Another Time, Another Place - Chapter 2

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dianepm

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Ok, so this is part two of our little story.

A mirror-ball lemon time machine story wouldn't be a mirror-ball lemon time machine story without dinosaurs, now would it?

I forgot to put this in last time.................This is pure fiction. No money was made from this. I'd say this never happened, but how would we know if it did or didn't? They could have changed something in our pasts and we'd never know the difference.

We'd also like to thank Reggo for all her help.

Chapter 2


“WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED?!” Somehow, Larry was in Bono’s arms again. Bono quickly dropped him.

“... Huh?” Adam belatedly noticed the expensive-looking special effects happening on the view-screen Edge had installed in the lemon. “Wow, trippy.” He sat back to enjoy the ride.

Edge had gone pale. “Bono... what did you do...?”

Bono affected an air of childlike innocence, which he was usually very good at. “....Nothing...?”

“WE ARE HURTLING THROUGH SPACE AND TIME! YOU DID SOMETHING!!” Edge shouted. He had planned for every contingency, except Bono.

Bono was trying to hide behind Adam, and Larry was trying to fry him with his best Death Glare.

Adam was distracted by the pretty lights outside.

“I may have accidentally not entirely on purpose but I couldn’t help it… it was right there calling out to me to do it..... I may have pushed the red shiny button…” Bono spoke very quickly.

Edge glared at him. “The red shiny button that has a label on it reading ‘DO NOT TOUCH’?!”

“..............yes…”

Edge could only splutter inarticulately.

Adam had finally noticed what was happening. “You shouldn’t have made it shiny,” he said wisely.

“Is this bad?” Larry said, eyeing the space-time continuum as it sped by.

Edge frowned. “It’s not quite crossing-the-streams bad, but it’s pretty bad.”

“……….I’m sorry…”

Everyone ignored Bono.

“Where are we going?” Adam asked.

“That was the Random button,” Edge said. “I don’t know where we’re going... and I don’t know how we’ll get back.”

Three dramatic chords echoed through the time machine.

“Where did that music come from?” Larry said, looking at the lemon-painted ceiling. There were wires and speakers hanging from it.

Edge turned around, to where his elbow had jostled an array of buttons. “Oh, sorry.... It IS a sound system.” He pushed another button, and the music changed to Steppenwolf’s ‘Magic Carpet Ride’.

All of a sudden the music stopped, and they heard a Bing! The lemon's shaking had ceased.

"What happened?" Bono asked Edge, as smoke cleared from the lemon's interior.

Edge looked at the view-screen. "I think we landed."

Bono looked around nervously.

"Nobody goes anywhere until I check the sensors," Edge said, looking pointedly at Bono.

Bono squirmed in place, looking longingly toward the Open button. "What happens if we need to... umm... use the little boy's room?"

"Hold it in," Larry said tersely.

The tension in the lemon thickened palpably as the rest of the band watched Edge madly turning dials and pressing buttons, punctuated with many beep boop twiddle zing beep noises. Edge's brow furrowed.

"Has anyone noticed that there seems to be a lot of trees around?" Adam asked.

Edge just stared at the panel in front of him. "I did it. I actually did it. I really actually did it!!"

"What did you do, Reg?" Bono asked.

"I am a genius," Edge said faintly. A maniacal gleam entered his eyes. "I am a genius! I am the lord of space and time! I have bent the universe to my will!! The laws of physics are merely guidelines to me!!" he said in an increasingly hysterical voice.

Bono, Adam and Larry all looked at Edge like he had lost his mind.

"Oh for feck’s sake," Larry said and slapped Edge hard across the face.

"What are you all looking at me like that for?" Edge asked, rubbing his face. The ragged streamers of insanity were receding, though, and he realised Larry had done him a favour. "Thanks," he muttered. "You didn't have to slap me that hard, though."

"What exactly did you do Edge? And would you please explain it so Bono can understand? " Adam asked. Bono glared at him, but was distracted by his over-full bladder and tried to edge his way out the door.

Edge tried to think of words of one syllable or less.

"We have just ... gone through time, and space. Accord... I mean, these things tell me that we are now a long long way... hey! Stop him!”

Bono had run for the emergency escape hatch and had his fingers on the handle when Larry grabbed him. "Ow!"

The singer wriggled like an eel, escaped Larry's grip, tumbled down the small internal ladder, through the hatch, and headed for the first unoccupied tree. Soon a sound of immense relief drifted up to the others in the lemon.

Edge was furious, recovering from his fear about Bono's immediate safety. "Aren’t you lucky there was oxygen out there!"

Bono thought quickly. "Umm... there’s trees! Don’t they need oxygen?"

"... Damn." The undersized front man was actually right. Edge opened the lemon properly, and closed the emergency hatch.

Bono looked smugly at Edge as he sauntered out of the undergrowth.

