wrong timeline-new

Creative Intuition Lab Presents THE WRONG TIMELINE: A Handbook for the Cosmic Traveler Who Took a Wrong Turn A community Compilation of Art and Prose Contributing Authors Andi Francine

THE WRONG TIMELINE: A Handbook for the Cosmic Traveler Who Took a Wrong Turn Copyright @ 2021 Creative Intuition Lab. All Rights Reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including internet usage, without written permission from Creative Intuition Lab, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. First Edition, 2021 Cover Design: [insert] Cover Illustration: [insert] ISBN: [insert] Includes indexes: [insert] Creative Intuition Press An imprint of Sacred Dragon Publishing Los Angeles, California 90013 Sacreddragonpublishing.com



Restaurant Review Octopus Garden Café Zebion City, District ������������ Planet Neku 129.8945#.{39.93} ������������������������������������������������ I wouldn’t give this place five stars because I’m not over how actually weird it is, even if the food is absolutely fantastic. I’m still unsettled, and even if my stomach is in bliss, my brain is working overtime to figure out what happened to get me here. All I remember is that I was heading hurriedly toward my departure gate on one of those underground moving sidewalks in the bowels of London’s Heathrow Airport when there was a sudden jerk, and the sidewalk stopped moving. I stumbled forward for a moment, and the next thing I know, I’m sitting in a strange café writing a restaurant review after eating a delicious, though bizarre, meal served to me by a waiter I can only describe as a land octopus. My waiter, who is obviously not from Earth, seems to be holding me hostage at my table, or rather, not to offend, is cuddling me gently with one of his, her, its slimy but beautiful arms with shimmering skin that changes colors and sparkles like rainbow diamonds. Of course, I have no idea what pronoun to use for my waiter or if there is such a thing as gender in this fantastic place, but “it” seems an appropriate choice either way. I discover quickly that my waiter likes compliments and gets friendlier the more I write nice things. Whoa! I think one of its six eyes just winked at me! I am doing a lot of erasing and rewriting now that I have figured out that a glowing review may be the price of my meal here and perhaps even my release. I’ve tried to leave five times. Every time I got up to go, my waiter used one arm to shove this pen-stick-writing instrument back into my hand, another one to slam this weird electronic slate back onto the table, and a third one to push me back into my seat. So at least for now, I am not going anywhere. All of my waiter’s six eyes are glowering at me right now, commanding me to complete my task. Oops! I mean to say its eyes are glowing affectionately at me in a very sweet way. So Wonderful. So Welcoming. Yes, the meal was fantastic. Unbelievable! The, uh, waiter never leaves my table. It knows instinctively what amazing thing I would like to eat next, and one of its eight arms miraculously places it in front of me. My first course was a mind-blowing gelatinous substance that tastes exactly like strawberry shortcake. (It’s winter back in London, and I’ve been craving strawberries.) There is no menu! I just imagine what I would like, and it appears, sort of, or at least the amazing flavor does. Don’t look too closely, though; just focus on the aroma and taste. Yum, never mind the texture! No—don’t think, just eat. Ouch!! I just got pinched by one of its small very cute arms. Yes, yes, the texture is original and . . . unforgettable.



This electronic gizmo slate thing I’m writing on already has the café address on it with a four-star rating, in English no less; that’s how I figured out where I am, uh, supposedly very, very lucky to be right now. At least, my overlords—I mean generous hosts—are smart enough not to give this place a five-star rating. Apparently, even they know no traveler would believe that rating for airport restaurants, which are notoriously lacking something, indeed, mostly everything. Wait, what? Planet Neku? Zebion District? What kind of address is that? Where the hell have I landed and how did I get here? Crap, no idea! Guess I will figure all that out once I get the hell out of . . . this stupendously fantastic café. Right, remain calm. Stay focused. Back to the task at hand, my four-star review. My octopus waiter is a genius at anticipating and satisfying my every craving! It just stares at me, then flings out an arm that stretches back to the kitchen and grabs something fabulous. And it’s not just food it brings to me. At one point in my eating extravaganza, there was a long pause while my waiter seemed to be assessing me inside and out. My mouth literally dropped open on its own, I think, and I felt one of my waiter’s hands, tentacles, uh, I mean beautiful fingers, almost go into my mouth. Gag! Somehow, it had figured out that I needed a toothpick. I had just eaten a delicious grilled crunchy stringy meaty substance, and a tender savory morsel got stuck in my back molar. Just as I was starting to fuss with the stuck food, one of my waiter’s beefy long powerful stupendous tentacle arms whipped out of the café door, plucked some kind of toothpick-needle thing off a weird cactus-like plant by the entrance, and whipped back in to give it to me. And I kid you not, it was mint-flavored! Yes – I am in the land of mint-flavored cactus toothpicks! Of course, I used it; I’m not an idiot! It seems the Zebions, just guessing from the café address I can call them that, want to attract more human guests. I haven’t explored the restrooms yet but wonder if they have discovered our basic biological need for elimination in their quest to attract more of us for experimentation. For that matter, do land octopi ever pee? So far, no. Anyway, pay attention Traveler! Next time you pass through Heathrow airport, watch out for the moving sidewalk on the far left below Terminal 4. If it lurches unexpectedly, don’t stop. Instead, take a giant leap forward hopefully hurling yourself past the Neku portal and onward towards your destination—unless, that is, you would like to visit a Zebion café and be served by a Neku octopus waiter. Trust me; it’s an out-of-this-world experience! Hmmm, not sure, but I may be here a while? It looks like the giant magnificent handsome land Octopus can’t quite read or understand everything I have written but loves the positive energy from my complimentary words—Fabulous! Excellent! Wonderful! I love this place! Exquisite. Hopefully, I will be released from this extraordinarily blissful café soon and find my way back to Earth. If I came here through a portal TO Neku, there must be one FROM Neku and back to Earth, right? Though I must say, I haven’t heard of any land octopi making their way to Earth.



