Rusty was a tough kinda guy in a tough kinda bar. A patriotic ex-patriot of the Divided State of the Anarcho-Capitalist Americas, Rusty felt it was his duty to kick an extra-especially large amount of ass now that he was stuck off-world. He was the ambassador of just exactly why it was a bad idea to mess with the DSA and worked hard to maintain the reputation. It was to this end that he was telling a largely embellished story about something that never happened to a Silicon-based life-form that looked like an upside-down screw with spider legs.

As he got to a particularly imaginary part of the story, he waved his arms in the air for emphasis. As he did so, his hand collided with a bipedal Lizard that was walking by, spilling both their beers and dooming Rusty’s home planet.

“Hey,” said Rusty in drunken anger “Why don’tcha watch where you’re going?”

“We think that maybe you should watch where you’re waving your hand!” hissed the Lizard in reply. It stood up and threw its fur cape back behind it, and straightened its crown.

“Well, you gonna buy me a new beer, or am I going to have to get rough?” asked Rusty, reaching for the unnecessarily large laser he wore openly on his belt.

“You fool. Do you have any idea who we are? We rule entire galaxies. We command more soldiers than there are beings in your universe. We refer to ourselves in the royal we! We could destroy your puny world and everyone on it,” boomed the Lizard, motioning towards the rest of the bar with his hand.

“I tell you what your majesty you go ahead and blow up this dump. I don’t even live here. Ain’t you never heard of humans? I ain’t from no one-city hole like Niddia Prime fulla bugs n’ shit. I’m from New New New Earth!”

Rusty beat his chest. Schoolin’ folk before beating their brains out always made him feel patriotic.

“The merest wave of my hand could reduce it to dead, dead, dead Earth,” the Lizard deadpanned. The joke was terrible, but two of his cronies laughed anyway just to kiss his ass.

“Oh yeah?” asked Rusty “Prove it.” 

* * *

“It’s definitely the past,” said Randal as he plodded through the dirt.

“It has to be the future,” replied Mint, trudging along beside him. She was from a later point in history than Randal and she felt this added weight to her opinion.

Randal and Mint had just appeared at this point in time a few hours ago via means they didn’t quite understand, and they still weren’t sure when they were. They had just started walking in a random direction from the place they materialized in.

“The air smells really clean. I remember reading in a comic-book somewhere that the air in the past would smell clean,” explained Randal.

“I don’t know what that is,” Mint replied “But the air is only cleaner in the past if you’re from a barbaric throwback civilization that hasn’t invented air cleaners yet.”

They arrived at the edge of a ridge, and looked down. Just below was a windowless building shaped like half a golf-ball. Spaceships had been parked haphazardly around it. A spinning hologram of neon alien letters identified the building as a bar to Mint. She would have bet a good sum of money that Randal couldn’t read them. Randal couldn’t, but even if he could he would have still been more concerned with a certain mirror colored saucer parked in a handicap space.
“Oh my god, isn’t that your ship Serendipity?” said Randal, pointing.

“It is,” Mint agreed.

“How Serendipitous”

“Not really,” replied Mint “It turns up like this all the time. If it’s here, that means we’ve obviously traveled into the future.”

Mint paused for a brief moment to bask in her correctness.

“Well, let’s hijack it,” she said. 

* * *

“Well,” said Rusty as he watched his home planet explode over the TV monitor “A fella’ knows when he’s beat. I’ll pay for the beer.”

The lizard sneered with an alien emotion something akin to sadism. Several large, heavily armed lizards came close enough to Rusty that they were no longer part of the general blur of the bar. Rusty reached for his gun, and stumbled to his feet. The lizard guards make a hissing noise that was supposed to be laughter. They made the mistake of taking time to aim. In an instant, Rusty fired off his laser at a mirror. The beam bounced off and hit the sole light-crystal hovering above the bar, shattering it and plunging the bar into darkness. Rusty kept his head down and ran for the tiny bar of light that indicated the exit. He slammed into the door and forced it open. The rest of the patrons, seeing the light of the door, rushed towards it like moths, causing a pile up.

Rusty pressed a button on his keychain and the docking bay of his spaceship lowered to let him in. He stumbled up it, pressed the button again to close it, and puked on the floor. 

* * *

Mint wrinkled her nose in an attempt to subconsciously influence the ship to become easier to hotwire, while Randal spun around in the pilots chair beside her.

“Maybe we should try the time bracelets again,” said Randal.

“Not until we have some control over them,” Mint replied “And we’re not going to find someone who can show us how they work on this planet, so we need a spaceship. And as luck would have it, mine’s here. We just have to steal it back.”

