“Oh, well that certainly explains your outrageous clothing… from my point of view that is.”
His suit shimmered with shifting light and coloured in swirling patterns the eye struggled to follow. About his suit were several equipment modules with pipes and cables connecting to each other in various combinations. Upon his impressive cranium he wore a headdress of brightly coloured strips of tissue paper kept aloft by a small fan. His tie, however, was a very dull shade of grey, which on close inspection turned out to be the fur of a specially aged polecat.
“Oh, this isn’t the fashion of my time. I’m a pioneer you see; I’m bringing it in.” said Vince.
As I moved my face away from his neckwear and seated myself once more I noticed that Darwin was no longer in the room.
“Did you see where my dog went?” I asked.
“No, I can’t say that I did.”
“I’m sure he’ll turn up soon. Anyway, how do you go about this time travelling?”
“I’m glad you asked. You see all this equipment on my clothing?”
I nodded.
“Well, it warps the fabric of space-time in such a way as to allow something, or someone, to circumvent its normal conventions,” he continued.
“Please, keep the technical jargon to a minimum, Vince. It’s for the sake of my readers, you see. I’m very interested though. What are those tubes running into your skin?”
“Ah, I’m having a little technical difficulty at the moment. Time travel is not without its complications. I have an issue with metal balancing, which affects my passage through time.”
I was scribbling his ramblings down furiously when I noticed a pig next to my bookshelf, chewing on a rare, print edition, of the first ever SJIS.
“What’s that doing in here?!” I demanded “Did you bring it with you? You should’ve been made aware of the strict policies governing the transport of livestock on airships.”
Vince just shook his head, sending the strips of tissue paper dancing about.
“It’s not mine. Don’t worry this sort of thing sometimes happens around me. It’s just a little temporal displacement. I imagine you’re going to order bacon sandwiches or other pork based products soon,” said Vince.
His mention of bacon sandwiches gave me a brilliant idea. I picked up my phone and pressed the button to talk to my secretary.
“Holly, can we get two bacon sandwiches in here please?”
“Get your own damn sandwiches!” Holly screeched in her usual charismatic manner, “I’ve got my own problems you know: the SJIS soda machine has stopped working! How am I meant to make you lunch, when I can’t even get a drink?!”
“Just do it. It’s what I pay you for.”
“Whatever!”