The guitarist's ego was smarting, and he felt a need to reinforce his safety concerns. "There might have been poisonous gases as well! And other things you can't even imagine!"

Adam, with his usual perfect timing, farted noisily.

"Arrgh!" Larry started choking. "Do you have gas masks in here?" He started searching through the clutter of bits and pieces desperately.

Adam looked around innocently, safely immune to his own emanations.

"I’m so not going back in there," Bono said from the lush jungle outside. He was suddenly joined by the rest of the band as the lemon emptied.

"Talk about explosive outgassing," Edge muttered, waving his hand in front of his face.

Adam was unconcerned with the respiratory distress of his band mates. "So... uh... where are we exactly?"

Edge was redesigning the ventilation system in the lemon in his head, and had to be asked twice.

"Huh? ... I believe we are somewhere on the north American continent, circa seventy million years BC."

Adam, Larry and Bono just stared at him with their mouths open.

Adam tried again; third time's the charm, after all. "Umm... so where are we exactly??"

How many times did he have to say it? The Lord of Space and Time's patience was wearing out. "In the middle of a rainforest, you idiot!"

"Did you say seventy million years?!" Bono was dumbfounded.

They all whipped around as strange noises were heard from nearby in the forest. A slight tremor in the ground was felt underfoot.

"Yes, I said seventy million years..." Edge suddenly really heard what he was saying. His manner became more excited. "There could be dinosaurs here!" He took a deep breath and ran back up the lemon's steps, and started rummaging for a camera.

Fooom. One of the strange noises seemed to be coming closer. No one noticed, however, because at that moment Edge's three companions grasped what he'd said.

" DINOSAURS?!?"

"Yes! Dinosaurs!" Edge emerged triumphant, camera aloft. He was nearly bowled over by the other three running back into the lemon, but then they all ran back out again, as the air had not yet cleared in there.

Edge was waiting on the forest floor. "This is fantastic! We can answer the question of dinosaurian endothermy once and for all... does anyone have a rectal thermometer?"

Adam pulled a rectal thermometer out of a pocket and handed it to Edge. Everyone stared at Adam, but he just looked back as if to say "What?"

Edge decided not to ask.

Larry, ever practical, had a question. "For feck's sake Edge...how the hell do you think you’d use it? And what about cats... are there sabre-toothed cats?" Suddenly the drummer was looking more scared than he had a moment before.

Edge thought for a second. "No, that was during the ice age. Cats don’t exist yet."

Larry became much happier. "I like this place!"

Thump, went a noise.

"What was that?" Bono asked nervously.

Larry didn't care. "Not a cat!"

Edge had adopted a determined expression. "I don’t know, but I’m going to take its temperature..." He disappeared into the undergrowth.

THUMP went the noise again. It was followed by rustling and thrashing sounds from nearby, struggles and a shriek of reptilian indignity. Edge was just lucky that the dinosaur he'd tackled was a juvenile.

Adam, Bono and Larry were of one mind. "RUN!" They dashed back into the lemon, and hammered desperately at the Close button.

Larry tried to hold his breath, but it was no use. Five seconds later, they all ran back out again, gasping for air.

Edge emerged from the verdant undergrowth, scratched and disheveled and roughed-up, but beaming and triumphant. "36 degrees Celsius!"

Behind him, an enraged mother Tyrannosaurus rex crashed through trees. "RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWRRRR!!"

All four men went screaming into the jungle in different directions.

After his initial panic subsided, Edge stopped and realised that he would be better off hiding in the bushes, and hoping the T-rex didn't have a good sense of smell. He hid, waiting. The sounds of crashing and roaring diminished off to his right...

Adam found himself alone in a clearing, and just stood there, listening to the eerie sounds of a Cretaceous world. Giant insects hummed, small unseen things skittered through the ferns at his feet. He shouldn't have been able to, but he could feel that he and the three others were the only human beings on the entire planet. It was a very lonely, terrifying feeling.

"... Guys?"

Larry had taken off like MacPhisto himself was after him, and the crashing sounds behind him only spurred him on in a haze of adrenaline and fear. He became uncomfortably aware that the red shirt he was wearing was highly visible in the green world they had found themselves in, but didn't want to slow down long enough to rip it off.

"Feck off, ye bloody great beast!" he gasped over his shoulder. Glimpses of leathery scales and fangs the size of steak knives gave his feet even more speed.

After hiding under a tree-fern for several minutes, Edge realised the dinosaur wasn't coming after him, and realised guiltily that he should have taken better care of the others. He crept out from under the fern and started looking for his band mates...

He found Adam rooted to the ground in a clearing, almost hyperventilating.

"Adam!"

The bassist leapt a foot in the air, uttering a noise that he denied later bore any resemblance to a scream. Half a second later, he was clinging to Edge like a lifeline. "There's nobody here, Edge! We're completely alone!"