“I just don’t like stealing,” said Randal.

“It’s not stealing,” said Mint “it’s my ship.”

“But you just said it was stealing.”

“No I didn’t.”

“What if we get caught?” asked Randal.

“We’re not going to get caught,” scoffed Mint.

“Who the space-hell are you?” asked Rusty, standing in the doorway to the cockpit.

“Um…” said Randal, turning the chair to face him.

“Oh, it’s you two. Still traveling through time? Well nevermind. Outta my way, I gotta pilot this thing outta here.”

Rusty pushed Randal out of the seat and took hold of the controls. Serendipity buzzed to life. Rusty push down on the steering bar and the ship rose into the air in a very wobbly and indirect way. Suddenly, it snapped into faster-than-light speeds and took off.

Randal noticed that Rusty was sitting way further down in the chair than most would consider safe, and while he did seem to be paying attention to the road (“or the space,” Randal supposed) he didn’t seem to be gleaning much information from it. The ship jerked violently as Rusty suddenly turned to dodge a satellite last second.

“How did you know we had been time traveling. Is it very common here?” asked Randal, mostly to see if the man was still awake.

“Of course not. We met years ago on New New New Earth” replied Rusty, “Don’t you remember me? It’s me. Rusty.”

“Moon,” warned Mint.

Rusty swerved in surprise at hearing an unexpected noise, and by lucky coincidence it was in the direction away from the Moon they were about to hit.

“Maybe I should fly,” said Mint “You’re very drunk.”

“Good idea,” said Rusty, immediately letting go of the controls and falling out of the chair. Mint hastily grabbed them and dropped the ship out of accelerated light speed, setting them adrift in space. She spun around in the chair.

“So should I set in a course for New New New Earth?” asked Mint.

“Can’t say I’d recommend it,” mumbled Rusty “It just got exploded because a Lizard guy can’t take a joke.”

 “Another Earth was destroyed?” asked Randal.

“No that’s just what they called Earth 4 back in the day. I guess we did travel to the past,” Mint paused for a moment “Wait a minute, you must be Rusty D. Warpsmith!”

“See I told you you’d remember me,” said Rusty.

“I don’t remember meeting you. I only knew your name from History Class. You’re a genuine historical figure. You get lynched in one of the Orion colonies tomorrow.”

“Well then,” said Rusty “I have decided where we’re going: As far from Orion’s Belt as we can get.” 

* * *

The furthest planet from Orion’s Belt that Serendipity could reach with the quarter tank of fuel she had left was a third world world called Twee’noch. Mint set down on a landing pad she was certain was made of mud and started looking for someone to bribe to keep it from being stolen.

“Uhg,” said Rusty, stumbling out of the ship “Did we have to come to such a loud and bright planet? Aren’t there any quiet dark planets we could have come to instead?”

“Get used to it, we’re stuck here until we’ve refueled,” said Mint.

“You do that. I reckon I’ll find the dog that bit me and have a serious drink with him,” said Rusty, stumbling off in a random direction.

Randal came out of the ship in time to see Rusty stumble off into the crowd.

“Won’t stopping him from being hanged change history?” asked Randal.

“Screw history,” replied Mint.

“Oh yeah,” said Randal “This is going to end well.” 

* * *

It took Rusty fifteen minutes to find a bar, a personal worst. He walked in and bellied up to the stone bar.

“Gimme a double whiskey sour, and another for my hangover,” he said smiling. Rusty liked bars.

A moment of silence passed that made Rusty’s smile fade. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched and not being fed alcohol. He looked around. Everyone in the bar was staring at him. The giant screen behind the bar was displaying wanted posters, which meant that it was a bar frequented by bounty hunters. Rusty’s poster was very big, taking up almost half of the screen. The reward for his capture was $$1,000,000.

“Already?” asked Rusty indignantly “I just got the planet destroyed this morning.”

Many of the more heavily armed patrons began rising from their seats.

“Any chance I can still get that drink real quick?” asked Rusty.

Three armed three armed aliens advanced on him. Rusty put up his hands and walked towards the closest one.

“Alright, you caught me, let’s go,” he said.

The three armed alien grinned, and rubbed its chin with its third arm.

“Wait a second,” said the second three armed alien, “We all caught him. We’ll split the reward.”

“To warp with you, he was most afraid of me. That’s why he surrendered to me. Better luck next time,” said the first alien, grabbing Rusty with its second arm, and pointing its gun at the other alien with its third.

