‘Self-destruct in ten… nine…eight…’

As the computerized voice droned on, Legcramp desperately mashed buttons on the speedboat/time machine’s dashboard, hoping to find some way to avoid being exploded (again).

‘Seven… six… five…’ it continued.

‘YOU FOOL!’ Nosebleed roared. ‘WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?’

‘Four… three… two…’

‘How do I turn it off? HOW DO I TURN IT OFF?’ Legcramp pleaded.

‘One… zero point seventy-five… zero point fifty…’

‘PRESS THE MAGENTA BUTTON!’ Nosebleed shouted.

‘Turbo self-destruct sequence initiated,’ said the time machine.

‘THAT’S THE FUSCHIA BUTTON! I SAID MAGENTA!’

‘Pull the orange lever to the third notch and yank the pull cord!’ Skeleton said.

‘No, no, no!’ Heartburn objected. ‘You have to spin the chrono-regulation wheel 240 degrees and pump up the nebula bags with the nozzle under the passenger-seat chair!’

‘INCORRECT!’ bellowed Nosebleed. ‘THE ONLY WAY TO FORCE A COMPLETE SHUTDOWN IS BY PRESSING THE MAGENTA BUTTON!’

‘Ultra-turbo Kaioken x20 self-destruct sequence initiated,’ said the time machine.

‘YOU PRESSED THE PERSIAN ROSE BUTTON!’ Nosebleed cried. ‘ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME?’

‘Yank the pull cord!’ said Skeleton.

‘The wheel! THE WHEEL!’ Heartburn insisted.

‘Zero point zero zero three… Zero point zero zero two…’

Legcramp went for broke. With both hands he pressed as many buttons on the dashboard as possible. Then he was gone.

All around him swirled an array of colors and lights. They shimmered and flickered in and out of existence, sometimes forming enormous geometric patterns, other times just darting about at random like extremely confused ants. The speedboat warped and jiggled like liquid in a vacuum, sometimes constricting as if it was trying to turn itself inside-out. Legcramp felt simultaneously invigorated and drained. In this psychedelic abyss, the future and past entangled like earbud cables left in a pocket for more than three minutes. It was weird.

‘Zero point zero zero one...’ the time machine said, its robotic voice garbled by the weird wobbly atmosphere.

Legcramp had certainly done something, but he hadn’t stopped the countdown.

‘Zero,’ said the time machine. ‘Goodbye, cruel world.’

The speedboat exploded, rippling the space around it like water. Propelled by the shockwave, Legcramp was catapulted off into the rainbow void, his only way of returning home now destroyed.

Legcramp floated aimlessly for nine weeks, four days, thirteen hours, fifty-eight minutes and two seconds. He wasn’t sure how fast he was going or how far he had traveled from the explosion, but he did, for some reason, have a perfect internal clock. Perks of being trapped in the space between timelines, he supposed. The spectacular colors and the distant sound of lo-fi hip-hop radio 24/7 chill beats to study/relax to stopped him from going completely insane from boredom, but Legcramp did wish something more interesting would happen. He wasn’t quite yet on board with being stuck in this place for the rest of eternity. It was on the second second of the fifty-eighth minute of the thirteenth hour of the fourth day of the ninth week of floating that something more interesting indeed happened. Legcramp floated straight into another floating person. The other person was a vampire, too, and seemed very, very old. Older than Heartburn and Nosebleed, even. Vampires aged much more slowly compared to other lifeforms, but over enough time the years did begin to show. Strangely, Legcramp found this vampire somewhat familiar, but he couldn’t place how.

‘Holy timezones!' said the Vampire. 'Only nine weeks! I’ve never met you so new!’

‘Who are you?’ Legcramp asked. Seemed like a reasonable question, all things considered.

‘You haven’t realized?’ the vampire asked. ‘I’m you, from the future.’

Legcramp blinked.

