The Wheels of Chance

 
        A slight wind and bright sun mark my preferred weather for bicycle riding. On just such a day, in the best of spirits, I peddled my favorite bicycle path, taking its mild incline robustly. Until I struck what I assumed was a rock, probably placed in the path by a playing child and which, though not sufficiently large to stop me, seemed to cause me to skim into space. An odd sensation, totally incommensurate with the object I had struck and the velocity at which I had been traveling.
        The time before my bicycle’s return to the path, for which I braced myself, seemed a beat too long – a beat which I dwell much upon now, but hardly had time to then. When I landed, however, it was not on the path (a fact I discerned immediately by the feel of the tires); the bicycle having slithered to a stop on a muddy patch of ground adjacent to a lake.
        Which surprised me since there was no lake in the vicinity of my favorite bicycle path – although it was known from the fossil remains occasionally unearthed that the whole area had once been a lake, eons before. A boon to an amateur paleontologist like myself, who likes nothing better than puttering around a bit in search of fossil remains. My wife was fond of joking that I preferred my fossils to her.
        So I was both surprised, and yet not completely surprised, upon descending from my bicycle to see half submerged in the lake a purple – well, it looked like a giant eggplant except for its long, more thickened neck, more like the swollen neck of a flamingo than that of a giraffe, topped by a head that was anything but flamingo-like. I recognized the creature at once by its shape – not its color, which has never been conclusively established.
        Instinctively I realized that I had moved back in time – bicycle and all. I leave it to anyone who may come upon this memoir (written with flint on stone to be thereafter buried in the dubious hope of greater preservation) to speculate on how he or she would be affected by such a realization. If I had been younger, I would surely have panicked. If not possessed of an overriding scientific curiosity, I might have done so in any event. As it was, I was excited and bemused at the same instant. But not frightened – a fact which surprised me.
        Until the creature turned in my direction. Curious I was, but being a meal was not the preferred way of learning about a dinosaur’s habits. Empiricism has its limitations. On the other hand, I possessed the distinct advantage of knowing more about its habits than it did about mine, it presumably never having researched me.
        The long neck stretched itself in my direction. Yes, I knew that the creature was reputed to be a herbivore, but I did not wish to be the exception that disproves the rule. I tried the bicycle bell. It sounded twice in the afternoon air – air which I noted was purer than that of my former contemporary time, almost lambent. The tone of the bell seemed purer, as well; however, the lack of noise as compared to my clamorous age may explain this phenomenon.
        To my surprise and satisfaction, the beast pulled back its neck, frightened by the sound, or at least rendered circumspect. It even wallowed a bit in a rearward direction. I did the homo sapiens equivalent, walking my bicycle backwards carefully without removing my eyes from the creature.
        I was considering risking a photograph when, to my dismay, I realized that I possessed no camera. More sobering was the thought that even if I had, I couldn’t develop the picture for a hundred million years!
        A part of me was adjusting to where I was – or, I should say, when I was — while another part was overcome by a feeling of self-pity. Most of all, I missed my wife.
        And then the thought that I was seeing a sight no other man had ever been fortunate enough to see buoyed my spirits. The scientific part of my brain took over; I could pursue at first hand my conjectures concerning the opposing theories as to whether dinosaurs were (are) warm-blooded or cold-blooded. I even had had a paper published on the subject in a local scientific journal. If I had to go back in time, I had come to the most advantageous time for me.
        I lay the bicycle gently on the ground, further from the lake, where the ground was not muddy and was firm enough to ride upon, had I the desire. At that moment, I did not have the desire, even though the thought came to me, that if I did, perhaps I would return to my own time in the same manner as I had left it – on the wheels of chance. I was still thinking present. As I lay the bicycle on its side, the front wheel spun slowly. Its motion caused me to conjecture on the conjunction of vortexes and the rock on the path and centrifugal force as perhaps together causing the time-jump, or time reversal, which had occurred. Perhaps I would soon come upon a cyclist who had had a similar experience sometime during the last century. Or even, so my thoughts quickly moved, a chap, goggled, scarf flying in the wind, on one of those large front-wheeled bicycles of the 1880’s tethered to a small dinosaur, perhaps compsognathus, pulling him blithely along.