"Don't panic, Adam," Edge said, patting Adam's back soothingly and ignoring his own fears. "We need to find the others and get back to the DUMASS. Come on..."

They found Bono panicking as well, but he was trying to climb a tree rather than staying frozen to the ground.

"Bono!" Edge shouted to get the singer's attention. "The dinosaur is taller than that tree..."

Bono stopped, hanging from a branch with his feet dangling a foot off the ground. "Oh."

Adam rolled his eyes, feeling superior that he at least had panicked with mostly quiet dignity.

"It's not my fault!" Bono protested. "Where I grew up, there weren't many trees..."

"Not many dinosaurs, either," Edge shot back, while Adam groaned at the awfulness of Bono's self-reference.

Bono dropped to the ground, reluctantly relinquishing the heady feeling of being higher up than Adam or Edge. "Where's Lardence?"

On cue, a faint scream was heard drifting through the jungle. The small insect noises stopped abruptly, and they heard crashing and roaring as well.

"Oh dear," Adam said, before the three of them ran to Larry's aid.

They found him trying to fight off the juvenile T-rex with a large stick.

"Is that the same one you assaulted?" Adam asked Edge.

Bono didn't wait for the guitarist to reply. "Probably, it’s pissed off anyway."

"Oops." Edge had the grace at least to blush.

Adam grabbed at the moral high ground. "You see, this is what happens when you stick a thermometer up its ar--"

Edge shut him up with a glare and pulled out a tazer. "Stand back!"

Bono suddenly found some sympathy for the young dinosaur. "No! It's just a baby..."

"It bleedin' isn't! Look at the teeth on it!" Larry, vegetarian or otherwise, had less sympathy. Bono wasn't the one staring down its maw, after all...

Adam affected boredom. "Just stun it, Edge, so we can get the hell out of here."

Edge scowled. "That’s what I was going to do, Mr Smart Arse..."

Zzzzap went the tazer.
Thud went the baby dinosaur.
Fooom went a sound, carried through the ground.

Larry dropped the stick, puffing and gasping after his flight and the brief battle. "Why didn’t you do that BEFORE you jammed a thermometer up its arse?!"

"I didn’t think of that," Edge admitted sheepishly.

FOOOMM went the sound again, closer. That got everyone's attention again, and they turned around just in time to see the mother tyrannosaur come out of the trees towards them.

"To the lemon!" Edge shouted, leading the way at top speed. Fortunately the lemon was only a short distance away, winking at them through the trees. Also fortunately, Adam's fart had dissipated by now, and the air was breathable again.

"I've got to fix that ventilation system," Edge muttered as he shoved everyone inside and hit the Close button. The steps retracted with agonising slowness. On the view-screen, the huge dinosaur came crashing towards the lemon, and its somewhat nervous occupants.

"Uh... Edge... Get us the hell out of here!" Bono shouted.

"I'm trying!" Edge cried, frantically pushing at many buttons. "Okay, here we go!" He pushed the big red button, as the tyrannosaur lunged at the machine, massive jaws agape.

Adam, Larry and Bono all held on for dear life. There was a metallic whine, a sharp fizzPOP noise, and more pyrotechnics appeared on the view-screen.

The T-rex's jaws snapped shut on empty air.
 
O.M.F.G. I CAN'T STOP LAUGHING! :lol:

"I am a genius," Edge said faintly. A maniacal gleam entered his eyes. "I am a genius! I am the lord of space and time! I have bent the universe to my will!! The laws of physics are merely guidelines to me!!" he said in an increasingly hysterical voice.

:lmao: !!!!!!!!!!!

"Oh for feck’s sake," Larry said and slapped Edge hard across the face.

:lmao: :lmao: I totally lost it at that!

Adam, with his usual perfect timing, farted noisily.


AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

"Huh? ... I believe we are somewhere on the north American continent, circa seventy million years BC."

Adam, Larry and Bono just stared at him with their mouths open.

Adam tried again; third time's the charm, after all. "Umm... so where are we exactly??"

How many times did he have to say it? The Lord of Space and Time's patience was wearing out. "In the middle of a rainforest, you idiot!"

:lmao: LOLOL!!!!! ROOOAAAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"It's not my fault!" Bono protested. "Where I grew up, there weren't many trees..."

"Not many dinosaurs, either," Edge shot back, while Adam groaned at the awfulness of Bono's self-reference.


:lol::lol::lol: OMG You killed me!

I'm totally loving this!
 
OMG I am laughing and crying, this is so amazingly great and hilarious! :laugh: Can`t wait to read the next one!
 
I dunno if "little" is the word I'd use to describe this story... :giggle: More like "huge" and "insane". :wink:

Thanks for the feedback! I'm putting up chapter 3 shortly. :)
 
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