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Knox / Tour Guide / Page 1 Andrew Knox English 284 Final Story March 10, 2012 Tour Guide

e Outskirts, Philadelphia, PA, 1778. Benjamin Franklin, a score of steps from the front door of his log cabin, stands in the heavy rain, scanning the skies. Lightning crackles in a nearby cloud, he doesn't even get to the count of one before the thunder arrives. Tonight's the night. He's ready. He strides briskly through the puddles forming on the pathway and right through the door. His last kite got soggy before he could get any observable results. Newsprint and old copies of Poor Richard's Almanack just can't withstand that much water. Looking around the living room, he mentally examines and discards alternative materials, dismissing bark, bed sheets, his jacket, the litter of stray kittens, until he remembers the briefcase behind the kindling chest. He opens the briefcase on the table, taking out two parchments: an original copy of the Declaration and his Illuminati membership documentation. Aha, vellum! Both sheets

completely unfolded barely covers the surface area inside the diamond-shaped twig frame. It will work this time, Ben and the storm have an agreement. One last try and Ben will never ask it for help ever again. He promised. When he finishes the kite, he ties off the corners with copper twine. These four strands tie together into a hundred yard length raveled up in the space between the crook of his right hand and the elbow. He ties the tool shed key about twenty feet from his end of the line, and sighs with completion. Back out in the storm, he tosses the kite upwards. The wind catches it and starts tugging on the line. He straightens his bent arm, allowing the rapid unraveling and ascension of the line and the kite. Seventy five feet, one hundred feet, he can barely see it, one hundred fifty feet, just

Knox / Tour Guide / Page 2 a beige dot inside a lightning strike. Two hundred feet and he's lost visual contact, but the twine keeps spiraling off of his arm. When there's no more slack, the line jerks taught and almost free of his grasp, but he recovers. Now it is the storm's turn. Breathe in, breathe out. He turns his head to acknowledge a passing carriage, and in that moment, lightning strikes, racing down the wire at the speed of, well, light. But in this rendition, the key doesn't complete the circuit, he does. Convulsing with electricity, his proudest memories, of the Continental Congresses, of founding Philadelphia's Fire Department, of the birth of his illegitimate son, but mostly of tawdry affairs with Parisian and Bostonian hookers, flash before his eyes. He closes his eyes and collapses backwards, but never touches the ground. He just keeps falling backwards. For better or for worse, Benjamin Franklin has become displaced in time. He falls gently through a black and white swirling hypno-scape until he lands on a pile of dirty clothes on the floor next to my bed. The time-space continuum is like a 1987 Mazda, you can only run up so many miles on it before the cheap repairs no longer work and the bigger components start to fail one after the other. Our timeline is breaking down, but right now it is manageable. Occasionally (about two or three times a day globally), people from the past will appear all of the sudden somewhere in the present. Some people claim the government has a machine that pulls characters out of the past on purpose, and pairs them with young people in need of character. Thankfully, these visitors are all well-known historical figures and, for some reason, all speak perfect, unaccented Modern English. This is no longer considered a terrifying development by the general public, so citizens are selected at random to act as tour guides to the time refugees. The lottery for this position is run by the same administration as jury duty. It is mandatory and nobody likes it, but I am determined to make the best of a shitty situation, to have fun if nothing else.

Knox / Tour Guide / Page 3 Where in God's name am I? He gets to his feet as fast as a rotund octogenarian can, backs up to the wall, letting loose a series of gasps upon cognizance of all the strange devices in the room until his back accidentally flips on the light switch. He shrieks a little bit. What is this? An indoor sun? A flame-less candle? It's a compact florescent light bulb, I say. He hadn't noticed me till now. Badly startled, he hollers and lurches backwards again, accidentally flipping the light switch off. Who are you? Where did you take the light? he asks. I give a sigh and begin to recite the Time Wanderer Welcome Speech we were required to memorize to pass Senior Civics class back in High School. Welcome, Time Wanderer, welcome, to the future! The future? he asks. His face crumples. Yes, about 250 years have passed since your last recollection. I have been assigned to assist, acclimate and rehabilitate you in the transition from your former life to your new one. There is no reason to worry about those you have left behind, as everyone you know and love has been dead for hundreds of years. This is usually the part where less intelligent historical celebrities will act out and interrupt the spiel, but Franklin just sort of grimaces and whimpers and waits for me to continue. But I can't remember what comes next, so we just stare at each other for a while. Which colony is this? he eventually asks. We are in the United States. Oh, thank God. I never thought the country would make it more than twenty years. Yes, but we are on the other side of the continent, in Washington State. The great expansion of the nation he partially sired doesn't seem to faze him. He seems more interested in

Knox / Tour Guide / Page 4 the lighting system. So, the old general couldnt resist naming another thing after himself, eh?... Curious When I scratch my back against this wall, I can snuff this flame-less candle and relight it, almost at will. Turn around, that's called a light switch. Aha! he works himself into giddy laughter as he flips the switch on and off and on again. Sir, this is simply amazing! You must show me how it works. I have the whole world to show you first. He that would live in peace and at ease must not speak all he knows or all he sees. Aw, shut up, you smart-ass.

