Robert Rankin - Nostradamus Ate My Hamster

Russell raised an eyebrow once more.

“They were , as it happens. When out of the blue, or the black really, as it was quite late at night, comes this god-awful racket. Like engines failing. I thought it must be a plane about to crash. And I remember thinking, that’s handy, because I could help.”

Russell raised the other eyebrow.

“All right. Well it didn’t sound like a big aircraft. A light aircraft. Maybe carrying drugs or something. But it wasn’t an aircraft. I looked all around and I couldn’t see anything. Then out of the black, out of absolutely nowhere, in fact, that thing in the hangar. That Flügelrad materializes in the air about twenty feet in front of me and crashes right down onto the ground. I nearly shat myself, I can tell you. And I ran. I won’t say I didn’t. You’d have run. I ran for a bit and then I thought, Roswell . Alien autopsies. Video rights. What would a dead alien be worth? You’d have thought the same.”

Russell shook his head.

“No, you wouldn’t have thought the same. But I thought it, so I crept back and hid and watched. And after a while the hatch opens and the ladder comes down and then out they come. Not aliens, like I was expecting, but Nazi soldiers. SS blokes, all the uniforms and everything, and they climb down and look around. Looking really baffled. And then there’s all this shouting in German, like ranting. And I thought, I’ve heard that voice and then –”

“Adolf Hitler got out,” said Russell.

“Adolf Hitler got - What do you mean? How did you know that ?”

“A lucky guess?”

“Hm. Well, it was him, Russell. It really was. Looking exactly the same as he did in the pictures.”

“I believe you,” said Russell. “I really do.”

“Blimey,” said Bobby Boy. “Well, it was him. And he gets out and climbs down the ladder and shouts at these SS blokes and they shrug and continue to look baffled. And one goes back in and gets a map or something. And they study this and then they all march off. And I watch them go and when they’re well away into the distance, I creep over and have a shifty inside. Wait until you see it. It’s all old radio valves and dials and turncocks and levers. So I’m inside and I’m wondering what to do. It seems as if this thing’s crash landed and I think, well, should I pull out a few bits so it can’t be mended and phone the newspapers and do a deal? I mean, well, this has to be news, doesn’t it? So I’m tinkering about, wondering which bit to remove when I twiddle this dial and the next thing that happens is the ladder retracts, the hatch snaps shut and the whole thing shakes like crazy. And once again I have to hold onto my guts.”

Russell had finished his second stolen Scotch and he rattled his glass on the desk top. Bobby Boy poured another small measure into it.

“So I’m thinking, Get out before the frigging thing blows up. But then the rattling stops, the hatch opens again and the ladder goes down. So I rush out. And this is where it gets weird.”

“Oh, this is where it gets weird.”

“This is where it gets really weird. You see, it isn’t night any more. Only a few minutes have passed inside the Flügelrad but outside it’s daytime. And it isn’t the next daytime either. Oh no. When I take a look outside, everything’s different. The Flügelrad –”

“Why do you keep calling it that?”

“Because that’s what it is. I found the instruction manual and notes and stuff. I got a German dictionary from the library.”

“They don’t let you take out dictionaries, they’re in the reference section.”

“I nicked one, all right? But I managed to do a translation. But that’s later on, let me tell you what happened next. I get out and I’m not on the allotment any more. Well, I am. I am where the allotment used to be. Now it’s a park. A nice park and all around it are these smart new houses. But they’re futuristic houses. I’m in the future, Russell.”

Russell made the face that says, Yeah, right! without actually saying it.

“OK, I didn’t know it then . The Flügelrad has landed in amongst a load of bushes and it’s pretty well hidden. I’m standing up on the dome looking around, so I figure that as I’m here, wherever I am, I might as well have a look round. So I get out and take a walk. I cross the park and I go out into the street. And the first thing I see is The Bricklayer’s Arms. It’s hardly changed. Except for the name on it, now it’s called The Flying Swan, and the road isn’t the Ealing Road any more, now it’s the something-strazzer or something.

“German name, right? I’m pretty shaken up by this, as you can understand, but I go walkabout. And up where the Great West Road should be, there’s this huge shopping centre. Huge. Oh yeah, Russell, and there’s cars. Flying cars, I kid you not. Volkswagens they are. But sort of souped up and flying. Landing in car parks on top of the shopping centre.”

“What about people?” Russell asked.

“Yeah, there’s people. They look pretty hot. Tall and blond, really well dressed. The women have these golden scaley dresses. The men have the futuristic uniforms, like Star Trek , but they’ve got swastikas on them. Freaky, right? Well, I’m pretty sure now that I must be in the future, but I know there’s one way to find out – because they always do it in the movies – find a newspaper shop and check the date. Well, there’s no newspaper shop, because there’s no newspapers.”

“So how did you find out?”

“I’m coming to that. I’m all in my black, right, like I always am. Because it suits me so well, as you know.”

Russell nodded, although he didn’t agree.

“Well, as I’m walking along the street, blokes keep saluting me, flapping their right palms up, like the short Nazi salute. So I keep saluting back, and I stop one bloke and I say excuse me, like. And he snaps to attention and looks really worried and I ask him the date.”

“You just asked him the date?”

“Yeah, well actually it was a pretty stupid thing to do, but it was all so freaky and I couldn’t think of anything else.”

“And he told you?”

“He like barked it out. ‘Twenty-third of May.’ What year? I ask. ‘2045,’ he says, and ‘Sir’. ‘Very good,’ said I, and he salutes again and off he goes.”

“Ludicrous,” said Russell. “That never happened to Reece in The Terminator .”

“That was just a movie, Russell.”

“Oh yes of course, and your experience was real life. My mistake.”

“Do you want some more Scotch?”

“Yes please.”

Bobby Boy poured another short measure. “Well, he told me and he saluted and off he went. I went off to the shopping centre. The stuff in the shops seemed mostly as you’d expect. Clothes, things like that. Except in the gift shops there were all these posters and mugs and plates and things, all with Hitler on them. Whole shops that sold nothing else. I didn’t go in any of those. But I came across this one shop that really interested me, it was like a Tandys, but it had some German name. It was an electrical shop, right, TVs, hi-fis. Shit, Russell, you should have seen the gear they had. Computer games like you wouldn’t believe. Holographic stuff. Kids were in there playing them, sitting on little chairs, but they didn’t have those silly virtual reality helmets on, they were right in the middle of the games they were playing, spaceships whizzing past them, laser beams going everywhere. And that’s when I saw him.”

“Saw who?”

“Elvis,” said Bobby Boy.

“Oh yes, right.”

“Elvis. And Marilyn Monroe and James Dean, oh and Marlene Dietrich. She was there.”