By Kevin J. Phyland

It was raining the night we abandoned the Liars' Club meeting.

It was guest night, which meant members could bring along a guest who might tell a superior tall tale in the hope of securing the much-coveted Liars' Cup. In its previous life it had been a second prize award for Creative Floral Arrangement at a regional flower show, and the irony was not lost on the score or so members present. Now it was a rather battered and tawdry piece of tinware, but its value was in the kudos gathered from its possession, not its intrinsic worth.

The smell of cigars and the sweet hint of alcohol from a sherry decanter wafted effortlessly and directionless across the carpeted room, a small snug bar hired for Tuesday nights by the club, in the rear of the Gravedigger's Arms.

The hinged door swung open and Gaffer Greg, a local fisherman, strode in accompanied by a small woman in rain slicker and cap, which she doffed upon entering. She looked about nervously for somewhere to put the dripping objects and Gaffer directed her to a small cloak room where she divested herself of the offending apparel. They took seats at the far end of the large table, and the meeting got underway.

After a number of fairly uninspiring tales — one of which, from the local butcher Harry Henshaw about his apprentice mistakenly using condoms instead of proper casings for the sausages, had to be disqualified on the grounds that it was actually true — the meeting lapsed into a short recess where constitutions were fortified with brandy and more carcinogenic inhalations.

Gaffer Greg finally rose to his feet and addressed the meeting.

“If it would please the club I would like to invite my guest, who goes by the name of Indium Melano, to astound us with her quite remarkable tale.”

There was a smattering of encouraging applause as the woman, dark-haired and not entirely unattractive, rose and headed for the lectern. Her hair was a little strange and it appeared that she favoured one leg, and her wrists were bandaged or covered with a cloth of some kind.

Addressing us, she started.

“This will seem like a very strange and frankly unbelievable tale,” she said, “but I need to tell it for my own sanity.

“I am...was..damn...I don't know the right tense. I am part of a research team that is involved in studying the effect of changes in the local time stream. We use a temporal translation device, what you might simplistically call a time machine, to go back in the timeline and make changes, in order to see their effects.”

She paused for a mouthful of water from the conveniently placed jug and glass. 

“On one of these experiments my colleague, Jonas Wasubi, travelled back to the early 1960s and somehow prevented the assassination of a president. Rather than improving the global situation however, it deteriorated to such a point that a thermonuclear war started and almost ninety percent of the Earth's population was eliminated.

We were trapped by debris and after digging our way out of the rubble, we attempted to find Jonas and the device. Radiation was everywhere — far more than we were accustomed to — and if we did not change the timeline quickly we would be stuck with it and the thought that we had committed mass murder on a scale not approached before by anybody.”

Another drink of water. Her eyes seemed haunted.

“Finally, after almost a month, we located Jonas and the time device. Jonas was dead but he had left a note for us should we find him. It spoke to the proximate cause of the disaster and how we might alter it back to the way it was.

“It called for two paths. One was to go back to just before we used the time device and destroy it, a path that had its own perils, and the second was to go back...err...forward and urge Jonas not to stop the assassination, but just act as an observer.

“We chose that option. After the event we headed back to our own timeline but the device broke down and we were trapped back in time. In fact we were trapped here and now in your timeline.”

She looked out at us. There were encouraging nods from most of the members, but a few frowns as problem questions occurred to them.

“Who was this pivotal figure that you were so intent on?” asked Eric Bodley, local historian and our pet Devil's Advocate.

Indium shook her head slowly. “His name was John Kennedy and he was President of The United States at one time.”

“And just where is this time machine now?” asked another. That was the question uppermost on my mind as well.

“We destroyed it,” she said. “It was clearly a dangerous machine. My colleagues are both dead as well. I am all that is left.”

After a few more questions, all deftly answered or satisfactorily deflected, we adjourned and declared that Gaffer should get the Cup for the night, courtesy of his guest's skilful tale.

As we left the meeting an hour or so later, and a power outage from the raging storm outside consigned us to darkness, I happened to pass Indium as she gathered her wet outers and headed for the door. Her hat ruffled her hair, which slipped off her head.  She appeared to be completely bald! 

She mumbled a bashful apology about treatment for cancer and I gave her a sympathetic pat on the shoulder.

By the time I got home however, I started to think upon her strange tale of wildly inventive but non-existent people and places, and decided that she should be disqualified after all.

I think her tale was true.

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