Fortunately the Milk

with his tail.
    “I’VE LOST THE MILK!” I told him.
    “That’s not good,” he admitted.
    “But I know where it is. It’s on top of Splod’s head, on the side of the volcano.”
    Professor Steg said, “Good Splod! What on earth is that?”
    Before our eyes, another balloon, just like ours, appeared, over by the volcano. A man hurried down the rope ladder. He placed a large emerald in Splod’s eye, picked up the milk from Splod’s head, ran up the ladder, and the balloon vanished.

    The very small volcano stopped erupting as suddenly as if it had been turned off.
    “That was a bit peculiar, wasn’t it?” said the professor.
    “It was,” I agreed, gloom and despair and despondency overcoming me. “That man in that balloon stole my milk. We are lost in the past, with jungles and pirates and volcanoes. Now I will never get home. My children will never have breakfast. We are doomed to float forever through the dusty air of the past in a hot air balloon.”
    “It is not a balloon,” said Professor Steg. “It is a Floaty-Ball-Person-Carrier. What nonsense you do talk. Now, I think that should do the trick.”
    He finished attaching the emerald to the box, using string, mostly, and also sticky tape, and he pushed the red button.
    “Where are we going?” I asked. It seemed like the sun was zooming across the sky, as if nights were following days in a flickering strobe.
    “The far, far future!” said Professor Steg.
    The machine stopped.
    We were hanging in the air above a grassy plain, with a very small grey mountain beneath us.
    “There,” said Professor Steg. “It is now an extinct volcano. BUT LOOK!”

    On the side of the extinct volcano was carved the face of Splod, still recognizable, even though it was much eroded by time and the weather, and in the single eye was a huge green emerald, a perfect twin to the one that we had attached to the Time Machine.
    “Right,” said Professor Steg. “Grab me that special-shiny-greeny-stone.”
    I went over the side of the gondola and down the rope ladder. I pulled the emerald out of the eye socket.
    Below me, on the plain, a number of brightly colored ponies were gathered, and when I picked up the emerald, one of them shouted up at me. “You must be the man without the milk. We have heard about you, in our tales.”
    “Why are you a pink pony with a pale blue star on the side?” I asked.
    “I know,” said the pony with a sigh. “It’s what everybody’s wearing these days. Pale blue stars are so last year.”
    Professor Steg leaned over the side of the balloon’s basket. “Hurry up!” he called. “If the volcano is going to go off, it will do it any moment.”
    The volcano made a noise like a huge burp, and the middle of it collapsed into itself.
    “We thought it would do that,” said a green pony with a sparkly mane.
    “There was a prophecy, I suppose,” I said.
    “No. We’re just very clever.” All the ponies nodded. They were very clever ponies.
    “I am so glad there were ponies,” said my sister.

I got back into the balloon basket. Professor Steg unhooked the first emerald from his Time Machine and replaced it with the one that I had just taken from the weathered face of Splod-in-the-Future.

    “Do not, whatever else you might do,” said the professor, “touch those two stones together.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because, according to my calculations, if the same object from two different times touches itself, one of two things will happen. Either the Universe will cease to exist. Or three remarkable dwarfs will dance through the streets with flowerpots on their heads.”
    “That sounds astonishingly specific,” I said.
    “I know. But it is science . And it is much more probable that the Universe will end.”
    “I thought it would be,” I said.
    “You look so sad,” Professor Steg told me.
    “I am! It’s the milk. My children are breakfastless—”
    “The milk!” said Professor Steg. “Of course!” And with that, Professor Steg pressed the red button with his heavily armored tail.
    There was a ZOOM , a TWORP , and a THANG , and we were hurtling through the cosmic void.
    And then it was dark.
    Very dark.
    “Oops,” said Professor Steg. “Overshot a little. Only by a week, though. Hold on. . . .”
    Professor Steg leaned over the side of the basket.
    “Excuse me?” he said. “Is there anyone around?”
    “Only me,” said a very surprised-sounding voice from below us. “The priest of Splod. Who is that up in