I get dressed first. I don't care if he judges my appearance, but I can tell from the look in his eyes that he certainly is judging my appearance. He asks me why I haven't sewed shut the holes in the knee of my jeans and I tell him it's just the style nowadays. His brow furrows when I don my white Nuns-with-Guns Rage Against the Machine t-shirt, but I don't have the energy to explain communism to him right now. Do all men of this age wear such drab tunics? Yeah, and many women too. Ah, you are a wise folk to have dispensed with those frivolous petticoats. It's been working pretty well so far. He picks up a shirt from the dirty clothes pile to feel it, run it through his fingers. So soft! So finely spun! he finds the tag, eighty-percent cotton? What is the rest of it?

Knox / Tour Guide / Page 5 You don't wanna get into that. We leave my bedroom and enter the living room of my apartment. I guess I left the TV on last night. Homeowners! a loud commercial starring a thick jawed suit booms, Were you tricked by a corporation into installing asbestos in the walls of your house? You may be entitled to substantial compensation... I mute the TV. What did you do to that little man to silence him? And, why do you keep him in that box? He was wary at first, hiding behind the couch, but once I explained several times that watching television is what we do instead of reading books in the future, and the commercial changed to one for auto insurance, he was willing to sit next to me on the couch and take in the warm glow. That was just an advertisement for a cheap law firm. A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats . Look! That lizard speaks! I know, I've seen this one a million times. Why would you sit through this a thousand thousands of times? No, I meant that was just an expression. And the lizards just trying to sell car insurance. Does the lizard maintain sufficient capital to indemnify against all possible losses? What? Uh, no, hes just a cartoon spokesman. Cartoon spokesman? Surely that lizard is not a man. That lizard aint a lizard neither. Its a computer generated image. What is that? That isnt a real talking lizard, I answer, realizing I'm in over my head.

Knox / Tour Guide / Page 6 Is it a demon, then? No, it is a character brought to life by people, and given words to speak by people. Its a moving drawing. There is nothing amazing about it. Neither of us really feels that his questions have been satisfied. We sit quietly for a moment, taking it all in. Where was he walking, with all those people? he asks after a while. I think it was the Brooklyn Bridge, in New York City. So, they have bridges there now. Yup. Remind me to take you there sometime.

It turns out that the television is the perfect tool for this job; it displays all the trappings and customs of our contemporary society while keeping the dangerous and uncomfortable bits at a pleasant distance. If I had simply taken him outside right off the bat, he would've been overwhelmed by all cement roads, horse-less carriages, electric trees, all of the order. With the television, we can almost deal with one detail at a time. He questions everything. I explain everything. It's like he's my child. My little old fat rustic New World genius man. I tell him, however briefly, about American history and world affairs since 1800, about light bulbs, microwaves, iPods, telephones, computers, atom bombs, and internal combustion engines his eyes glaze over when I try to explain the Internet. He doesn't seem surprised at all that black people, or people of any color, are almost treated like equal citizens. What does take him into a long stupor of reflection is the tale of female empowerment. So, now ladies may traverse the streets without escort, wearing pantaloons? Yes, they look rather good in pantaloons. And they may say 'no' to a gentleman's advances?

Knox / Tour Guide / Page 7 They can and will. Oh, if only for the good old days. That was an expression back then?

He's quite the quick learner. In only fifteen minutes, he no longer has to ask me to show him how the remote control works again. He flips channels quicker and quicker as he relaxes and reclines into the couch and puts his feet up. I'm so proud of him, only inserted into the future two hours ago and he already looks like a real American. But, things that held him in a state of awe earlier now seem to bore him. He starts to flip channels quicker than I can identify them out loud. That was weather, that's the news channel, that's the liberal news channel, that's the financial news channel, that's the conservative news channel, that's the crime channel, that's the women's channel, that's the other women's channel, I don't know this one, that's the history channel, that's the black people's channel, that's the comedy channel, oh, uh, and this is the music channel... Pornography! No, no, this is what we call popular music. A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges. Cake? Are you hungry? I ask him. If I could trouble you... Just a second, I got something you might like. I race to the kitchen and return with two cans of Budweiser and a bag of mini pretzels. Once I show him how to open a can, he takes a sip and murmurs a remark about how smooth and pulp free it is. Next, he gets gluttonish over the