The other alien aimed his gun as well.

“I’ll do it,” said the first alien.

“So will I,” sneered the second.

Both aliens fired, and disintegrated each other. The rest of the bar patrons stared blankly, including the third bounty hunter. Rusty shot him in the face and ran for his life. 

* * *

In Mud Mort, like in most cities on Twee’noch, everything that wasn’t made of mud was alive or an advertisement. The air was thick with the smell of cooking garbage.

“Why did you bring us here?” asked Randal. Twenty minutes of shopping for rocket fuel in a city made out of mud and billboards had taken its toll on him.

“Well in my time this planet is a lot nicer,” said Mint.

“It certainly has nowhere to go but up.”

“Alright,” said Mint “There’s nothing we can do about it now, so let’s just try to find a place where we can refuel so we can leave.”

“Unless your ship runs on mud, I don’t think you’re going to find any fuel here,” said Randal. For all he knew Mint’s spaceship really did run on mud.

“There has to be a refueling station around here somewhere. Look,” she pointed to the sky “If there’s no fuel here, what’s powering all those ships up there?”

Rickety Twee’nochian spaceships noisily flew around overhead leaking vital components.

“Mud?” asked Randal.

“They have fuel. Serendipity is an open-minded ship. She’ll run on almost anything with a little creative rewiring.”

“Hey,” said Randal “Do you smell whiskey?”

Rusty slammed into Randal, knocking both men into the mud. Rusty scrambled to his feet.

“We’ve gotta leave this planet right now,” said Rusty “Let’s go.”

“We can’t,” said Mint “We have no fuel. Ship can’t run without fuel.”

“Then we’ve gotta find another ship!” Rusty insisted, shoving his face way too far into Mint’s personal space.

“What’s your problem all of the sudden?” demanded Randal, climbing to his feet.

“All of the sudden?” asked Mint.

“I’m a wanted man! There are posters and everything. The bounty is $$1,000,000!”

“What’s a space dollar?” asked Randal.

“What does it sound like?” replied Mint.

“We have to go now!” said Rusty.

“Why?” asked Mint “No one is chasing us. We’re just as safe here as anywhere else.”

“Who said no one was chasing me?”

“There’s someone behind you? Why haven’t they caught up yet?” demanded Mint.

“I get chased a lot, I’m a good runner. But we have to go. Now like.”

“We don’t have to go,” said Mint “You’re the one on the run.”

“You two are listed as accomplices,” Rusty lied “You’re worth $$50,000 each.”

The buzzing noise of repulsorcraft could be heard in the distance getting closer.

“Let’s go,” Mint conceded. 

* * *

A ten foot tall robot arm loaded a crate into the swirling rip in space-time. Randal watched from atop the mud-brick building that he, Rusty and Mint stood on. The crate disappeared into the blackness.

“What is that thing?” he asked.

“It’s an industrial wormhole,” said Rusty.

“But it must be a really primitive one, it being so far in the past,” said Mint “So they can probably only keep it open for a little while each day, and if they’re loading it now that means that it’s active now. We can jump in, come out the other end, and lay low there for a while without the possibility of being followed.”

“Where does it go?” asked Randal.

“Like you’d recognize the name if I did know where this thing goes,” said Mint “Stop asking dumb questions.”

Mint sat down, swung her feet around and jumped off the roof of the building. Rusty and Randal followed.

“From the looks of things, these arms are automated. They shouldn’t bother us if we don’t touch the cargo.”

“How do you know so much?” asked Randal.

“I’m just confident and make a lot of lucky guesses. It’s essentially the same thing,” replied Mint.

The three came upon the vortex and stared at it for a moment in silence. The robot arms whirred as they loaded more crates into it.

“Well,” said Mint “It’s not getting any safer.”

She pushed Rusty in and walked in after him. Randal quickly followed, his fear of being alone outweighing his fear of horrifying vortices. 

* * *

The first thing that Rusty noticed, after the wave of vertigo associated with using a wormhole with a hangover passed, was the giant logo on the far wall of the building he was in. Orion Trading Company it said across the top in big fancy orange letters. Noose Factory was written below in plain black.

The workers had all stopped working and were glaring at him. They were all human and looked like they were still sore about him causing the destruction of their homeworld.

Behind him, the wormhole closed.

“Huh,” grunted Rusty “What do we do now?”

“I’m thinking we give those time bracelets another go,” said Mint.

“Good idea,” said Randal.

They both pressed buttons on their metallic bracelets and disappeared in a puff of time. By then, the Orions were already fitting a noose around Rusty’s head.