The other vampire, who was also Legcramp apparently, chuckled. ‘I forget how much time it takes to get acclimated to this place. One moment you’re in space-time, now you’re in time-space! Must be quite a shock. You see, in the world we came from, space-time, spaces takes priority. We lived in space, we breathed space. It was all particles and waves, all happening everywhere at once. In time-space, it’s the opposite. In here, time rules. Instead of particles and waves, there are seconds and hours, as physical as you and I. And all those seconds and hours exist at once, changing together, not apart!’

Legcramp nodded along, pretending he was listening.

‘That’s how we are both here, together,’ other Legcramp continued. ‘You only a few months into your stay, and me hundreds of millions of years.’

Legcramp snapped into focus. ‘Hundreds… of millions?’

‘Yes,’ said other Legcramp. ‘Without a time machine, there is no escape. I’m actually one of the younger Legcramps floating about! Theta Fifty is hitting his four quadrillionth birthday in just a few hundred millennia. There’ll be cake!’

Ignoring the headache-inducing timescales at play, Legcramp instead asked, ‘Theta Fifty?’

The other Legcramp nodded. ‘Ah yes, we call each other by our timelines. Similar timelines are grouped under greek letters, then numbered. I, for instance, am Sigma 430. If you check your right shoulder, the time-space imprints a tattoo of sorts informing you of your timeline.’

Legcramp pulled up his sleeve, and sure enough, there was the symbol α, tattooed in glowing white ink.

‘Isn’t there supposed to be a number?’ Legcramp asked.

Sigma 430 gasped. ‘I don’t believe it! You’re… Alpha Legcramp!’ He began to tear up. ‘After all these years!’

‘Listen,’ Legcramp said. ‘I just need to find a way out. I don’t care about all this exposition stuff.’

Sigma wiped the tears from his eyes. ‘Just thirty seconds ago I would’ve called it impossible, but you… you’re Alpha Legcramp! With you, we may all finally be free!’

‘Okay, fine. What’s special about Alpha?’ Legcramp asked, bracing himself for another paragraph of explanation.

‘The Alpha timeline is… How should I say this…?’ Sigma stroked his bearded chin. ‘The Alpha timeline is the main timeline. The important timeline. The one the plot centers on.’

Legcramp cocked his head. ‘The… plot?’

Sigma suddenly looked very flustered. ‘I… uhh… Forget I said that.’

‘So how does this help me escape?’ Legcramp asked, suddenly and inexplicably forgetting any mention of a plot.

Sigma wiped the sweat from his brow and sighed in relief. ‘Being from the Alpha timeline means you’re the main Legcramp. You have to escape. It’s inevitable, no matter what. The Eye can’t just let you stay stuck here for—‘

Sigma suddenly found his mouth sealed shut, preventing him from speaking any more foolish words. For no reason in particular, he forgot all about the Alpha timeline and instead remembered that there was a spare time machine conveniently floating just nearby.

‘What eye?’ Legcramp asked.

‘Eye?’ said Sigma. ‘I didn’t say anything about an eye. I was just talking about that time machine near here that you can use to escape.’

Legcramp was very confused. ‘Huh? You didn’t say anything about a time machine. You said there was no way out of here just a few minutes ago.’

Sigma laughed. ‘Did I? I must have misspoken.’

Legcramp stared at his future self. ‘Why haven’t you used the time machine to escape, then?’

Sigma froze in place. ‘I… I… suppose it just never occurred to me. It’s quite nice here once you get used to it. So how about that birthday party?’

‘Where’d it come from?’ Legcramp asked, glaring into Sigma’s eyes.

Sigma avoided his gaze and said, ‘Where did what come from?’

‘The time machine.’

Sigma pursed his lips and tried to look casual. ‘Ooh, I don’t know… around…’

Legcramp sighed. He supposed spending hundreds of millions of years in this place would do who-knows-what to someone’s psyche. ‘Just show me where it is,’ Legcramp said.

‘Of course, of course!’ Sigma said, kicking off a nearby floating hour and gesturing at Legcramp to follow. Legcramp hesitated for a second, then kicked off the hour and floated after him. For some strange reason, Legcramp felt like he was being watched. Probably just his imagination.