Knox / Tour Guide / Page 8 pretzels, shoveling handfuls at a time. He's never had such salty food and he loves it. These are too delicious, he says, I saw few die of hunger; of eating, a hundred thousand. Only one thing missing from the quintessential modern American experience, I say while wrestling away control of the remote from him to change the channel. I can't believe I almost forgot the Super Bowl was today. There's still an hour until kickoff, so the pre-game show talking heads can blather their nonsense on low volume while I give him my best primer on American Football. Once he's up to speed, he proposes a

gentleman's wager, one hundred dollars to the winner. I take the Giants, he takes the Patriots.

The following day (I think), I wake up in the bathtub, dipped in vinegar. Hung the duck over, I shake myself somewhat dry and poke my splitting head out the bathroom door. My apartment is a disaster zone. Beer bottles, empty bags of chips, pizza boxes and assorted feathers, this is the palette of the litter. There's a live turkey in the kitchen, clawing at the oven door. From somewhere, I hear an old man snoring. Ah, it's coming from underneath the pillow fort. I excavate and discover a much thinner man than I expected to find. Who the hell let Coolidge into the party! I yell to no answer. Get the hell out of here! After steadfastly evicting Calvin, Martin Luther, a couple future-bums and a heroin-chic Marie Antoinette, I find Ben is nowhere to be found. Fuck. I lost him. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. But just as I zip up my bag to flee the country, he strides through the front door, jittery and smiling. Ah, sir! What a great and cheersome day it is! Everything so bright and active! Where the hell have you been! I've been worried sick! How many times have I said, 'no

Knox / Tour Guide / Page 9 going outside without an adult!' Not once. Well I thought it was clearly implied! Nevermind, where did you go? Why are you so damn happy allahdasudden? I slur to completion. I went out for a walk, to clear my head of the alcohol's revenge, and took a glimpse at the sights you had been preparing me for. Walking down the avenue, I met a merchant, a young man with blue thorns for hair who introduced me to this most splendid elixir! Have you tried it? He called it... Red Bull. It is amazing! More palatable and stronger than coffee, indeed! I have since imbibed four servings and I feel... invigorated! Well, isn't that great. I hope I can keep up with you during the field trip. Field trip? To where? he asks, smile broadening. We're going to the mall. What is the mall? he questions like clockwork. Uh, the bazaar? Ah, yes, the bazaar. Be sure to keep your wits about you. Wouldn't want a spindly Arab sneaking up behind and cutting loose your coinpurse. Whatever, dude, let's just get in the car.

Once we're both seated and I have him buckled in, I turn the key. The shudder and shake and roar of my piece of crap coming to life puts glee into his countenance. He's never gone above thirty miles an hour before, so I don't take his white-knuckled grip around the armrest or occasional panicked gasps personally. I'm not that bad of a driver, am I? No, you're the best driver I know.

Knox / Tour Guide / Page 10 At least I have his endorsement. At the mall, he wants to see everything. Every, thing. He lingers as we pass the lingerie store, gawking at bra and panties display mannequins. His first brain freeze comes courtesy of Orange Julius. After three circuits, he has run me ragged, so I park myself on an uncomfortable couch and let him burn off energy running up and down the down and up escalators. Moving stairs, moving stairs, stairs of the fuuuuture! he sings in a mocking tune. I don't need to stand for his insults. I'm done babysitting, I wanna bounce. I'm getting the shakes and feeling I gotta leave this fake ass zone. On his fifth lap of the escalators, he turns his back as he gets on the up side. I leap from my seat and take off sprinting towards the department store we came in through. His song grows fainter with each step til I only hear the ringing echo of the fuuuuuture! There couldn't possibly be any consequences for this. He'll be alright, old people belong in malls. It isn't til I get in the driver's seat of my car, about to put the key into the ignition, that I ask myself Do you think he got the message yet? I run through the department store, retracing my escape, only slowing down to a confident stride as I come around the corner of the mall intersection I abandoned him at. I spot him standing next to the gum ball machines, wringing his hands and weeping hard, scanning passersby. I pretend to try to sneak past him, but he tackles me from the side and forces a lower chest bear hug. His tears stain my shirt salty. His choked cries resemble pleas of don't leave me!, but only sometimes. He may be a fat old crybaby, but he's my fat old crybaby.

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