        My sense of humor had not abandoned me, I reassured myself; only regretting I could not share this particular manifestation of it with my wife.
Sitting down next to my bicycle, I patted it; its touch gave me comfort, however far away the age of metal. I pondered how I would fill my tires with air, when the need arose. The sunlight glinted on the metal just as I had seen it do countless times in the past – that is, in the future. Double-time-think was difficult for me, but as time passed I settled on thinking of the future, as the past. I prided myself on this bit of forward mindedness.
        Even as these thoughts were going through my mind, I sat watching the creature which had evidently lost interest in me. Because I was uninteresting or because its small brain size relative to its bulk made it difficult to retain thought? The latter hypothesis was more flattering and in the first few days of my new situs I retained an anthropocentric vanity.
        I was not at all tired, time-travel apparently having no deleterious physiological effect, and I made a mental note to perhaps write a paper on the subject. At that time I thought I would somehow return to my place in the future – that the natural laws of time (whatever they were) would have to return me. Later I amended this theory to their having to return someone to take my place – perhaps the gent on the large-wheeled bicycle, but hopefully it would be I who was chosen on a time-theory application of the last out-first in principle.
        Later, I wasn’t so sure. The novelty of my predicament had worn off, its scientific opportunities were less prepossessing, and searching for food – mostly fresh-water mussels and small creatures and plants (I had become a vegetarian some years before, but it was a luxury for the future) – was time-consuming: an ironic phrase, but there it is.
        One had to keep an eye out for possible predators, too, although the bigger creatures seemed to sleep a lot. I wondered if they dreamed. When I slept, I did. Of the future-past that for me was no longer a mere tense. Also (at that stage) I kept an eye on my bicycle, rubbing it down with my only handkerchief and even coming up with a plant oil which I prided myself was not too far away from a very good twenty-first century lubricating oil. I had, further, gone on a couple of bicycle excursions of limited duration, returning to my “landing-spot.” Why? Familiarity, nothing more, like the presence of my alter ego in the lake (as I sometimes thought of it). Oh yes, one thing very much more — since I had landed there, maybe I could take off from there. Man, in any time, remains something of an animist.
        My bicycle began to suffer. Corrosive lichens and perhaps bacteria as well began splotching it and eating at the tires. My lubricating oil spread liberally on all merely delayed the process. It seemed to occur faster than it would have in previous time. Perhaps a combination of the then present organisms and more oxygen in the air, or less carbon dioxide.
        With the bicycle’s disintegration, began mine. I lost interest in the flora and fauna of what I assumed was the Mesozoic Era. I was subject to weeping spells. The purity of the air and beauty of the natural scene – and its lack of raucous noise – paled. I wanted to talk to someone. Even a dog, but dogs would not exist until the age of man. My memory began to be affected, perhaps for lack of new ones to keep it in trim. All my memories were a hundred million years in the future.
        I buried the bicycle, hoping that if it were unearthed at whatever my paleontological level would be in the future (Triassic, Jurassic?), it would give some clue to my fate. For increasingly I was obsessed with the fact that no one knew what had happened to me. Especially my wife.
        I realized of course that even if my bicycle somehow survived the elements and were found, it would be regarded as a practical joke, a “plant” like Piltdown Man. And so my watch, even my bones. The best I could hope for was that a five-centimeter section of my femur or such would be taken for a part of a small as yet unidentified creature. I placed even less faith in the survival and discovery of my flint-on-stone record.
        I dug up the bicycle and took to spinning the front wheel over and over, summoning Whatever had sent me back in time, praying with the only prayer wheel at my disposal.