Rites of Passage

Runner Up

Binky Merton Takes a Trip

By Mark Terence Chapman

“Behold King Binky the First. Be prepared, you insignificant worms, to bow and scrape before my magnificence!”

Eleven year-old Binky Merton addressed his reflection in the dresser mirror, freckled nose raised haughtily in the air and blond cowlicks sprouting in every direction. He was planning his eventual domination of the entire planet. Binky was determined to teach those cretins at school who called him “egghead” and “dweeb” and—worst of all—“Stinky Binky,” a lesson. If they didn’t learn to respect him, maybe they’d learn to fear him. They were but worms beneath Binky’s boots.

Binky began the final test of his latest invention—a time-travel wristwatch. Without warning, his bratty nine-year-old brother burst into the room with a clatter. “Binky, look!” Corey held some sort of childish thing in his hands while sporting a gap-toothed grin.

Binky ignored him, as usual. Consequently, he never found out what Corey wanted to show him.

As one of fewer than a hundred members of the elite ultra-high-IQ Prometheus Society, and by far the youngest, Binky secretly sneered at his brother’s low intellect. After all, he barely qualified for Mensa! Binky’s own IQ easily topped 200.

Only two weeks earlier, he had put the full might of his prodigious intellect to work on the puzzle of time travel that had stymied the greatest minds in science and mathematics for generations. Binky laughed at the so-called “barriers” that had proved insurmountable for others, yet were no obstacle at all for him. In less than a week, he’d invented temporal calculus. It took two days more to complete the algorithms necessary to travel backward in time and three days to build his prototype, using an old digital wristwatch and a few basic transistors “borrowed” from Corey’s teddy bear radio.

This is all so simple! Why has no one succeeded before?

Then he understood: everyone else operated under the handicap of lacking his incredible intellect, his perspicacity, his modesty. In short, they weren’t him.

Now, they’ll see exactly why they should acknowledge me as their superior!

At last, after a veritable eternity—three whole days of experimentation and fine-tuning!—he was ready for the ultimate test: human trials. Tomorrow he would announce his triumph to the sure-to-be-awed scientific community. After all, he was a kid who had done what adults had declared impossible. Soon, the name Binky Merton would be spoken in the same reverent tones as that of da Vinci, Newton and Einstein.

The digital readout on the watch face displayed 0000:0000:0000, which Binky had arbitrarily synchronized to the moment of his birth. Because it was merely a prototype, he hadn’t included all the bells and whistles the final version would have, including the ability to input the date and time directly.

After all, with my superior intellect, I won’t have any trouble specifying the precise time manually.

Binky had just begun the process of advancing the watch settings to the coordinates for five minutes ago when Corey burst in.

Unfortunately, another of the “minor details” Binky hadn’t yet bothered to implement was the ability to transport his body back in time—only his consciousness would be sent. Because he was aiming to go back only five minutes he didn’t see this as a problem. However, when Corey startled him, Binky inadvertently pressed the Go! button, initiating the time jump prematurely.

The room shrank to a pinpoint of bright light. Binky felt a moment of nausea as his mind spun and twisted. He slammed his eyes shut, to block the view of his bedroom dancing crazily before him.

Just as he began to think that maybe, just maybe, his calculations might be a wee bit off, the spinning ceased. He opened his eyes to the sight of institutional green paint and fluorescent ceiling panels. Several giants in mint-green surgical scrubs loomed over him.

Huh?

It took only a moment for the realization of what had happened to set in.

“No-o-o-o-o-!” His scream of rage at Corey was interpreted by his doting parents as the normal lusty cry of a newborn.

#

Binky Merton lay in his cradle sucking on his pacifier with fierce determination. He schemed how best to be the first toddler time traveler.

I’ll show everyone. Next time I’ll get it right. All I have to do is wait until I’m old enough to hold a programmable calculator....

Mark Terence Chapman began writing fiction seriously in 2003. Since then, he has sold two novels (The Mars Imperative and The Tesserene Imperative), as well as numerous short stories, poems, and humorous essays, and has more novels and a couple of children’s “picture books” waiting in the wings. His publishing credits also include a nonfiction book about the OS/2 operating system (OS/2 Power User's Reference), three chapters of a book about IBM servers (Exploring IBM Server & Storage Technology, 6th Edition), articles about writing, investing in nanotechnology, and various “white papers” on the subjects of Windows, Linux, and server technology. To learn more about the author and his writing, visit his website at http://tesserene.com, or his blog at http://tesserene.blogspot.com.

Mark lives in historic Oxford, NC, with his wife, two daughters, and a menagerie.