Oh my god, one of muscular amazing fantastic arms is pulling me away; these guys are... Contributing author - Francine





Monday in Phoenix There are lots of ways people start their week. Some go to work or school; others go to a coffee shop to work on their epic novel or get their car washed. Really, it’s entirely up for grabs what to do on a Monday. I don’t usually pay too much attention to Monday as a likely day for adventure; maybe because for most of my life, it was a day resolutely assigned as a workday that began a whole series of workdays to follow. So being in Phoenix on a hot Monday morning was nothing to write home about, as the saying goes. On this Monday, I opted for coffee shop novelist and headed out to grab a secluded perch at my local haunt where I could work undisturbed as my creative brilliance flowed. As soon as the caffeine kicked in, my laptop keys were clicking, and my mind raced with visions of a grand galactic drama with Earth at the epicenter of a battle for human souls—light versus dark on a cosmic scale. Scene: Dark planet Xeren with craggy mountain cliffs, spacecraft hangar secreted in a hidden valley. Characters: Enliel, the dark master of Xeren, stands at the hangar entrance going over plans for assimilating his new human harvest. Laru, his second-aide, comes running up to Enliel with urgent news. “Commander,” Enliel says, nearly breathless, “we cannot find them anywhere!” With bulging neck gills flaring, Enliel roared back, “Then find them! Humans don’t just disappear. I have paid a heavy price for this lot. They are the best we have harvested yet. Do NOT tell me they are lost.” “Commander, we have tried everything to locate the legion ship they are on, but there is no response on comms, and the ship nav signal has been lost,” replied Laru, doing his best to feign confidence in the face of Enliel’s rage. “The only explanation we have so far is that the navigation system may have been damaged in the solar storm that broke through Earth’s atmosphere as the ship was leaving orbit yesterday. The pilot might not even know the ship is off course and either can’t or hasn’t tried to communicate its location.” Relaxing slightly but still glaring at Laru, Enliel bellowed, “Lost? An entire legion ship carrying my human harvest is just lost. No! Ready my scout ship; we are going to Earth to find my ‘lost’ humans.” Scene: Lost legion ship command deck



Character: BioDrone 487, ship’s pilot. “Ship’s navigation is offline, rerouting . . . rerouting . . .” repeatedly flashed across the navigation console as 487 moved his hands from one holographic star map to another looking for clues about the ship’s location. 487 could not make sense of star maps showing that the ship hadn’t left Earth’s orbit and the exterior view screen showing stars and planets flashing by, as if the ship was in full flight on its way back to Xeren. “Unless,” thought 487, “it’s true that matter can be in two places at once.” 487 remembered the legion flight class on multi-dimensional travel, but it was only a theoretical course to provide context for possible contact with multi-dimensional species. “Humans? Earth? - Not possible,” responded the ship’s computer when 487 asked it if humans are a multi-dimensional species. Still, there was no other logical answer. Nothing 487 could think of explained why either the star map system or the exterior view screen was malfunctioning, let alone both of them. Radiation from the solar storm when the ship left Earth’s orbit wasn’t nearly enough to cause this kind of damage. “No, that can’t be right, can it—two places at once?”487 whispered thoughtfully. But there was no other explanation; somehow, the ship had split into two planes of existence, neither one sufficiently dense enough to send a signal over the ship’s nav or comm systems. In other words, the ship was functioning as two ghost ships. 487 had no idea how to reconfigure it back onto one whole ship and watched in growing bewilderment as the nav screen continued its endless loop of rerouting. Back at the coffee shop, my seclusion was interrupted by people suddenly starting to gather at the front window, then moving out onto the street and looking upwards. As much as I wanted to stay seated and solve the storyline of how 487 finally manages to contact Laru for help, I had to peel myself away and satisfy my growing curiosity about what was going on outside. I left my table and everything on it to take a look. The experience of near-total silence as I stepped outside struck me as even more mysterious than the gathering people. Then I noticed that I was the only one moving or appearing to have any degree of consciousness; the rest, like statues, were just standing there frozen in upward gazes. Following their gaze, I looked up and saw a lenticular cloud formation open up overhead revealing a black triangular-shaped ship with strobing orange and red lights. The ship

began a slow descent then headed towards an open park just a block away from the coffee shop. Nothing and no one else moved. When the ship landed, a beam of bright white light burst out from its hull. I stared in utter disbelief as about 100 people stepped out of the near-blinding light into the surrounding park. As suddenly as it had appeared, the light went out, and the ship was gone. It did not fly away or ascend into the sky; it just vanished, leaving a cool mist in its wake. When the mist cleared, people began regaining consciousness and going about their business apparently without any recollection of what had just happened. Still in a state of disbelief but functional, I walked over to the park and started talking with the people who had inexplicably just arrived by spaceship. I found out they were from cities and towns around the world and had no idea how they ended up in Phoenix on a Monday morning. Scene: Was this the instruction Laru gave 487 when he finally made contact? Is this how Laru, and doubtless others, were saving humanity from Enliel’s ruthless harvesting? Cosmic travel tip: Never forget you might be in two places at once, even in Phoenix! Contributing author - Andi