.
Another long thin thing appeared suddenly between his legs, and he swallowed his chocolate with a heavy gulp.
Arrows.
Trevor sprang to his feet just as an arrow appeared where his stomach had been just a second before. The knights were still noisily clattering their swords and shields and hacking ineffectually at the cow barn roof – but they had been joined by three more men. These men were tall and muscular, and though not dressed in armour, had a distinctly military bearing. In their hands they held bows which stretched from their heads to their toes, and Trevor would not have believed that a human would have the strength to draw such an huge weapon – right up until the point that one of the archers drew back his muscular arm and let loose an arrow that flew true across the rooftop, and hit Trevor right in the centre of his chest.
Trevor stumbled back, and with a howl of pain and despair, he fell backwards off the roof.
To be continued...
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