Justin Thyme

Junior agent in the Temporal Corps,

Justin felt nothing at all counted more

than preserving safe the continuum.

One day, while clearing the residuum

from a failed time-travel experiment

and checking again a key measurement,

he was shocked to find that a Time Scout crew

had gone missing in 1492.

Eight Scouts and their leader were out of luck,

having dropped through a time rift, then got stuck.

Their temporal van could never get back

unless someone found out and fixed the crack.

But Justin thought quick. To close up the slit,

he took out some thread from his sewing kit,

soaked it in an Einstein tachyon gel,

then sewed up that rift, securing it well.

The News of the Corps then led the headline,

atop page one, "A Stitch in Time Saves Nine".

Copyright ©2018, Paul H. Harder II

This poem is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 License.

This is my first intentional attempt to write a Feghoot poem, a shaggy dog story ending in a pun that makes sense only in the context of the story. And no, there is no such thing as an Einstein tachyon gel – but, if Star Trek can power a story by making up fake science, I can do it for a poem!